rockerpixie
I wish I had a garden.
cry I've always thought the idea of growing and consisting on your own food was so romantic.
3nodding Romantic?
I see it as practical. Even if food imported from overseas was always wholesome (and with the contamination that's been reported lately, that's just not guaranteed anymore) the fact of the matter is that it takes weeks to get here. Huge supertankers use up absolutely amazing amounts of diesel to carry their wares across the oceans and to power refrigerators and freezers on the tankers (and then belch it all onto LA because so much comes through the ports).
Now I'm all for the free market and all, but I also think that if people were more interested in caring for tomatoes than a lawn, that if a neat veggie garden was the mark of a "nice" house, we would be a lot better off. When you grow your own, you're investing in your food, you get a deep appreciation for what it takes. I grow organically so that's very true around here. You also get much fresher produce that tastes better. My oranges are sometimes not round. when you tree-ripen an orange, eventually it becomes oval from the effect of gravity. You never see that in the markets because they pick their oranges barely ripe. To me the bitter result is unmistakable.
This is a change that can only occur in people's hearts, and is not possible via any sort of legislation I can think of. Once you taste a tree-ripened fruit it's not something you will forget easily.
One last thing. If the economy is truly going south the way some are predicting, growing your own may no longer be so much a romantifc option than a necessity. I'd like to think that I'll have a jumpstart in that department, I already have the knowledge and just have to have the land that will let me loose.
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