For all you urban gardeners out there. Article is Sydney based cos abc, but still valid. Good balance of ALL the factors involved including the downsides.
For all you urban gardeners out there. Article is Sydney based cos abc, but still valid. Good balance of ALL the factors involved including the downsides.
Anti-capitalist rant ahead
Normally I’d be all for this. I am. I have a few tiny vegie containers of my own and given the capacity would have loved to have been able to grow enough to share with people around me. I posted for awareness of seed libraries if people didn’t already know.
I post to Frugal, try to post things to do that are some action rather than nothing, and share budget recipes that are basically poverty food. (I will continue doing this.) During lockdown I was posting local foraging maps of fruit trees to Reddit. If I wasn’t so physically disabled and mentally unwell I would have considered volunteering with Food Not Bombs.
However I can’t help but feel cynical about how these ‘motivational’ advice articles and suggestions are yet another way the burden of poverty and managing food insecurity are put back on the people experiencing it. The whole pushing of individual effort to manage systemic inequality.
And people on the lower rungs that can afford or have the energy to take on extra stuff after work have likely already have been doing this. I knew people in public housing who did this ten years ago not as a fashionable thing but to feed their families.
This is not a knock at OP and this article is a lot more sensible and realistic than others I have seen over the years. Maybe this helps someone who is newer to poverty and food insecurity. I will certainly keep contributing any suggestions and resources I think could help anyone get by.
It’s just… Things shouldn’t have been allowed to get to this point and there’s only so much further people can stretch to make ends meet. Especially people who are disabled, already have manual jobs or juggle gig work. This growing level of wealth inequality is fucked, it was predicted ten years ago even without the pando justifying inflation, and it’s so depressing to see all these well meaning top-down advice articles.
Wealth is concentrating to corporations and the people at the top to the point ordinary people are struggling to eat and food banks are overwhelmed, and instead of any action the media are cheerily offering people a bandaid. That they have to apply themselves. When they get a spare hand and a minute.
I can’t begin to tell you the mental load of all the ‘easy little things’ you have to juggle being poor and I am so much luckier than some.
People shouldn’t have to come home after work and labour more just to get fed because essentials like food and housing have been made increasingly inaccessible and their wages aren’t enough.
Also they are seriously underestimating yield. I don’t expect a lot but with my little containers I can expect a literal handful of produce for the expenditure and work and see it more as a relatively cheap hobby. I could expand vertically but that has challenges as a renter.
Ps. On a more practical and less ragey note.
If you do do the guerilla gardening thing for edible food or start a vegie patch please test your soil for heavy metals and other contaminants. I won’t be bothering as containers are what is feasible for me but if you’re interested try these guys https://www.360dustanalysis.com/ or you can look at a soil map for your area (less reliable)
Please be aware contamination concerns (and council bylaws, and anti-fox measures that add up) also apply if you plan to keep chickens. Which I would love to but yeah. I don’t have the space, the living situation stability, and staying on top of it is more than I can handle.
Also for foraging, I’m not experienced but be wary of things growing by paths ie dandelions or blackberries - you don’t want a mouthful of dog wee or sprayed weedkiller. Do not try to identify wild mushrooms by yourself.
And be very careful of buying foraging guides online as there have been cases of AI written foraging guides with inaccurate and dangerous advice, ie tasting something to identify it. See my above point about mushrooms. Make sure the author is reputable.
Pps. Seriously do not do edible guerilla gardening on a golf course. One you’d probably get charged and two the soil is heavily contaminated from ages of being soaked in arsenic based pesticides. Or something. Idk. Nothing you want to be eating.
Remember that any netting used should be a particular type to avoid entangling and killing birds or animals. “Hungry animals are easily caught in ‘bird netting’, which has a mesh size greater than 1cm square. Wildlife friendly netting should have a mesh size of less than 5 mm.”
I’m not kidding, an anti-cruelty regulation came in 2019. If you have the old netting you need to replace it.
And be careful of roaming neighbour cats. They love to use the soft soil of vegie gardens as an open air litterbox, potentially opening you up to parasites or bacteria if you don’t prevent that.