Why I think it is Important to Grow your own Vegetables

A discussion on the importance of self-reliance, as well as related issues.

Philip Brennan | PhilipBrennan.net | 8 January 2011:

I have to admit that these winter months have been a time of sitting around and doing nothing but working on this web site. I hate being stuck indoors all the time – it gives you a feeling of cabin fever, where you just want to get out and away from everybody in the house. I don’t believe it is good for people to live in overcrowded cities and high rise apartment blocks, and I am sure that many sociological studies would support this thinking. I really don’t believe that we are meant to live this way.

I got to thinking about this through a friend in America complaining about the cold weather and wishing that it was nice outside again. She said that she was ready for Spring, and I had to agree with her with my own reasons: I can not wait to get back outside in the garden and start growing vegetables again.

Now I have a small confession to make: I hated gardening lessons at boarding school. All we ever did was dig vegetable plots for the first two or three years. The only highlight of this was when Andrew Parish Evans managed to stick a gardening fork through his foot!

But what I did learn without even realising it was how to prepare ground for crop cultivation, even if I tarried at my work and didn’t get half as much done as I should have. Digging vegetable plots became instinctual – no one had to remind me how to prepare a plot when I took up vegetable gardening last year. Other things I had to go look up, either on the internet or on the backs of seed packets, but as for the general task of preparing the ground for vegetable plots I just got on with it, and did it in good time.

At least the old git Mr. Dunkley managed to teach me something useful…

So I am looking forwards to being able to get back out in the garden and start making preparations for the new vegetable growing season. There was a break in the weather last week, which meant I was able to prepare two 2×1 metre beds for Bloody Baron Corn. I also got to check how well my compost heap was doing, as half of it went into the bottom of these two beds.

Two beds down, and at least a dozen more to go.

My vegetable plot is 27 square metres. This should give me enough space to grow a wide variety of vegetables. I also have a 1x9m plot by a fence, which I plan to use for sweet garden peas, with lettuce planted in front to use up the space. Apart from that and the Bloody Baron Corn (Heirloom sweetcorn variety that is red), I have plans for carrots, beetroot, parsnips, onions, garlic, and various other vegetables.

I am also planning on doing the Potato Barrel.

With regards to the earlier conversation with my American friend, I came to some interesting conclusions. The first conclusion is that home grown vegetables are always the best tasting. I do not believe this is just because your own effort in producing them make them taste better in a psychological sort of way, although that might account for some of the reasons. I really do believe that home grown vegetables are better and healthier for you than mass produced ones. We use less artificial fertilisers, pesticides and weed killers. In fact, the only pesticide I used at all last year was slug pellets. The only fertiliser I used was organic tomato feed. And as for weeds, I was always yanking them out by hand.

With my lovely compost heap I am going to be using even less fertiliser this year.

The second conclusion had to do with self-reliance. If you grow your own food you will never starve if the price of food suddenly shoots up. It is always cheaper to grow your own vegetables than it is to buy them from a store. Seeds are cheap if you know where to buy them, and you do not have to factor in labour costs because all the labour is yours, and on your own dime. With the amount of rain we get over here in the UK one should not need to do much watering at all, and with water butts you should never need to draw it from the tap. Even so, most of us here are on water rates and not metered billing.

The third conclusion is probably the most important, and I apologise if I start sounding like an old hippy here, because I am not.

Those who grow their own vegetables are more connected to the earth around them. They are in touch with something primaeval about digging in the earth for sustenance. It is natural for us to grow our own food, just as it is natural for us to hunt for our own meat rather than get it in plastic packaging at the local supermarket. I personally feel that I am connected to something more important when I am digging around in the mud, planting seeds and harvesting my own crops. If I had the money I would buy myself a two or three acre small holding and have chickens and stuff and just live off the land.

Seriously, I prefer this to the constant rat race modern society has become.

While David Rothscum Reports is running a series on the Death of Humanity, I am thinking of how I am to survive whatever comes our way, and the first part of human survival is food security, something which can not and should not be left in the hands of corporations and governments. If you have not started reading his series I would recommend it as it is a serious eye-opener, but you have to do something with that knowledge. It is no good knowing about how messed up our world is without being prepared to think very carefully of how you are going to effect change.

And the first change always starts with yourself.

As you know, I do not believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming. I think it is all a big con so that governments and corporations can inflict even more taxes on us.

There used to be a joke floating around that if the government could tax us for breathing then they would.

I am not laughing at this any more. They’re already doing this in the form of Carbon Taxes and Cap’n'Trade.

There are far bigger forces at work on this earth than us. We are mere ants on the face of the earth. Volcanoes produce far more so-called greenhouse gasses each year than we could ever do in a millennia, and the earth has not become uninhabitable because of them. Each year at least twenty volcanoes blow their tops. The Mount Saint Helena eruption in 1980 produced more so-called greenhouse gasses than the whole of human existence up to that point.

The sun is the biggest factor in our weather, with the moon being a not too close second. It is our position in relation to the sun on our annual orbit that determines the seasons and how they change depending on where you are in the world. It is solar activity that causes extreme weather events, volcanic eruptions, and even, earth quakes. Many are caused by plates just rubbing together as per normal, but many are also caused by solar flare momentarily heating a portion of the magma layer and causing it to suddenly expand and contract.

Due to solar activity we have had several miniature ice ages and warm periods since the last great ice age. In the first century AD the Romans could grow vineyards as good as any in France here in England, and also in the 12th century warm period the Normans had excellent vineyards in England. In the 9th century we had a mini ice age, and in the 1880s it got so cold in winter that you could ice skate on the Thames river in December.

I believe it is partly due to our disconnection with how nature really is that the Eco-Fascists and Global Warming Alarmists have been able to con many people into believing their lies. Plus our levels of science education at schools and colleges have seriously dropped in the past twenty to thirty years.

The only people who are benefiting from the Climate Change Scam are the likes of Al Gore with their fraudulent Carbon Trading Markets. He has made billions of dollars out of them personally, and have bought several coastal mansions. He is obviously not worried about rising sea levels…

So I will continue pottering about in my vegetable garden and ignore all these idiots. I am the master of my own destiny here, and not some stupid politician with fingers in pies he should not be sticking his fingers in.

If anyone has a nice little cottage with two to three acres of arable land attached they can rent me, please let me know…

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