Why should you plant a garden?
1. You’ll have lunch and dinner in minutes. In the past week alone the NY Times has run two articles about the virtues of planting your own garden. First up was the article about Kitchen Gardeners International (whom we wrote about earlier this year), and a short history of the “victory garden.” How good is this homegrown stuff ? “Like buried gold,” says Barbara Damrosch, whose new gardening book just hit the shelves.
2. You can reduce your carbon footprint. Or, at the very least, do “one thing that is real and particular (as well as symbolic) and that, come what may, will offer its own rewards.” This quote comes from the second article in the NY Times, from their “Low Carbon Catalog,” in which Michael Pollan proposes a backyard garden as that “one thing.”
3. All the cool kids are doing it. Slow Food Nation–Slow Food’s large-scale food event being held this Labor Day in San Francisco–is planning a Victory Garden at the Civic Center. They’ll be working with community gardening associations to plant a plethora of edible greenery, including seeds from the Slow Food USA Ark of Taste. In mid-July, they’ll have a public planting day when people who want to can come help get the shoots in the ground. More details to follow on their website.