What happened to growing your own chow?

[PrettySquareGal]

This article has me perplexed:

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THURSDAY, Nov. 22 (HealthDay News) -- In this land and season of plenty, low-income and rural Americans continue to have difficulty finding healthy foods that are affordable, a new study finds.

One study shows that low-income Americans now would have to spend up to 70 percent of their food budget on fruits and vegetables to meet new national dietary guidelines for healthy eating.

And a second study found that in rural areas, convenience stores far outnumber supermarkets and grocery stores -- even though the latter carry a much wider choice of affordable, healthy foods...

http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/healthday/071122/many-americans-cant-afford-to-eat-right.htm

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I can understand low income people in cities not being able to afford produce, but I am just at a complete loss about rural people being at a disadvantage because of the high cost of fruits and vegetables and too many convenience stores. What happened to old-fashioned gardening????? It's not hard to grow some veggies is it?? They can even be frozen after harvesting for winter food.

Is common sense dead?

 

[cowboy76]

I've been wanting to plant our version of a 1940s Victory Garden foever now,....I'm going ahead with the plan come this spring!!!

As a kid, I grew up for many years in an old alley apartment in an coal mining area/town. Across the Alley was an old Italian lady we were very good friends with! My mom and I would always head over after she'd invite us, and she'd give us lots of tomatos, cucumbers, lettuce, beats, carrots, etc. We'd always help her plant, dig stuff up, etc. She was the most wonderful neighbor I've EVER had,....she passed away many years ago,...I still miss her. That's the way I grew up, you became friends with your neighbors, helped each other out, etc. I was raised the way my grandparents were raised,.....
Another reason I have trouble dealing with our modern world....people just dont "get it!"..some never will!!

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I've been wanting to plant our version of a 1940s Victory Garden foever now,....I'm going ahead with the plan come this spring!!!

As a kid, I grew up for many years in an old alley apartment in an coal mining area/town. Across the Alley was an old Italian lady we were very good friends with! My mom and I would always head over after she'd invite us, and she'd give us lots of tomatos, cucumbers, lettuce, beats, carrots, etc. We'd always help her plant, dig stuff up, etc. She was the most wonderful neighbor I've EVER had,....she passed away many years ago,...I still miss her. That's the way I grew up, you became friends with your neighbors, helped each other out, etc. I was raised the way my grandparents were raised,.....
Another reason I have trouble dealing with our modern world....people just dont "get it!"..some never will!!

Hey you just brought back some nice memories of my grandmother's (RIP) neighbor (RIP) who grew tomatoes! This was in suburban New Jersey. It really was the only time they would talk because Mrs Spano (I still remember her name!) didn't speak English.

Here in Maine neighbors always share their garden goodies with one another.

I once had a garden and what a slapstick comedy THAT was! I was fresh out of NYC in Maine and hadn't a clue as to what I was doing. heh. I ended up doing OK with it.

 

[Nashoba]

At least the common sense of the person who wrote it. We live in semi-rural TN and most people round these parts have some kind of garden. We aren't low income, but still. And when you get really out into the sticks round here the gardens get much bigger. In my little subdivision you'll see little gardens...(except in my yard where I have a *huge* one) you go out to the older (and sometimes a bit run down) areas of town (really is a town...our biggest claim to fame is the new Lowes and Home Depot...both! and we're getting a target) and the outlying acres that surround and you see gardens that take up *alot* more space.
But then we may be the exception i suppose. My husband's dad's side of the family were farmers (his 90 year old grandfather *still* maintains the old family farm....been in the family for 5 generations) and while he doesn't plant much these days, he still plants.

 

[vonwotan]

All I can tell you for sure is that one of my goals, at some time in the future, would be to have a place in the country where I could, at least in theory, live entirely off the grid, grow my own food, etc. If I had the money for it, I would love to have a "gentleman's" farm that would provide for me and for a caretaker, or caretaker's family as was the case in our place in Virginia (as a young couple we only rented the back 20 of this wonderful horse farm). The owner also had wonder greenhouses and kept free range chickens who's eggs she sells for $0.50 a dozen...

I don't think I can speak specifically to why the decline in people growing foods for themselves but, it seems that attitudes have changed considerably. Some neighborhood associations have complained when families put in vegetable gardens instead of flower beds or lawns and while living in our Italian neighborhood, some of the your renters nearby would make snide comments about the vegetable gardens behind the homes of long time residents.

 

[PA Dancer]

I can understand low income people in cities not being able to afford produce, but I am just at a complete loss about rural people being at a disadvantage because of the high cost of fruits and vegetables and too many convenience stores. What happened to old-fashioned gardening????? It's not hard to grow some veggies is it?? They can even be frozen after harvesting for winter food.

Is common sense dead?

Most people in general are lazy. Those of us who have the garden space will say we lack the time to care for a garden. We want our veggies now not in 3 months! So it becomes to easy to go to the grocery store and complain about over-priced tomatoes grown in Mexico.
We could have bought that pack of seeds for less than a buck-fifty.

Maybe it's a lack of space for a garden, laziness, or maybe these people just don't think they can grow a garden because they have never done it before....who knows.

If I am hungry and poor I will grow corn in a pot on my back porch if I have to....which by the way...potted gardens do work.

I can't wait to start my garden this spring. (I tried growing an apple tree in the house, but it didn't work out too well..heehee)

A Gardening Tip: Plant from North to South. putting all the highest-growing veggies on the northside and working your way south to the lowest growing plants.

 

[Paisley]

What makes me scratch my head is when people of modest means will buy pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns, and then throw them out instead of eating them.

It goes to show the old saying: waste not, want not.

 

[pretty faythe]

unfriendly soil aka rocks
lol
In the last house we were renting we were getting the back yard ready for making a samll garden (they didn't mind what we did in the back yard since nothing was done back there), getting all the rocks, well, what turned out the be loads and loads of cement all over the dirt or sand out of the way bofore the owners lost the place. Now the owners of this place have the wonderful xenoscape which I am sure I am spelling incorrectly, ya know, water wise, desert landscaping. So we have potted herbs in the front yard. When I finially by a house and no longer have my wonderful mum (enter sarcasm here ) as a roomie I will have a garden.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Back when I lived in an apartment, I tried growing corn and beans in the windowboxes. Not a successful experiment. I'd be afraid to try and grow anything where I live now, given whatever contaminants have probably leached into the ground from the 90-year-old junkyard next door. Probably could raise some interesting mutations, at least...

 

[PrettySquareGal]

Back when I lived in an apartment, I tried growing corn and beans in the windowboxes. Not a successful experiment. I'd be afraid to try and grow anything where I live now, given whatever contaminants have probably leached into the ground from the 90-year-old junkyard next door. Probably could raise some interesting mutations, at least...

lol

 

[Nathan Flowers]

Back when I lived in an apartment, I tried growing corn and beans in the windowboxes. Not a successful experiment. I'd be afraid to try and grow anything where I live now, given whatever contaminants have probably leached into the ground from the 90-year-old junkyard next door. Probably could raise some interesting mutations, at least...

There's always Container Gardening

 

[Rooster]

Other than Milk and bread we're nearly self sufficient. We raise chickens and sheep and eat both. Yummy. Garden and several fruit trees too. And there's always hunting too.

 

[Ben]

Do you gardeners ever run out of anything or have trouble getting things out of season?

Also, in addition to the container gardening link, does anyone else have any good resources -- books, Web sites, and the like -- on growing vegetables indoors?

I live in an apartment and have tried peppers, tomatoes, and corn. I have harvested only one pepper. It was small, but might tasty.

My houseplants do okay, but I would like to be able to supply more of my own produce. It usually tastes better and getting good produce at the stores can be a challenge.

 

[Starius]

This is where I get most of my seeds:

http://www.rareseeds.com/


They put out a nice catalog and have some interesting festivals out there in Missouri.

 

[Brad Bowers]

This is where I get most of my seeds:

http://www.rareseeds.com/

They're a good company. We order from them, too.

We grow our own chiles and tomatoes, as that's what we eat most often, but we've also grown various other vegetables in the past, and once we finally get moved out of this apartment and buy a home of our own, we'll plant a much larger garden. I like the idea of being as self-sufficient as possible. What we don't grow, we try to buy from local producers.

Brad

 

[zaika]

This is where I get most of my seeds:

http://www.rareseeds.com/


They put out a nice catalog and have some interesting festivals out there in Missouri.

That's a great site. I'm hoping to get some land here soon in one of the popular community gardens to suppliment my diet with fresh veggies, and I'm getting heirloom seeds only. I didn't know this until recently, but companies like ConAgra and Monsanto genetically engineer their seeds so the seeds that the fruit or vegetable yield cannot be used again. That's just...wrong in every way possible.
Definately getting hierloom seeds.

 

[PolkaDotMeggie]

I can't say that I am currently growing anything from my garden, but I do find it enjoyable and rewarding. Once my duck starts to lay, I will have nearly a years worth of eggs from her. Her breed is known to be highly productive and it is not unusual to lay more than 250 a year. Alas, she is not laying yet. I fear I might have to shake them out of her. I am impatient lol

 

[Starius]

That's a great site. I'm hoping to get some land here soon in one of the popular community gardens to suppliment my diet with fresh veggies, and I'm getting heirloom seeds only. I didn't know this until recently, but companies like ConAgra and Monsanto genetically engineer their seeds so the seeds that the fruit or vegetable yield cannot be used again. That's just...wrong in every way possible.
Definately getting hierloom seeds.

Yeah, this is how the modern farming industry works. With modern seed varieties, its actually illegal for a farmer to keep seeds from his crop to grow again even if that genetic tampering didn't work, because the seed company owns the rights to those genetic alterations and you only have the right to grow them for that growing year you purchased them.

It's a practice I've never liked, so I am all for heirloom varieties.

 

[Joie DeVive]

Before I became an apartment dweller I gardened every year. Once I moved into an apartment I mostly limited my growing to herbs and houseplants.

I'm thrilled to now have my own little corner of the universe where I can do what I want with the yard. I have already scoped out what I think will be the best area for a garden. This spring the big job will be moving all the rocks that the former owners used for landscaping off of it and conditioning the soil. I'm thinking that I may put a raised bed in, but I'm not sure. It will probably be a year or two before I have anything much to speak of, but I am really happy to be able to get back to gardening.

 

[Hondo]

I would go hungry! everything I tried to grow dies on me,
even my own lawn, no green thumb