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Urban Gardens Grow your Own

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Urban Gardens Grow your Own:

Organic vegetable garden at Elukholweni School Photo: News24

Addressing food scarcity, job creation, and poverty in Urban areas is our goal. We have been establishing organic vegetable gardens in and around Port Elizabeth for the past ten years. In the drive to Grow your Own we are ready to roll out Community Gardens along plans and designs which have been developed and tested.

Our aim is to provide interested gardeners and farmers with the infrastructure to develop self sustainable areas to produce natural tasty food with a high nutrient value on an on going basis.

Our approach is fully organic, using natural earth processes and local resources, in a simple basic way.

The outcome is to feed the hungry, produce healthy communities, offer job opportunities, develop self esteem, independence and pride (building a nation).

We need to become aware of where our food comes from, how it is produced, what additional substances it contains and what the nutritional value is. Nobody else is concerned about the quality of our food, as long as it sells. The quality of our lives now and in the future, is largely determined by what we take in through our mouths. Nothing we eat just passes through, it either builds us up or causes damage.

The price of food is increasing at an alarming rate. The more a household can grow at home and supplement the food budget the greater the saving and the healthier the family.

The priority in starting a garden is to get the soil right. The soil along the coast is mostly poor for growing vegetables. A good soil mix (black bush soil mixed with red bush soil and manure) needs to be brought in and mixed with a good compost in a ratio of approximately 1:3. To save on quantity, the soil can be placed in either box planters or a trench beds. The vegetables need to grow in a fairly sunny area and must be protected from the wind. Establish a reliable source of water with rainwater tanks or recycled grey water. Once seeds or seedlings reach a reasonably sturdy stage a mulch of dry grass placed around the plants, covering the entire open spaces will retain moisture and prevent weeds from growing. Mulching also encourages microbial activity which releases nutrients from the organic material in the soil, enabling the plants roots to absorb them. Check a planting guide for this time of the year in Eastern Cape and start planting.

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Source: Port Elizabeth – MyPR.

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Port Elizabethan

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