Jesse: You'd be surprised how easy it is to grow your own food.
Joan: You go outside, you pick a few items and you cook it for your dinner.
Carlos: This was always ours.
We gave it away for I don't know what, I guess convenience?
But I think we're learning now that convenience doesn't always trump everything.
Hi it’s Emily from Bite Size Vegan and welcome to another vegan nugget. It’s no secret
that fresh, organic fruits and vegetables are ideal for our physical health.
But depending on where you live and what your circumstances are,
getting access to quality produce can be challenging.
Our food system is broken in more ways than one.
We have a long and hard battle to fight not only for the trillions of
sentient beings killed for its “products,” but also for
the inequality of food distribution, among other concerns.
One of the simplest and most empowering...literally
grassroots solutions is growing our own food.
In an upcoming video I’ll cover some exciting grassroots initiatives
that are transforming urban spaces into community gardens and working
to bring fresh produce to food deserts and individuals in need.
Today’s video is about getting started growing in your own home, apartment
or residence, and the importance of taking our food back into our own hands.
To help me share this important topic, I had the honor of
speaking with three knowledgeable individuals.
Jesse from the Instagram account vegantake0ver,
who we met in the video on feeding the homeless of New York, and
whose son Jesse Jace will be appearing in upcoming vegan kids interviews.
Joan from the Instagram account and upcoming website HOG,
Health Organic Green
who helps people get started growing with great tips, creative ideas,
and by sending organic seeds through the mail,
and Carlos Espinal of the 100th Seed Project,
which empowers communities in reconnecting with their food source
through urban farming, gardening and green space initiatives.
We’ll hear more from Carlos in the upcoming urban gardening video.
Let’s open up with hearing some basics about how to get started growing:
Jesse: I had this huge patio in my new apartment that I had moved into.
There were a few pots out there that were left and I always thought,
“man, let me fill these pots up.”
Eventually I got some soil and seeds and I planted those pots and
things started growing so well. So the next thing you know I purchased
a lot more pots, I started researching, I started going on YouTube, and
Googling things, I started visiting local nurseries, and
buying baby plants. And I just started slowly filling up my patio.
My first year and I never even lived in a house, always in an apartment.
I've never had a backyard. My first year I was harvesting pounds and pounds —
probably hundreds of pounds of food. It gives you a great
satisfaction to grow your own food, you really enjoy it.
You just need to identify where and how you going to grow your food.
Are you going to grow it on your balcony?
Are you going to grow it in the ground?
Find a place with direct sun, find some nice organic seeds from
a trustworthy place. Visit a local nursery and find out what plants
grow good in your growing zone because typically we don't know
what type of plants grow where we are living.
Carlos: See if there's a local farmer's market, or CSA,
community garden that you can go visit and volunteer.
Don't be afraid to volunteer, take some time out of your day and
put that work in and learn. It's all there you just got to find it.
Don't be afraid to search, don’t be afraid to feel like you don't know
enough or whatever because we all have to start somewhere.
Joan: We've been growing food for more than thirty years now.
Twenty-eight of them right here in our own backyard.
We removed the deck that used to sit right here and replaced it
with a partial shade garden.
When Hurricane Sandy hit,
our roof got damaged and we needed to replace the gutters.
The banged up ones were up-cycled and now,
hanging in the back, they grow our lettuces.
Over the years we learned how to grow more food in less space. Thanks to social media
we've been able to teach people to grow their own food anywhere. We started balcony gardens
in Miami, hydroponic gardens, rooftop gardens, and windowsill gardens. We've visited community
gardens and CSA's. Folks have started produce gardens right at their job place.
Reclaiming our food system is such a powerful action. Self-proclaimed Gansta Gardener Ron
Finley says that “gardening is the most therapeutic and defiant act you can do.
Plus you get strawberries.”
Jesse: I think it's very important to reclaim our own food system because we have almost
forgotten how to grow food. Growing food is a skill that we all should have in our arsenal.
We go to the supermarket and we purchase everything there but we don't know how things were grown.
A lot of these things aren’t grown locally, they're not in season.
When you grow your own food, you know what you've put in the soil,
you know you grow these things organically, you know you didn't use any pesticides.
Carlos: I'm a believer that by design we're stewards of the land. We're were meant to
be in unison, in cooperation, with the land and we have lost that.
It’s one of the most vital connections we have, is to our planet and our Earth.
Through learning how to grow our own food we also learn, like, responsibility,
you know? We plant the seed, we nurture it. You know, it’s like birth, right?
You see it grow and you're able to watch your creation blossom by nurturing it,
taking care of it. I think you just have a whole new respect for that process.
Joan: The ethics behind many organic labels have brought attention to fraud. Global concerns
on the carcinogens use, on the food supply, pollinator decline, wildlife destruction leaves
the consumer at risk. This is the food we're eating, this is how important this is.
The best way to know it's organic is to grow your own organic. We used our social media
platform to spread awareness and to date we've mailed seeds that we
grew right here in this backyard to 1325 addresses worldwide.
Not only is growing our own food a way for us to reconnect to our
food source, it’s also a way for us to overcome food insecurity and subvert
the power of food corporatization.
Jesse: Once your plants go through a few seasons, you get to save seeds.
Next thing you know you have your own seed bank, you have a seed collection.
If something ever happens, you have food security. Seeds may be worth
more than gold if something happens in the future.
It's a very important skill that we as a society--they don't teach this in schools most of the time.
We should know how to grow our own food. You know, if everybody grew their own food we
could barter, we could trade. You know, if people started planting seeds in public places,
if we had edible fruit trees in the parks, we wouldn't need to be reliant on buying food
from these major corporations. So I think it's very important to grow your own food.
Carlos: Well I think the main problem is the access to food, having these food deserts.
Even in the biggest cities. Like here in New York we have tons of supermarkets and stores
everywhere, I can walk down the block and go to the bodega but what are they selling
there? None of it is healthy. All of it is detrimental to our health. As much food as
there is around us, there is not an abundance of healthy living thriving foods. Regardless,
especially in cities, there's a growing movement of grassroots organizations and people that
want to have that reconnection again. Even with the farmers' markets. They're bringing
in access from regional farms that are growing a lot healthier, non-monocultered,
like mass produced food that our agriculture today is filled with.
Joan: We're trying to make a difference because this is something simple, affordable, and
needed. The environmental impact of growing your own food is immense. There are no fueled
delivery systems to bring cargo ships of produce to your store, no plastic packaging up the
food, and there is no fuel to purchase the food; you don't have to get in your car and
go purchase it, you go outside you pick a few items and you cook it for your dinner.
It's that easy. It increases the health of the food and it supports the ecosystem that's
right outside your door. Growing an organic garden is the easiest most repeatable way
to ensure that the food you're serving your family on their table is secure.
Finally, home and community gardening is a great way to involve kids and young people
in a fun activity that helps them connect to their food in a world where kids are more
and more distanced from their food sources.
Jesse involves his son Jesse Jace in their home gardening.
Jesse: I think it's really important for children to see where and how food grows because if
kids grow kale, kids will eat kale. If kids grow tomatoes, they're gonna eat tomatoes.
Kids love being in the garden. They get excited, they want to water the plants, they want to
plant the seeds. They want to harvest the stuff. Then they become connected with it.
In todays society children don't even know what fruits and vegetables are many times.
Growing your own food makes children understand and cherish vegetables and fruits.
I think it's very important to get the kids involved and let them be outdoors.
They're getting their vitamin D and fresh air rather than being cooped up on video
games and electronics. So, I think that's the most important part.
I hope this vide has been helpful and inspiring. Connecting to our food is vital on so many
levels and, I believe, can even help people open their minds and eyes to where
and from whom their animal products come from.
It’s also a way to make fresh, organic produce more available to everyone, making a healthy
vegan lifestyle that much more approachable and attainable. As Carlos said in the opening
of this video, we’ve given away our connection to our food and our ability to produce it
on our own. And I think it’s time to take it back.
I’ve included links to my guests’ contact information if you want to get in touch, and
I want to thank Jesse, Carlos and Joan for their important work
and their assistance with this video.
Now I’d love to hear from you on this. Do you grow your own food? Do you want to?
What do you think about reclaiming our food system? Let me know in the comments!
If you enjoyed this video, give it a big thumbs-up and share it around to help others grow their
own organics. If you’re new here, do hit that big red subscribe button down there for
more awesome vegan content every Monday, Wednesday, and some Fridays and not to miss out the on
the community garden video. If you want to help support Bite Size Vegan,
check out either of the support links in the video description below or
click on the Nugget Army icon or the link in the sidebar.
Now go live vegan,
take back your food,
and I’ll see you soon.
Jesse: What are you doing?
Jesse Jace: Watering the plants!!!!
Jesse: Good boy.