The People's Garden

I'd love to talk about food security, farming for distros or anything else, small garden solutions, container gardening etc. Tryna bring some activity to this community!

These are out front. I've told my neighbors they can come by and grab some when they want. I think only one neighbor has come so far. It grows quick, so it doesn't take a large patch to keep plenty around.

They're usually bigger, but it's been a hot, dry summer. The leaves are edible and go great in soups or with eggs! They need to be cooked, though, or they'll cause gastrointestinal distress. At least, I was told that and haven't bothered testing it. Lol

So I've been toying with an idea in my head: Setting up a mutual aid group centered around gardening for food and herbs, teaching organic and sustainable gardening techniques, and sharing produce amongst each other and the community.

I feel it could reduce working class dependence on the prices set by the top six agro-companies like Tyson or Monsanto and enable a degree of food security for everyone, which is especially important now as people start to see that $100 will only get you enough food to sometimes hide the mesh at the bottom of your cart and will no longer fill it to the brim like it used to when I was a kid.

It seems like gardeners always have way too much of some produce or another. I had an aunt a summer ago have piles of home grown tomatoes in her house she was begging us to take with her (which we happily did) because it was just too much, and it was from only about 4-5 plants. So why not create a way to share?

What challenges do you all see with creating a functional, organized mutual aid group centered around this idea and how might they be overcome? Have any of you done this? What other thoughts do you have on this idea?