Where’s the missing link in our food chain?I am the keeper of a little rustic outbuilding I use to protect seedlings from creatures and critters. Unfortunately, the young plants never make it to the garden, because the greenhouse doesn’t protect the nascent plantings from the most dangerous threat of all—me. So I gave up trying to create life in what I now call my plant mortuary and use it instead to house my shiny, virgin gardening tools. I continue to pay big bucks at the health food store for my organics and the gas expended to take me there.
That’s not to say that we don’t have some great produce grown right here on Maui, and some fine stores and farmers’ markets from which to choose, but despite my previous farming failures, I’m still willing to try my hand (minus my black thumbs) at gardening. With food prices growing, why not try to grow our own? And lucky we live Hawai‘i where we can grow some kind of greenery all year long (if we get some rain).
We earnestly and optimistically taste test time and time again those fruits and veggies that come from the Mainland. Although they may look like flawless renditions of the real thing, the produce is usually as flavorless as the wax models they so perfectly resemble. “It looks like a melon, kinda smells like a melon, tastes like Styrofoam.” If it’s true that where good nutrition goes, flavor tends to follow, we’re really in trouble.
It all started after World War II, when The Green Revolution made chemical agricultural practices the worldwide norm. It was a good thing then, putting a big dent in famine around the globe. But now we are at the mercy of Big Agriculture, which has a big-time dependency on oil in the form of fertilizers, pesticides, processing and transportation between farm and face.
Maybe now is the time to test your green thumb and trade in that brown lawn for a plot of veggies. Victory gardens were planted during WWI and WWII, when the government encouraged average folks like you and me to feed themselves so the large-scale farms could support the troops. Land was reclaimed to make room for crops and about 20 million Americans planted victory gardens from which they fed their families. They learned to be self-reliant: canning, making jams, collecting seeds and rainwater, and studying the Farmer’s Almanac. Maybe its time for a new kind of green revolution.
So give me the scruffy, the bruised, the critter-nibbled produce from my own garden… at least it will be more healthful, flavorful and sustainable. But how do we do it successfully, without using damaging pesticides and fertilizers?
The Maui Weekly wants to acquire an organic gardening column, so if you can help us find the missing link in our food chain, email editor@mauiweekly.com, and let’s talk about growing together.