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?
One of the biggest obstacles for gardening is the work and upkeep because they can require a lot of time and energy. I’d recommend everyone coming together to decide what should be grown, then dividing those among each other so everyone is only growing a few things. That way, they don’t have to remember the specific requirements for each and every plant, just a few or even one.
I’m currently working on a friend’s yard that’s just bare grass with no trees. Because I won’t be there to do a whole lot, I’m looking in particular for plants that are aggressive growers and spreaders. Aggressive plants are good for starting because they don’t require work to keep alive. Most actually require work to keep back from areas you don’t want them growing. But mowing them back is still less work than trying to keep plants alive. I’m not looking for invasive species, just species that might be considered “noxious”. Those can be good plants to grow for people who don’t have as much ability to go out and garden.
Also, if you can, look for a staple crop that doesn’t require much land to produce food. Depending on where you are, it might require a bit of research. Where I am, most of those have been systematically wiped out from the fields and other open spaces. You can still find them most of the time, but you have to buy them because they’re mostly being kept around by people actively trying to preserve them.