Healthy Eating with Organic Farming at Home

We are in 2020. It has been a challenging year for all of us and has been the time we were forced to review our lives and the way we live on this planet.

I have been lucky enough to say, no one I personally know was affected by the virus and suffered, but must add, “so far”. I also know and feel very sad about the fact that there were just too many people who suffered from the virus, have lost their loved ones, or have gone through difficulties because of the whole situation we have been had no choice but to live with. 

However, we need to move on with positive experiences that came out of this madness. I have learned so many lessons during the last few months since the outbreak. And one of them is to look after our planet by producing our own food where we can and also to look after our health and put it on top of our priority list. 

I have spent so much time studying organic vegetable farming and planting some seeds as an experiment. I do have some experiences in vegetable farming and what I’ve learnt is that we can not protect our crops 100% from nasty creatures in nature but we can control it to some extent. I had to throw a towel so many times in the past and as a result, I do stick with pest tolerant (if you’re lucky) vegetables.  It’s just a waste of my time to try to grow sweetcorn or even cabbage. So here are the vegetables and herbs that I have tried this year. As I only started cultivating the soil in late May, I had not many choices as you can see. 

Chinese Chives – great for Chinese and Japanese dumplings
Perpetual Spinach – great for any type of cooking even in the soup
Galic – I’m sure nothing will want to disturb my garlic, even slugs… 
Beetroot – I love the leaves in salad more than the bulb itself
Basils – I will make pesto pasta : )
Corriandars – perfect for any Asian cooking

I bought a few herb plants from a garden centre and they are doing well in my high raised container. I also planted some interesting non-eatable plants too. And I am sure I will update some pictures to show you the progress in a separate post. So far, it has been fun and we are all enjoying the outdoor activity, although I did encounter difficulties already facing ants colony in the raised bed, and beetroot leaves already been eaten by an unknown attacker, and we know nothing is as easy as learning the ABCs. 

We will continue working on our projects until we can grow at least some vegetables in our own garden and actually make some meals out of them. Also, we have been eating less meat and more vegetable. At one point we did think of becoming a vegan family but that is also not as easy as it sounds since veganism is not just about food but also the lifestyle choice.  I am, however, so grateful that we were given this opportunity to rethink the way we live and behave on this planet. I just hope this enthusiasm and the good habit that we picked up will not fade away so quickly.