Final Report- Grow Your Own

This whole project is about making human life here on earth more sustainable. Since there are so many different ways to make life on earth here sustainable, I feel that the first thing we should all do (and probably did) is to ask ourselves what is important to us, and then see how we can help make our lives more sustainable from there. So that’s what I did, and I found that the thing that is most important to (sustainability wise) is food; so throughout this semester I have looked at ways to grow food indoors, with both successes and failures. Aside from the actual growing food, I also wanted to try and figure out what, if any, the impact of growing plants indoors had on a person’s psyche. I thought this mainly because I feel a planet full of happy people is more sustainable than a planet of angry people.

I had seen different examples of people growing things like pineapples and lemon trees indoors, which is what I really wanted to do, but because they take a large amount of sunlight and a very long time to bear fruit, I abandoned that idea, but it is possible (Everton). So I decided to try and figure out what kind of things are plausible for people with limited time and space to grow, and found out that sprouts, lettuce, and other micro greens are the perfect thing to grown indoors.

Sprouts have to be the easiest thing a person can grow indoors, my guess is that you could teach a Bonobo to do it. It incorporates all things that I wanted to show in my project: it’s cheap; it’s simple, and healthy. Since this is the 21^st century and all, instead of explaining how to grow sprouts indoors, here’s a step-by-step video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h1ADMsKQTg. One thing that I personally want to do is to swap out traditional snacks for things like sprouts, because after a little bit of research it’s almost foolish not to. There are many different kind of sprouts you can grow, and studies have shown that sprouts can help prevent cancer, heart disease, and menopausal symptoms (Hullum).

The next thing I gave a shot at growing was lettuce. I always seem to be running out if it, so I figured why not. This is where I encountered my biggest problem, sunlight. In the house where I currently live, I have no south-facing windows, or at least not one large enough to put a plant in front of. Luckily, my dad does, and he was willing to be my assistant. Regular lettuce takes two to three months until it is ready to harvest, but you can grow baby lettuce indoors and it’ll be ready to go in about 4-6 weeks.

The main thing with lettuce is keeping it moist. When you first plant the seeds is when it is most important to keep the soil moist, but don’t drown them. From then on, depending on the temperatures in your house, water them every couple days, to make sure that the soil stays moist. The quality of your soil isn’t all that important, but fertilize that soil when the first leaves appear. When your lettuce looks like something you would want to eat, go ahead, rinse it off and eat it!

Although this is a fun project to do, I began to wonder what good one guy growing his own lettuce really does, and as it turns out, isn’t much. However, I did look into a group called Growing Power, based in Milwaukee. . Growing Power is a community-based program designed to, “provide high-quality, safe, healthy, affordable food for all residents in the community.” It is headquartered in Milwaukee, but has other urban gardens in Chicago and training sites in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Massachusetts (“Growing Power”). Growing Power does an amazing job of building a sense of community based around hard work and a love for food, but that isn’t all they do, they also have training programs that help others to continue the idea of sustainable food (“Growing Power”).

Another question I began to ask myself as I was doing this project was, “what, if any, psychological effects do plants growing indoors have on humans?” In a chapter written by Marjolein Elings, the author describes that in a recreational setting (which is what this type of gardening would be) there hasn’t been enough research to determine a direct connection between gardening and therapeutic benefits (Elings 3). However, she does go on to say that there are mental benefits such as, “an increased sense of self-esteem, awareness, responsibility, and self-confidence.” Do to the great variety plants give in smell, appearance, and what they produce, plants can create a calm and relaxing environment for the people who tend to them (Elings 3). There was also a study done by Kid and Brascramp (2004) that studied 361 gardeners from New Zealand. What they found was that there were no casual relationships between gardening and psychological effects, but “high correlations between gardening and feelings of autonomy, environmental mastery, positive relationships with others, purpose in life and self-acceptance.” My point being here is that there are many different ways that working with plants can positively affect our lives. Not only do we benefit from eating food that is better for us, but that the cultivation of these plants will give us a sense of accomplishment and pride that simply make us feel better about ourselves.

In summary, I feel that there are no really legitimate reasons why we shouldn’t all at least give growing food indoors a shot. The types of things you grow will have virtually no distance to travel between where it is being grown and where you eat it, since it’s all in your house. This means that the food you eat will be much fresher than anything you’d buy in a store, and it won’t have to be transported on a refrigerated truck that only gets eight miles to the gallon, which is a whole other issue. In order to help make our world a more sustainable place, I encourage all who read this to plant their own food. Whether it’s something presented here, or something that tickles your fancy more than these, it’s at least worth a try, and every little bit helps.

Works Cited

Everton, Rick. “How To Grow a Pineapple.” Rick’s Woodshop Creations. N.p., 03 05 2009. Web. 15 Oct. 2011. <www.rickswoodshopcreations.com/Pineapple/pineapple.htm>.

Hullum, Robert. “Nutrition and Information.” Good Sprout News. International Sprout Growers Association, 10/10/2010. Web. 13 Nov 2011. <http://www.isga-sprouts.org/nutritio.htm>.

. “About Us.” Growing Power. Growing Power Inc, 2010. Web. 22 Nov 2011. <http://www.growingpower.org/about_us.htm>.

Elings, Marjolein. People-Plant Interactions. Wageningen: 2006. Print.