Last summer, as I was still living at my parents place and just starting to expand my interests towards a greener lifestyle, I decided to dig in to the idea of “growing food”. After a whole phase of trying more and more things DIY style, some of them quite hippy such as brewing my own kombucha or pickling vegetables, I thought it only made sense to try my hand at gardening. The idealized (in my head) concept of self-sufficiency seemed very attractive. And although I was not planning to stay at my parents place and move out, I even found a way to deal with these “mobile” circumstances, and got informed about container gardening, so using pots & containers to grow plants instead of planting right on the ground. How ideal! So one day, I dragged David along with me so we could go buy some seeds & seedlings. We came back with lots of things and ideas of fruits & vegetables to grow. Zucchini, tomatoes, raspberries, strawberries, peppers, kale, heck, we even got corn! But I did forget to mention one thing so far: we never, ever had any experience gardening before. None. Nada. Anyway, we still tried it, digging any information we possibly could, from scratch, and some advice from friendly green thumbs. Some stuff turned great (we had a pretty good supply of zucchini), some, pretty average (we harvested just a tiny dwarf-like handful of raspberries), and some quite bad (ALL of our tomato plants rotted which was extremely depressing).
Although we quickly found out the experience is pretty normal for a beginner gardener, we did want to try to inspire more people to try it, and doing so by making it easy and debunking all of the “hard to get” information as complete newbies. Despite this not-so-successful introductory experience of our own, we still believe in claiming back those gardening skills, like our ancestors who grew food to supply themselves, and who knew exactly where their food comes from. In today’s modern world, everything is moving so fast, everything is industrialized, and people don’t even know where or how their food is made, and this industry itself is poisoning us and controlling our consumer behaviour. Now, I could go on and on about this specific phenomenon, but I will fast forward into the real solution:
What if we just create our small revolution and get the hell out of this system and start doing some things ourselves? Wouldn’t that be fun, healthy, beautiful? Yes, it would.
In Luxembourg, a lot of people own gardens and they wouldn’t even consider they can be used to grow food. It’s much easier to just take the car and head to the supermarket. And then I took some time to think of the people I know, who are actually interested in growing their own food. Most of which I know, surprisingly, live in an appartment. And in most cases, no garden would mean no veggie patch, but thankfully, when there’s a will, there is a way: enter “urban gardening”. Hello containers! Hello vertical growers! Hanging planters! Indoor sprouts & microgreens. A world of new opportunities for the green thumbs in the making.
So when we were thinking of what workshop to do next, this is exactly the type of thing we wanted to talk about, and urban & newbie gardeners would be our go-to target! The idea? Inspiration for anyone to start growing their own food or giving it a shot no matter the circumstances. The content? Well, that took us a lot of work and research, but we decided to talk about various subjects, such as microgreens & sprouts, which are the foundation of gardening and the easiest & quickest tiny veggies to grow, as well as the easiest herbs to grow by the windowsill, and then moving on to the easiest, most fail-proof vegetables and fruits you can grow in containers, from the comfort of your own balcony. We also thought it would be nice to talk about vegetables that can re-grow from scraps (oh yes, we did try some and it’s pretty cool!!).
We decided to team up with the guys from Terra, and Pit helped us a lot in getting the right info. This guy turned out to also be a fantastic co-speaker the day we ran the workshop, perfectly geeks and passionate about sharing his knowledge. Well, it was not technically a “hands on” workshop, but more like a demonstration/seminar, as usually. And let me tell you… IT WAS A BLAST!
First off, the location was amazing. We got the opportunity to run the workshop at Nature Elements, by Robin du Lac. The loft-like space, filled with natural light, was extremely inspiring to talk about plants. Everyone attended the workshop eager to learn more, be curious, ask questions, and our friend Tessy even brought her own tomato seedlings to share with everyone. On top of that, we were also really happy to distribute goodie bags filled with wholesome delicious products from our generous friend David at Conscious Foods. This new company is supplying natural foods in bulk and at wholesale prices, which is really great = healthy food that’s affordable.
We want to thank everyone who attended, as it was an extremely rewarding & warming experience for us to share these discoveries with the community. And a little note to the people who couldn’t attend (as it was booked quite fast): stay patient and we might do the workshop again, if possible and if we can manage it in the right timing for veggie growing season!
Thank you all so much for your support! Let’s keep spreading the word about the “grow your own” revolution and make it accessible for everyone, whether they have a garden, a balcony or just a tiny windowsill!
The yummiest veggies are those we harvest ourselves!