FOOD INSECURITY

One of my dearest dreams is to again have a garden. There were a few years in my early thirties when I did have some space for a garden, but we also lived in the desert where summer temperatures would easily reach 115˚ F. Tomatoes love heat, so they did really well there, and some herbs would survive if they had partial shade from our porch overhang, but otherwise the things I planted were typically ornamental, like towering bamboo and hardy aloes and agaves, which the hummingbirds loved.

At the time I also did not appreciate how difficult it is to actually find and acquire enough extremely healthy food, ignorantly believing that even the organic choices I was making were the best we could do. In reality even organic food can be very poor in nutrients, and food is often so expensive that we instinctively opt for higher-calorie options, even unknowingly, and only indulge in things like strawberries or nuts when we have some extra cash on hand.

In reality, nutrient dense foods should be eaten every single day, but their cost is often prohibitive, and their growing methods usually also inhibit their true nutritional potential. We don’t eat nearly enough food as we need to be healthy, because of budgetary restraints, so growing food is one way to provide generous nutrition for ourselves and it can be done even if you don’t have space for a garden.

GROWING INDOORS

Having never been able to afford my own home, living in apartments has often been accompanied by the idea that I can’t grow the kind of food I want because I don’t have access to any land. Dreams of a flourishing garden full of life have distracted me from the realization that I can actually grow lots of food indoors, and that I have only lacked the inspiration to do it.

While many plants require abundant sunlight to grow, there are also many others which will thrive indoors with both ambient light from open windows and supplemental artificial light from bright, efficient LEDs which won’t drive up electricity bills. In my book I often talk about using bright, artificial lights for therapeutic purposes, and these same lights can be used simultaneously to provide ample light for growing plants indoors that directly support our health better than any supplement can ever do. So I am starting my own indoor mini-garden in order to provide myself with ample and affordable nutrition that is so crucial to being healthy, and I challenge you to do it too, whether you have a home or an apartment, join me in this endeavor especially if you have thought growing plants is difficult or requires land, you have metabolic problems that require this nutrition to do well, and help start a food and nutrition revolution which can empower others to better care for their own wellbeing.

The primary nutrient I am particularly interested in cultivating first is vitamin C. Vitamin C is the most important nutrient for robust human metabolic health, being required for oxidative respiration, which is the oxidation of dietary carbohydrate and the most efficient pathway for our body to produce energy. Like many nutrients required for human health, vitamin C is often characterized as something that is nice if you can get it, and definitely helps if you get a cold—but the reality is that vitamin C is so important for our health that even marginal reductions will dramatically lower the metabolic rate. It is also required for tissue regeneration, so it is impossible to restore metabolic wellness of our internal organs or heal from disease and injury without ample amounts of it. During times of stress too the body will actually dump vitamin C, because vitamin C promotes a high metabolic rate and during stress the body purposefully lowers the metabolic rate in order to preserve nutrients and protect us against nutritional and caloric deficits. In those who are very metabolically ill, we loose most of our vitamin C every night, and require lots of it every day to replace that which we have lost. Vitamin C abundance in the environment is a signal to the body that food is plentiful and that the growing season is productive and thus it is okay to raise the metabolic rate, and this must be replicated in the body if we wish to have a high metabolic rate and to be as healthy as we can.

But foods high in vitamin C are often very expensive, and supplements of natural vitamin C can run as high as $50 a bottle or more. Strawberries are actually one of the most vitamin C dense foods available, and compare the cost of a natural vitamin C supplement supply to spending $100 setting up a small indoor strawberry garden that will produce fruit all year long. It will also provide fresh vitamin C, as vitamin C does not dry or store well, and is also destroyed by heat, so fresh sources are far superior than what any supplement can provide anyway. Cheap, synthetic vitamin C is fine and can actually function to promote vitamin C dependent pathways and functions and rescue declining metabolic health. But even those will cost $100 or more a year. Being inferior too to natural vitamin C, investing in your own plants will be (can be) less expensive as well as more effective for supporting your health, and you will be able to harvest nutrient dense food to supplement your diet all year long and get far more nutrition than you can ever get from buying commercial supplements.

POTS AND SOIL

Planting indoors is often easier than outside anyway, since the environment is more controlled and comfortable (getting sunlight from outdoor gardening is a plus this doesn’t cover, though). But potted plants often suffer from poor soil which is in turn amended with artificial fertilizers and still produces inferior plants because there is not sufficient soil health to maintain plant health. Soil for a potted plant is just as important as for plants grown outdoors, and growing and cultivating healthy soil will in turn produce very healthy, productive plants which produce great food. Neglecting the soil will produce slow growing plants which produce poor quality food.

Good soil is created by soil microbiome. When there is no microbiome plants suffer and die. Like us, plants rely on microbes to obtain their nutrition, so killing microbes with pesticides and herbicides then requires toxic artificial fertilizer to make up for the role that microbes play in plant nutrition. Microbes are everywhere, though, and only need to be cultivated. Microbial amendments are also for sale and can be added to pots. Look for mycorrhizal fungi products and inoculate your potting soil with it.

One of the best tools for easily promoting great soil are worms! Worms eat organic plant matter and turn it into free fertilizer that nourishes both plants and the microbiome. People often make too big a deal about worm composting and culture, though. Don’t buy expensive worm composting bins or bother harvesting the worm tea (the juice made from worm activity which is very nutritious). It’s all a lot of unnecessary work and hullabaloo. If you just pop a few worms into each planter they will make all that nutrient goodness right there in the pot without all that fuss. The only thing that worms require is food and water. You’re going to water the plant anyway (don’t let the soil dry out, but don’t soak it either). To feed them simply mince green food waste and add it to the pots beneath the leaves. The worms will consume it and turn it into potent fertilizer for your plants. The compost they produce will also promote moisture retention in the soil, helping to prevent it from drying out like potting soil typically does, and their activity will prevent the soil from compacting and choking out the plant.

Worms can be bought online, but they’re also actually kind of expensive, and they can be gotten for free outside. To get worms go to any open ground that has plants growing around it and place a wet piece of cardboard on the ground. The next day or two you will find worms beneath the cardboard. Just pick them up and put them in your pots. You can also find worms under logs and rocks in damp areas like forests or parks.

Indoor planters should be pretty large—you’re never going to get a good plant if it doesn’t have sufficient soil volume, and the worms also need room to live. I’m starting with four 10x12 terracotta pots and will fill them with compost. Terracotta is great because it’s non toxic and permeable, so the pot can breathe and allow excess moisture to evaporate. Other containers are fine, but I would avoid plastic if you can, since plastic can leach chemicals into the soil, but given the choice of not doing this and using plastic, it would be better to use plastic, as plants will filter out as many contaminants as they can anyway, and the risk isn’t very large.

LIGHTING EQUIPMENT + GROWING 24-HOURS A DAY

Grow lights can be a little expensive, but they can help you grow plants all year long. The important thing to know is that lights can range a great deal in price, and you should spend some time searching for a good deal, because some prices are far higher than they need to be, even for the same exact bulbs. Because we are growing indoors we can actually keep these lights on 24-hours a day (as long as it doesn’t keep anyone awake) and plants will grow twice as fast as those outdoors, provided their soil is healthy. Plants don’t need to sleep the way that humans do, and they take advantage of every last ounce of light they can get. So keeping your energy-efficient LEDs on all the time can actually improve the productivity and quantity of your indoor grown food. You can also move your plants outside during the summertime if you have a patio and take advantage of the natural light, and move them back inside when the weather turns, and growing them near windows where they can receive direct light also works just fine.

CHOOSING PLANTS

Whenever starting a garden project, it’s always best to do just one or two plants at a time. Trying to do too many at once can be overwhelming and unproductive. Once you have had some success with the first ones, then move on to more. I’m starting with cucumbers, cilantro, and because I’m most interested in providing myself with a reliable and affordable source of vitamin C, wild strawberries. Specifically, I’ve bought some Alpine Strawberries (from seed), because while they are smaller than commercial garden strawberries they are sweeter (if your soil is healthy) and have higher vitamin C content. They also produce more fruit faster, earlier, and longer in growing seasons than the commercial variety, so while the fruit may be smaller it is healthier and more abundant. Later I will plant cilantro and basil for cooking.

PROGRESS AND UPDATES

Once my indoor garden gets going I’ll begin posting updates on my instagram, and probably cut together something to put on YouTube. I encourage you to start your own garden and share the results on your social media. I would love to see what you grow, how you grow it, and how it goes. Follow me on instagram and share your progress with me. https://www.instagram.com/naytehatch/