Lessons From Cuba - Urban Farming

Risking the visceral reaction garnered when anyone says anything positive about Cuba, I found this interesting article concerning how that nation is, and has been dealing with the global food crisis. From the online edition of Newsweek.

(HAVANA) For Miladis Bouza, the global food crisis arrived two decades ago. Now, her efforts to climb out of it could serve as a model for people around the world struggling to feed their families.

Bouza was a research biologist, living a solidly middle-class existence, when the collapse of the Soviet Union — and the halt of its subsidized food shipments to Cuba — effectively cut her government salary to $3 a month. Suddenly, a trip to the grocery store was out of reach.

...Cuba's urban farming program has been a stunning, and surprising, success. The farms, many of them on tiny plots like Bouza's, now supply much of Cuba's vegetables. They also provide 350,000 jobs nationwide with relatively high pay and have transformed eating habits in a nation accustomed to a less-than-ideal diet of rice and beans and canned goods from Eastern Europe.

I think there might be a lesson here if we choose to learn it.

Organic farming is on the rise here in the U.S., mainly because the profits for organically grown products has soared through the roof during the last few years. However that's taking a very narrow view of the overall impact that agriculture and the production of food has on the economy and our health.

With fertilizer use suspected of helping create oceanic dead zones, the still under examined role pesticides and their impact on human health, genetic modification of plants and seeds restricting countries abilities to produce and control their own food supply, and the sheer amounts of petroleum needed to produce food and get it to market, the agricultural sector in this country has long moved from the idealized "family farm" into the realm of big business. Really big business, much of it subsidized.

Most food is not produced anywhere close to where it's consumed, which is one of the reasons the increase in the price of gasoline has marched in lockstep with a corresponding increase in the price of food. Ultimately, like many other aspects of our economy, its unsustainable, and though the mounting global food crisis has yet to reach our shores, can it be that far off?

I don't know, but I do know there are plenty of open areas here in Houston, and I do have a backyard, so...

My Garden: Part 2

One would have thought that I knew better, but sometimes I get to moving so fast that I end up forgetting about the "gorilla" in the room. What do I mean?

Last year I ordered an Acerola plant over the internet. The plant was two feet tall on arrival, and shipped bare root. Several months prior I had begun a tiny compost pile, and I mixed my compost matter in with my potting soil and a few other things and my plants soon more then doubled in size. My aloe plants went crazy too, but I was really irritated by the smell of the compost heap. So I didn't start one this year up until a few weeks ago.

Well shame, shame, shame on me! The soil is the most important part of growing a garden.

A few weeks ago I showed you a picture of my two new garden boxes, filled with nice, fresh, and dead organic gardening soil. When I say dead I mean the soil had been stripped of all of it's nutrients, which I didn't know that at the time. So now my plants are all bright yellow and not really growing. As a gardener I know it's the soil because I dropped the same watermelon seeds in my older established box a week ago and they are doing better then the plants I planted a couple months ago.

Being an organic gardener, I wouldn't dare use any kinda Miracle Grow type product or anything like that, but let me tell you what I did use that didn't work:

-Seaweed emulsion
-Leaf mold compost
-Fish emulsion

I'm seeing very slow results but nothing like it should be. The good thing is I learn from my mistakes and started another compost pile. The materials haven't decomposed yet but when they do I'm sure it'll work better then anything else I've used. Just like last year I hope. If all else fails the compost will be READY and alive to mix in with the soil for the fall harvest of collard greens, mustard greens, garlic bulbs and other stuff.

Am I a bit disappointed? Well, yeah, a little. But a master gardener once told me that "You're not a real gardener until you kill a plant."

I may be on my way to being a real gardener then. We're just gonna have to ride this one out ya'll.