THE BOLTON 'GOOD LIFE'

NOTHING BEATS THE THE VALUE OF VEG - GROWN IN YOUR OWN BACK YARD 

Landworker magazine of Unite the union 

A Bolton community food growing permaculture project that aims to address food and resource poverty in social deprived areas by helping people to grow food in their yards and gardens has created hundreds of online YouTube short documentaries to help provide advice on growing your own fruit and veg.

This is good news as a recent University of Sheffield study has found that household fruit and vegetable production, in allotments and gardens, could be key to a healthy and food-secure population.

It discovered those who grow their own can produce more than half of the vegetables (51%) and 20% of the fruit they consume annually.

The Community Roots Permaculture Project is run by former Ruskin College student and food sovereignty advocate, Steve Jones with Ben Blackburn. The pair share a food growing site in Southfields Pub, Great Lever with local food activists Bolton Diggers.

Their YouTube channel "combines Community food growing, permaculture, outdoor skills and activities as a means of moving away from the destructive way of doing things towards a world more in tune with nature and each other."

Currently many people are really struggling amidst the cost-of-living crisis that is resulting in fresh fruit and vegetable prices rocketing.

The 5-minute documentary Grow Your Own Food shows how a stretch of garden 18’ long has been turned into a veritable feast that has cost virtually nothing in cash terms with most things scavenged or borrowed or, in the case of some pots, donated via former cannabis growers from the police!

Happily growing Staples, despite the Greater Manchester weather, are carrots, beetroot, salad crops, sweetcorn, courgettes, radish, sage, beans of different varieties, chives, rosemary, mint, strawberries, garlics, seed potatoes, pink gooseberries, celery, red cabbage, cherries, squash and even grapevine. Many of the products can be harvested two or three times a year.

“All of the food is nutritious. People are rightly using foodbanks but most of products there are highly processed foods. It will keep you alive,” explains Steve, “but it is not healthy. Someone in a flat who can grow something on a windowsill could then eat something nourishing that is better for their health.”

Other videos can be viewed at: -https://www.youtube.com/@URBANPERMACULTURE/videos

Meanwhile, Community Roots has started a Community Fruit Trees Project as it will give access to fruit that would likely be out of the price range of people on low and no incomes. The proliferation of trees into an urban area will additionally attract pollinators and other beneficial insects, and thirdly trees could help by absorbing carbon and releasing Oxygen. To find out more then watch a short film at:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_Rf0f8u-3c

@BoltonUrban Steve Jones is on 07821 847092  sj1j1@hotmail.com