We’re going through a complete lifestyle change starting TODAY. We’re getting rid of all our processed, canned, non organic food and switching to a dr.sebi “diet”. The food we have is garbage point blank, poison. I’ve been sick everyday for a week now because of the mucus buildup in my body. My kids are poisoned. It’s not right to be feeding them and my unborn this crap.
Devoting my life back to Krishna. That’s where all the magic happens. Getting back into following an Ayurvedic routine, yoga, pranayama, japa, every day.
I’ve also been binge watching ROB GREENFIELD on youtube and I would like to switch to a zero waste more sustainable lifestyle. It’s all possible. It may not be easy or an over night change but we will get there.
Rob Greenfield gardened, fished and foraged to eat more sustainably and encourage others to do the same. But to succeed, he needed the community
This is honestly awe-inspiring. And I have to say - I always found it a bit creepy that so many places around the world don’t get ‘real’ seasons, but it can be a blessing. If I had to plant and forage my life here, I’d basically eat onions and cabbage with tree bark for months on end.
(The idea of going on a hike and coming back with coconuts is honestly sci-fi.)
Still, I do my best to buy seasonal stuff, and I’m looking for new sustainability goals for 2020. Any suggestions? What works for you?
Notes, references - Gardening in Central Florida, 05/12/2019
I dunno much about gardening, but as soon as I accepted it was time to start making and learning from mistakes, local resources and opportunities started popping out at me. I immediately came across tons of upcoming classes, seed giveaways, and opportunities to tour some small, local farms. I’m documenting everything I can in case I need to reference something later, and to make the content available for anyone else who might share my anxieties about starting something new. I’m learning really basic stuff, and I’m having a great time!
I’d learned about traveling activist and gardener Rob Greenfield a couple of weeks prior to participating in a hands-on introductory gardening class in his front yard. Among other projects, these days he’s dedicating a year to eating only what he can grow and forage while leaving a minimal footprint and documenting his processes and local resources, right here in Central Florida! Greenfield was new to my state when he started his garden here, so he’s learning as he goes, which makes his observations especially relevant to beginners like me. When I didn’t have my fingers in the dirt, I was able to take these notes:
Annuals are plants that flower/produce once in their season and never again. These include carrots, kale, lettuces, etc. While annuals typically require re-seeding, some annuals are self-seeding, like Amaranth.
Perennials are plants that continue growing and expanding, year after year. All fruit trees are perennials, for example.
Most seeds need to be dry (not green) before harvesting for seeding.
We harvested a ton of delicious but stubby little carrots. Failure to thin carrots as they grow may cause the taproots to grow abnormally or fail to grow much at all. The presence of larger/harder soil aggregates may also cause carrots to deform and grow around the obstruction, but I don’t know if that matters much.
An easy way to prepare a yard for planting is to apply a layer of cardboard topped with 6 inches of mulch. This promotes weed die-off and soil development by blocking the sun and trapping moisture during the mulch’s gradual decomposition process. Particularly bad soil benefits from keeping the mulch damp and waiting multiple seasons before sowing any seeds. Heavy mulch holds carbon, so avoid keeping bigger chunks on top. (Rob told us about a great resource for accessing cheap mulch!)
Pull back the mulch along ridges intended for planting, and top with a layer of mushroom compost instead of gardening soil (approx $25 per self-serve truck bed at the nearby Monterrey mushroom facility, and apparently there’s a local fella named Alex who offers to pick up and deliver a dump truck’s worth of mushroom compost for $225 per load). Mushroom compost is high in Nitrogen and acts as a great soil all on its own. In fact, this is more of a one-time soil application than a yearly practice. Plant directly into the compost, unless it’s still hot from the farm. If so, wait for up to a week before planting anything in the cooled compost.
Apparently Summer’s a bad season for Florida gardeners, and I’m not surprised. The heat is unbearable, there are long dry spells, and the humidity invites all kinds of destructive insects. It was Spring when I took this class, but not according to Florida! Some summer crop suggestions are for the southeast are:
Sweet potatoes - Survives the heat and spreads quickly with big leaves, so also good for weed-blocking ground cover. Up to a ⅓ of the leaf growth of a sweet potato vine can be harvested without affecting the overall crop, and these leaves are highly nutritious.
Moringa - Almost all parts of this tree are edible and nutritious, and it’s also good for monthly pollarding--chopping branches down close to the tree to encourage fuller growth. The more branches grow back quickly, leaving behind lots of nutritious edible greens and/or green compost.
Bananas - Great spot for all kinds of chunky compost, and tends to come back if it dies back.
Everglades tomatoes - While larger varieties of tomatoes will struggle in a Florida summer, Everglades tomatoes are too tiny to be as affected by dehydration or scalding. See below.
Amaranth - Virtually every part is edible. Tiny grains. See below.
Some peppers - Visitors got to take a pepper off of an unnamed pepper plant in Rob’s garden. It was hot and sweet and fleshy, and I hope to grow some with the seeds I got from my sample. See below.
Mint - Grows like a weed, and seems to do fine in full Florida sun. See below.
Finally, I was reminded that there’s a local non-profit operating near the neighborhood Greenfield’s currently living in. For professional assistance designing, installing, and maintaining your own food garden in Central Florida (or if you’re looking for a learning opportunity or a great community project to support), check out Fleet Farming.
Welcome to The Permaculture Country Club in Costa Rica, the model for an environmentally conscious country club. Most country clubs are based around golf courses, which use huge amounts of toxic fertilizers, pesticides, fossil fuels, water, and land. The Permaculture Country Club is out to be an example for a better way of life.
Instead of a golf course, they have an 18-hole disc golf course, which is more affordable and accessible to everyone. It’s built into a food forest with hundreds of fruit trees, vegetables, and medicinal plants, so the land is used wisely as recreation, food production, and natural habitat. Instead of fossil fuel burning lawn mowers, they use rotational grazing. Waste is composted into healthy fertilizer, so no toxic fertilizers are needed. There are also no artificial pesticides are needed, since they work with nature to attract beneficial insects and keep away pests. Water is harvested naturally to grow as much food as possible.
They even have a salt-water pool fed by springs and rain.
The club is part of Saint Michael’s Sustainable Community, where you can buy or rent a house with sustainably built modern comforts like living roofs and walls and every house has edible landscaping and an ocean view.
forager teaching people about foraging: never eat anything unlike you're 100% sure what it is, no doubt whatsoever
the same forager: oops that's not what i thought it was, that's a mint! (After tasting it) let me tell you about the time i spent thinking hawthorn berries were rose hips
Your Planet Needs You: A Kid's Guide to Reducing Waste and Recycling by Philip Bunting
This book is a good starting point to teach kids about how to help the Earth. It covers topics like:
how to create less waste
how long it takes items to decompose
how to recycle and re-purpose items
how to reduce your consumption of things
water and energy
how to compost
how to help the environment by getting involved in your community
Be the Change: Rob Greenfield’s Call to Kids: Making a Difference in a Messed-Up World by Rob Greenfield
Rob Greenfield shares ways to make a difference in the world by sharing insights into 9 different topics that are hurting our planet. He suggests buying less stuff and wasting less food, water, and energy and offers ways to go about helping our planet.
He also shares ways he and children have helped better the world we live in.
Nature and Me: A Guide to the Joys and Excitements of the Outdoors by The School of Life
This book is about the importance of nature in our lives and how much we can learn from nature. It is a love letter to nature and a book that will help children face the challenges in their lives. This book is wonderfully uplifting to both children and adults! I highly recommend you read it!
Wake Up, Woods by Michael Homoya
This book focuses primarily on native woodland wildflowers of North America.
You can find all of the flowers and plants mentioned in this book in Northwest Indiana if you make a point to get outdoors in early spring. I've had the opportunity to see almost all of these beautiful plants earlier this year. Some of the plants only flower for a short period, so make sure to check your local parks often!
Rob Greenfield is on a mission to bring a sustainable living message to the world using unusual approaches from wearing the trash he produces and foraging for food to cycling penniless across the US on a bamboo bicycle.
Rob Greenfield bounds over to a plant growing amidst the makeshift garden plots on the grounds of Berlin's defunct Tempelhof Airport. He rips off a leaf and munches on it.
"It's either a radish or a mustard. It's in the brassica family. There are a lot of edible greens around," he says.
He's looking for the edible dandelion he had spotted earlier but is sidetracked by some nettle, which you can eat raw without stinging your mouth if you fold it correctly. It's good for you, he explains.
Greenfield should know. He recently spent a year growing and foraging his own food, while living in a 100 square foot "tiny house" built from reclaimed materials in a backyard in Orlando, one of the fastest growing cities in the US.
"The idea was that people would walk past these gardens and see you can grow an abundant garden full of food rather than a lawn of grass," says Greenfield.
