If you find the thought of growing your own food daunting, take heart in the advice offered by Dave Saunders: “It’s very simple, we have preschoolers doing it”.
And Dave should know. In 2006 Dave and Bing Saunders set up ‘The Green Patch Hong Kong’, providing micro gardening kits and services, and running workshops at schools, care homes and businesses.
Today they live and work on a small farm on Lamma Island and have just published their first book, “Growing Food in the City”, which offers a practical guide on how to grow food in urban spaces.
Dave really does make it all sound simple. The tips he offers are remarkably straightforward and can make it possible for anyone considering using a small space to grow food in.
One of the biggest mistakes people make comes down to the containers they use.
“A lot of people have a problem growing food in this climate because they have these single-skinned pots, the heat goes straight through it and radiates into the growth medium, and food plants, with their delicate roots just can’t cope with that heat, they need some insulation”, he explains to CLOSER.
You don’t need highly specialised containers for this, even just wrapping a towel around the pot can provide enough insulation to protect it against the heat, and containers can be bought at local shops, provided they have drainage.
A couple of essential factors on your path to nutritional self-sufficiency include: stable temperatures and decent compost – never soil, for soil in this part of China is notoriously thin and compact and it gets very hard, so it is best to use potting compost.
When it comes to getting the plants going, a lot of commercial compost doesn’t have much fertility, so plant food needs to be added once plants are between 5 to 10cm high, to give them a “little boost”.
Most people can get started with a 15cm deep, 15cm wide, 40cm long trough. With decent potting compost, and using some plant food, seed very intensively, about 5cm to 8cm apart, and follow the secret: when the plants demand more space, just pick off the outer leaves, and let the inner leaves grow. This method ensures a very great yield and a lot of harvest.
The Green Patch offer a Microgarden Kit that is a complete organic food production system, containing everything needed from seeds to a Growing Guide booklet. A salad made and grown by you is just a rooftop away.
www.thegreenpatch.hk
