Another video Blog post on Sustainability and growing your own food instead of paying someone else to grow it for you, not to mention saving all of the energy it takes to get it to the store and then to your home.

Today we are harvesting potato’s, and I actually grew 2 different kinds, one is called a Makewin, here in Hokkaido and is basically your typical white skin run of the mill potato. The second type I am not sure of the name but it has a red skin and yellow meat and is slightly sweet (somewhere between a regular potato and a sweet potato).

Potato’s are easy to grow, all you need to do is take some potato’s and cut them in half or quarters if they are large and plant them about 6 inches into loose soil and then mound dirt over the top of them into small hills. After the plants come up they will get about 1-2 feet in height and then make flowers. After that the vegetation above ground will brown and die. At that time the potato’s should be ready to harvest.

If the potato’s are not fully covered in dirt they will turn green, and are not healthy to eat and can possibly make you sick, throw those out. I placed mine in a burlap sack and hung it from a hook in our small basement. The storage place should be cool, dark and have ventilation.

Why grow your own food? Well you can’t get any fresher for one, you know what was sprayed on your vegetables and how they were handled. Even if you do not live in the country, many urban dwellers have the opportunity to grow a small portion of their food in community gardens or patio pots — a tomato plant or two, some herbs, lettuces and scallions.

Although we live in an era of ultrapasteurization and high-tech processing, food-borne illness is common in this country. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every year an estimated 76 million cases of food-borne illness — including 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 associated deaths — occur in the United States. That’s more than a quarter of the population suffering from food-borne illnesses each year.

When we produce our own food, we know it is safe. When we buy our food face-to-face from local farmers, we have the opportunity to talk with them and ask questions. No longer does the safety of our food depend on a totally anonymous system based on minimum-wage, exploited, often uneducated workers.

Producing our own food just makes sense, even if it is container tomato’s you are taking the step to live a little more sustainable. Take Care all!

[youtube:http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BUfBKxHO1ps]

1. 

   adekun says:

   August 28, 2008 at 11:51 pm

   Your soil looks good. It’s pretty sandy down here. Have some danshaku in at the moment and couple of varieties of sweet potato. I think garlic at \400 a head is another god reason. Adrian
2. 

   Charles Hamel says:

   September 26, 2008 at 5:08 am

   Thanks adekun

   The season us starting to wind down here, but my carrots and broccoli are still doing well. Did you harvest your sweet potato’s yet?
3. 

   adekun says:

   September 26, 2008 at 5:19 am

   I haven’t much else in at the moment. Have had the odd poke around the sweet potatoes and taken a dozen or so. Probably harvest them toward the end of October. Looking to get some hakusai and cabbage planted soon. The endamame are full of bugs.