#01 – Green Guerrillas – Growing food at home
Dear South Peninsula Moms, Akim Riemer here from the Green Guerrillas, on invite by Nicole of SP moms to share some weekly tips and to inspire you to start growing food at home.
I think we can all agree that food prices are really sky rocketing, the quality is deteriorating, and the availability dwindling, if there ever was a time to grow your own food, it would be now!
Now I know growing food at home can be a daunting task. As moms you have your hands full, from ensuring lunch boxes are packed, to thinking of what supper is going to be, never mind about a full time job and daily challenges of being a mother! This is why I am here to offer some simple and cost effect ways to get you started, some basic preparations methods can snow ball quickly into a small thriving backyard farm for the whole family to benefit from and certainly reduce that ever growing monthly food bill.
As an experienced backyard farmer I wish to share my knowledge with you so you may succeed. The trick is to start small, yet remain consistent and of course to rope the whole family in, this is a lifestyle choice and cannot be done alone but you have to start somewhere, so start now.
This week I would like to introduce micro-greens-easy to start, no green fingers required, and from a nutritional value, it is off the charts.
What is micro-greens?
These are normal seeds such as beetroot or peas that are harvested at an early stage ( 16-20 days), little seedlings grown in a seedling tray.
Some benefits of micro greens are:
- 40 times more vital nutrients than the fully grown plant
- 5 times higher levels of vitamins
- space efficient
- Growing micro-greens is child’s play
- Quick and easy healthy meals
- Adds flavor and colour to all meals
I think the greatest advantage about micro-greens is that you can sneak them into the family’s food, knowing that by your child eating one table soon of micro-greens it would be the equivalent to eating an entire portion, so if you thought it was impossible to get little Jenny to eat broccoli, well here is the answer.
Micro-greens won’t get eaten by the snails, will use about 100ml of water, and makes your kitchen look cool.
How to get started?
You will need a seedling tray or anything similar, a good organic seedling mix (to hold moister) and between 5-10g of seeds.
Place seedling mix in the tray, sprinkle with water (don’t soak), sprinkle seeds on top and cover with about 0.5cm of soil.
Place on the window sill and watch it grow. It will take about 2-3 days to germinate, harvest by cutting with a scissor when you can see the true leaves (second set of leaves) add to sandwich, soups, in salads.
The more variety you can grow, the more fun and creative you can be in the kitchen!
This week only the Green Guerrillas are selling a micro green start kit for R35.
This consists of a seedling tray, organic seedling soil mix, 2 packs of seeds (Beetroot and peas) and instructions.
For orders email anki@etadv.co.za.
Click here to find out more about Green Guerrillas.