Peppermint Magazine: grow your own way

Could community gardens be the answer to our insecure food systems?

Grow more food locally. Food Ladder is helping make that reality a little easier via community hydroponic greenhouse systems, which Lucy says can pump out five times more food than traditional farming methods.

“Within five to six weeks, they’re harvesting spinach, billowing heads of let- tuce, bok choy, the list goes on,” she says.

So far, Food Ladder has installed large greenhouses in 10 Aussie locations, many of them rural and remote schools, across the Northern Terri- tory, Western Australia and Tasmania.

“A lot of them are facing 45-degree temperatures in summer and frosty winters, so it’s difficult to continue in-ground growing practices. It’s about empowering groups to be able to grow their own produce so they’ve got more autonomy,” Lucy says.

Participating schools and communities are offered a heap of help to get growing, including a year’s support from Food Ladder’s skilled team of growers, plus access to curricu- lum-aligned teaching resources, recipes and growing guides.

View the full article below: