Growing Your Own Food in Hong Kong

1. Get Growing!

 xiv GET GROWING!  1 “All that summer, Julian spent her time in the garden with the gardener. She asked him a dozen questions as she watched him pull turnips from the black soil and toss them into a basket. How did he know that the turnips were ready? How did he get them up without breaking the stems? What happened to the turnip if it got too big? Would he plant turnips in the same place next year or somewhere else? He wiped sweat from his forehead and his hands on his mud-spattered tunic. He smiled a deep sun-and-wind-creased smile and laughed heartily at her questions.” Amy Frykholm, Julian of Norwich, a contemplative biography (2010)  2 SEEDS AND PROPAGATION Home-grown food will mostly be started from seeds though some plants are started from cuttings. Seeds vary enormously in size, from the tiny seeds of Chinese spinach to the golf ball stone of the avocado. The seed is probably the most marvellous piece of engineering on the face of the earth. Within its walls is stored nothing less than the blueprint of life itself. Its store of information, its genetic code, exceeds the capacity of any supercomputer. Every time a seed germinates and sheds its carapace, a miracle unfolds as it proceeds to fulfil your expectations, in other words, your “faith” in it. The faith factor is beautifully described in Hebrews 11:1 (King James Version): “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen’’. A better definition would be hard to find. The seed’s blueprint directs the plant’s development and behaviour depending on prevailing conditions, and passes information to the plant’s cells telling them how they are to grow, what shape or colour each bit of it should be, how they should react to outside attack, how to ensure reproduction and finally how and when they need to pack it in and die. Saving seeds (chrysanthemum vegetable)  3 Seeds contain genetic material that will eventually produce replicas of the parent strain. If two strains are crossed, a hybrid results. These are known as F1 hybrids and their seeds produce plants that combine some desirable traits of both parents. The development of hybrids is largely commercially motivated to produce increased yields, uniformity, resistance to pests or diseases, and ease of harvesting. However, F1 plants produce seeds that when grown, do not come true to type and are therefore not suitable for saving. New seeds will have to be purchased every year. Although the home gardener need not be overly concerned with genetically modified seeds, it is of topical interest and deserves some comment. These transgenic seeds are not produced by hybridisation but by manipulation of genes, that is, inserting favourable genes from an outside source (“genetic engineering”) to allow their expression in the modified plant. Like hybrid seeds, farmers who use these seeds are bound to purchase anew from suppliers every year at a much inflated cost. Some see this as a hugely profitable ploy by commercial producers to ensnare farmers into an unequal partnership. The subject of genetically modified, or “GM” food is complex and continues to be hotly debated, especially with many questions about safety still unanswered. For example, will transferring a gene from a peanut also transfer hypersensitivity to peanut protein to the new plant? The debate rages on. This is an appropriate place to elaborate on heirloom seeds and plants. Heirloom plants are plants that were commonly grown in early periods of human history, but many of which have become underused or even extinct as they give way to the needs of large-scale agriculture. For example, in the 80 years between 1903 and 1983, in the inventory of the National Seed Storage Laboratory in the United States (now the National Center for Genetic Sources Preservation), the number of seed varieties of tomato fell from 408 to 79; cabbage from 544 to 28; peas from 408 to 25; lettuce from 497 to 36 (National Geographic, July 2011, p. 117). Modern farming methods tend to favour only a few varieties which are grown in large monocultural plots to maximise consistency and profits while minimising labour. Whereas this practice has increased yields immensely and has helped to feed a hungry world, it opens up new areas of concern. For example, after the humble potato was introduced to Europe from the Peruvian Andes (where...