Cory McInnis | Contributed
For the past year and a half, gardening, growing your own food, and being in touch with where your food comes from is more than ever hitting the hearts of many families and individuals all over the world.
In Sooke, working at a local garden centre, I have seen its impact. With veggie starts arriving, only to be sold out by week’s end.
Anywhere you have space, either in a square-foot garden, raised beds, planters and pots, you can plant food.
You get a feeling of pride, ownership, freshness, excitement, and sometimes frustration when you first harvest the veggies that were lovingly sowed, watered, and tended to during the growing season.
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Carole Christopher is the Sooke Garden Club’s October speaker, and I couldn’t have said it any better than what she submitted:
“This talk, titled Eating Defensively by Growing Your Own, focuses first on the industrial food supply and how it has changed our diet and affected our health. It then looks at how we can take steps to regain control, one of which is to grow food to meet some of our own food needs. This has the additional advantage of helping us reconnect our food and our bodies with nature.
“Most of us have been impacted to some degree by the unwarranted reassurance of the food industry that they can outdo Mother Nature. Every major chronic illness has now been correlated with factors in the processed food supply.
“Further, the bending of the food system towards industrial agriculture hurts diversity and sustainability, leaving us in a more precarious position with regard to our food security. Growing some or own food is an action on behalf or own health, that of our families and the planet.”
With a doctorate in nutrition, 40 years of teaching, promoting local, sustainable and just food, Christopher brings an outstanding skill and experience to the gardening world.
If you are a Sooke Garden Club member, be sure to tune in to hear Christopher’s presentation on Oct. 27 at 7 p.m. New members are welcome. The Sooke Garden Club has a Facebook page and a website sookegardenclub.ca or email us at sookegc@gmail.com.
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Cory McInnis writes for the Sooke Garden Club.
editor@sookenewsmirror.com
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