God says in the Bible that you should sweat, yourself, for your food. Plant whatever easy, simple but plentiful of nutrition. I think if you have a garden, you should plant more fruit trees and food. Even if you have a balcony you can plant it.

Or if you have a flat roof, you plant up there. You don’t plant everywhere but you can use some plastic box or something or ceramic box and fill it with earth, fill your compost and just keep planting, planting - very fun. You go out and see the whole roof is green and edible - beautiful. It’s really beautiful.

Okay, so now, you try to plant those vegetables that bear fruits, like beans, pumpkins and stuff, cucumbers; those things that bear fruit and are simple, easy. So it becomes a habit. And then you will eat your own produce. It’s good to be independent. In case something happens, you will have sufficient food for yourself. Plant a lot of fruit trees wherever you can.

Welcome, enthusiastic viewers, to Planet Earth: Our Loving Home. From backyards to balconies, rooftops to ravines, and even on walls, organic fruits and veggies can be grown just about anywhere you can imagine! Whether you live in the city or countryside, on today’s program, we will see how you can easily grow your own fresh organic produce!

What kind of space do you need to grow your own super fresh, delicious fruits and vegetables? As it turns out, almost any small area will do. One of the easiest places to start is on a flat rooftop. Growers in the Taiwan Organic Lifestyle Association have discovered some of the benefits and joys to organic rooftop gardening.

If you plant vegetables on your rooftop, you can have fresh vegetables and reduce the temperature at the same time. Once the house temperature has been reduced, you can reduce your house energy bill as well.

To engage in organic farming, one must use organic materials entirely without using any chemical fertilizer or pesticides whatsoever. It doesn’t involve factory processing, so it won’t create more greenhouse gases.

I found the requirement to be simple and it is good for the Earth. It can also save energy, benefit the environment as well as our health.

I planted spring onions before; it was very rewarding, especially in typhoon season, because you don’t have to worry about the rising price at that time. But most importantly, seeing the plants growing is a very rewarding experience, which is beyond words.

I think organic farming is a very profound subject. Learning it can make one become a plant doctor.

It’s so nice that everyone (in the family) can work on the same project and eat healthy. Whenever we want to eat, we can just go out to get it.

A wide variety of fruits and vegetables, and even trees, can be grown in a rooftop garden.

See, we have planted fruits trees. This is peach. This is sand pear (Taiwan Stranvaesia), a very special kind of fruit. There are also custard apples, figs, papayas, and bell peppers. We have 20 to 30 different kinds of plants.

With some minor modifications, fresh, delicious fruits and vegetables can be grown even during the winter months.

Tomato, spinach, beet root, mustard greens, and Chinese cabbage. Actually, on the rooftop, we can set up some screens to prevent wind and frost damage, or build a simple green house, like this one behind me.

Thanks to the government's encouragement, rooftop gardening has become very popular in Japan. In addition to saving energy and producing an abundance of fresh food, these gardens have created an interesting side benefit.

Since year 2000, they have been giving incentives to those whose green building effort was approved by officials, and their property tax can be reduced by half for five years. So now if you take an aerial photo of Tokyo, Japan, you’ll see how beautiful it is. All the building rooftops have become parks.

But growing vegetables in the city is not limited to rooftops. They can be grown almost anywhere, even on a wall.

We use lettuce to construct a green wall. The idea can applied to the domestic home, which will save land usage. By using just one side of the wall, we can grow beautiful and delicious lettuces as well as green the environment. As for the construction, first we need to build a good waterproof panel, and then the irrigation system.

Also, to provide the plants with the best nutrients, we not only need water but also fertilizer. Regarding the green wall, since the plants always face the direction of sun, they will grow upwards, while slowly cover the whole wall and turn it into a beautiful green wall. Short-stem or green leafy vegetables are all okay, like Chinese cabbage, bok choy and American lettuces etc. These are very good choices of green wall plants.

What is the best type of seed to plant? How much land do we need to be self-sufficient? Let's find out by visiting The Digger's Club at Heronswood Garden in Dromana, Australia's largest garden club. Founded by Mr. Clive Blazey, the Club specializes in growing “heirloom plants,” traditional, organic varieties of produce which have been neither hybridized nor genetically modified.

The broccolis that you’re buying from the supermarkets have been hybridized in such a way to produce a rather large head which is good for harvesting all at once, but that large head has got no flavor, and it’s full of water and no goodness. So the types of broccoli that we have produced will produce a smaller head which is full of goodness, and you know the flavor is just sensational in these things.

Heirloom vegetables can also be unusually beautiful and highly nutritious.

We’ve got a beautiful old variety of Tuscan kale called Cavolo Nero. And it has the highest concentration of antioxidants of any vegetable known to man. Gram for gram, it is twice as powerful in terms of antioxidants as broccoli. So the benefits you are getting from using organic seeds far outweigh and outstrip the stuff that you’re buying from supermarkets or the seeds that you’re buying that are hybrids.

If you plan your garden carefully, you can grow a remarkable amount of produce in only a few square meters of space.

Clive did a lot of research into trying to find the best ways to encourage people to grow their own vegetables, and what we achieved, or what Clive achieved here, was to create what is called a “mini plot.” And it’s been based on that in order to feed one person for a whole year all you require is ten square meters, nothing more

And it is just based on successional plantings and by that I mean where you might grow a heavy brassica, or a heavy feeding plant, the next succession for that would be perhaps put in peas or beans that actually fix nitrogen back into the soil. So in order to feed a family of four, you need 40 square meters, and that area, when you think about it, 10 square meters is the area underneath a four-wheel drive, and that’s all you need to feed, an area for one person.

Can you tell us about the size of this garden and how many people it would feed?

What you see here is roughly 30 square meters. So this plot here would feed three people with successional planting for a whole 12 months. What we put in this is whole mixture of different types of things. We have got actually herbs in here as well as vegetables. We showcase some beautiful old Black Russian tomatoes in there with a little bit of parilla, with some mizuna, with some leeks, capsicums, … red pak choy, inter-planted with marigolds and then some garlic chives.

So this is for now, and then the next successional planting that would come in it would be peas and maybe beans and different things like that. So it’s a rotational thing that will go for a whole 12 months. And we actually set that out in in our books or on our website.

What if your garden produces more food than you need? What can you do with the excess bounty? Hillside Gardens, near Los Angeles, California, USA, has come up with a delightful solution.

The concept is free food for everybody, basically. This is a neighborhood that all gets together and brings everything they grow in their yard that they can’t use themselves, like fruits, vegetables, herbs, flowers. Whatever they have that they can’t use, they bring it over once a month to my house. And we divide everything up and make sure everybody who participates gets some of what everybody grows, for free. So free food!

We also have people who don’t grow anything who can get a bag and participate by either volunteering, doing the bagging and sorting, or volunteering to deliver. So like today we have six delivery volunteers and each one is delivering to a different neighborhood. So it saves on gas too.

Established for about two years, the Hillside Produce Cooperative’s concept of freely sharing extra fruits and veggies, has quickly gained popularity.

We started with six neighbors and now we have about 360 members. That’s just in our East Side Los Angeles cooperative. And there’s six chapters in California that are up and running.

On the day of our visit, over 40 people were happily sharing their fresh organic fruits and vegetables.

They’re going to take home a huge bag. Like you spend about US$60 at a really great farmer's market, is about what you get to take home. And besides all the fresh produce, people baked today. So we have banana bread, zucchini bread, honey wheat bread, cookies, brownies, jam. I think we have four kinds of jam people brought. And it’s all homegrown, homemade stuff.

For more information on The Diggers Club please visit: www.diggers.com.au
Hillside Produce please visit: www.hillsideproducecooperative.org

Our heartfelt appreciation, Earth-loving members of the Taiwan Organic Lifestyle Association, The Diggers Club, and Hillside Produce Cooperative, for sharing your green tips and enthusiasm for growing one’s own fruits and vegetables. We wish all many more joyous years of gardening in peace and harmony.

Thank you for joining us today on Planet Earth: Our Loving Home. Up next is Enlightening Entertainment, after Noteworthy News. May you be blessed with an abundance of happiness and health.