Square Foot Gardening in South Africa

No, not brussel sprouts… Blech! Normal sprouts. I came across this “micro indoor hydroponic home food production system” called ‘Kitchen Gardening‘ a few weeks ago, where you simply put your seeds in bottles, add water until they sprout… and eat them. After all, isn’t that what sprouts bought in the shops are? Seeds that have started growing and are then packed and sold to be used in soups, stews and even in sandwiches as a filling.

This is certainly one way of growing your own food but it reminded me a bit of an article I read a while back. The article was about a non governmental organisation (NGO) whose project to provide a poor rural community with the tools and the knowledge to produce their own food, had failed dismally - Because the people, too poor and hungry to wait for their crops to grow, had immediately gone out and sold their tools to buy food. The classic “Quick Fix” syndrome.

Isn’t this ‘Sprout Garden‘ concept the same sort of thing? Isn’t it a bit like selling the tools of the trade before you’ve made your products? I mean a handful of sprouts can by no means be called a full meal. It would also take dozens, if not hundreds of seeds to produce a small handful of sprouts whereas that same handful of sprouts, if they were planted out, grown and then harvested would provide a much, much bigger harvest of food.

It’s that whole “quick fix” thing that gets to me, not to mention it being a great waste of seed.How many seeds would you have to go through just to provide enough sprouts for one sandwich filling per day for a month? Now compare that to the harvest of a tomato plant grown from just a single seed.

Growing the sprouts is of course a lot easier than growing vegetables and, without the need for a garden (of any size), this would make it appealing to quite a few people. The health benefits also seem to be a big plus for those who are unable to grow their own vegetables during winter. In fact, the health benefits from eating sprouts seem to be a big plus at any time. I wouldn’t go quite as far as some have in calling sprouts the equivalent of a “Fountain of Youth” though

What do you think? Would you try this at home? Are you already doing it and if so, how is it working out?

Happy gardening
Mark

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Related Posts:

• Planting our first seedlings
• What is Square Foot Gardening?