Winter and early Spring are a great time to get those trees in the ground, giving them a good chance to settle roots and prepare for the dry Summer months. As climatic shifts and global weirding looks set to threaten our food security, biodiversity and social cohesion, are community orchards and more planting of fruit and nut trees the answer?

Leafy greens provide us with some really vital micro-nutrients and are so important in the transition to increasing the plant based content of your diet and good health. Winter is a perfect time to grow them and Summer, the perfect time to collect their seeds, ready for the next planting season.

Kale, as an example, is considered one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet, high in Vitamin K, A and C and also anti-oxidants that help maintain great eyesight amongst other things. Other greens are just as beneficial. Many can be grown year round and easily turned into stunning, nutritious and tasty meals. You're basically eating for free, with minimal effort.

Maybe what you didn’t know, is that according to recent NZ based research, the case for growing your own has additional benefits to your long term health, and that of your friends, family and global neighbours.

The benefits of some real, meaningful climate action when you figure the figures out.

According to Otago University, leafy greens (so your kales, silverbeets, mesclun, lettuce, spinach, microgreens, cabbage etc) have just over 3kgCO2e/kg (or 3kg of carbon emissions for every kilogram of greens)..which means per weight of leafy greens, grown at home, nutritionally better for you, fresh from your garden, you save 3 times their weight in emissions!

Source The Mouthful

Doesn’t sound like much? Our family of four ate 1kg (easily) of homegrown leafy greens this week. There’s enough amongst our 4 cavolo nero plants, 4 collard green plants, mesclun, kale and herb pots to harvest lots more than this. Every week.

It is reasonable to assume that every New Zealander (every global citizen?) has the space for the pots to be able to grow at least some of their own leafy greens. If 5 million New Zealanders ate this way, year round,

we’d collectively save 260,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year.

Sure, that’s a long way from zero-ing our current 84 million tonnes of emissions per year but it’s also a long way from insignificant. It shows that if we all do a little, the impacts can be far greater than we might expect.

Through this one, relatively small action of growing your own vegetables, a lot of things are happening:

• 1. Growing your own means you’re regularly looking after plants, or noticing them. This means you’re connecting with nature more - which studies have shown are fantastic for health and well-being.
• 2. Growing your own means not only are you saving emissions but you’re also saving money. At the time of writing, in Aotearoa NZ, 175 grams of curly kale will cost you $3.29. The yearly saving on kale alone is $170. If you’re buying spinach, kale, cabbage and herbs you’re looking at close to $700 a year saved. Just for your leafy greens. As we move into climatically uncertain times, your savings will increase, as will your food security.
• 3. You are nutritionally better off. Vegetables lose nutrition quickly after harvest and, particularly leafy greens, can take a lot of extra energy in terms of refrigeration to get them to you in a decent, fresh-ish state which is not bereft of vitamins and minerals.

Now here’s the really interesting bit. In a 2017 study in Santa Barbara, researchers modelled the potential for carbon sequestration in a vegetable garden, compared to other options for your outside space like lawns.

The world needs to reduce emissions globally by 7.6% every year for the next 10 years.

So genuinely, along with all the other benefits we’ve already mentioned, we can also propose it may be possible to save our planet’s eco-systems simply by home-growing more veg. Are you ready to get growing yet? Try out our planting diary to add your plants and keep track of what you're growing, including your harvests, to measure your impact and make growing easy.

In the UK, pictures emerged just before Christmas, as the result of a new Covid strain and unexpected lockdown, of trucks filled with supplies parked on motorways. They were unable to reach their final destination and UK citizens became instantly aware of food security issues in a country dependent on overseas food exports.

This week, Auckland entered Level 3 lockdown, with the remainder of New Zealand in Level 2 and an uncertain future as we head towards Autumn and Winter when the bugs and viruses love to thrive. Wherever you’re from, whatever your background, food is something which links all of us as human beings, and animals and plant life. This common connector is a need for every living thing. When it is threatened, our survival instincts have to kick in - it’s evolution. It’s why we’ve survived for this long. And it’s why many countries are experiencing a boom in demand for seeds and seedlings, in recognition of our animal instincts to adapt and survive. To have the capacity to grow some of our own food, improve food security and sovereignty alongside the ability to avoid reliance on supermarket shopping.

“Since the 1900s, we have lost 75% of genetic diversity in plants globally, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, and in the last century, 93% of our unique seed varieties have disappeared. This decline is connected to the rise of industrial agriculture and the big boom in agrochemicals. By returning to traditional farming methods of saving OP seeds, crops are richly diverse, well adapted to the soil and local climate, and more resilient to climate change.”

In Aotearoa, in our first lockdown in Winter 2020, sales of greenhouses sky-rocketed, as our people realised their capacity to avoid lengthy queues at supermarkets and price gouging beyond their control. Sales of seeds went gang-busters with suppliers unable to cope with demand. The same is true of many other countries around the world. Our survival instincts have kicked in, gardening was recognised as one of the top activities for lockdown and greenhouses are the must have item to ensure year round growing and limit the need to visit the supermarket.

The similarities between the actions needed to address climate change and our Covid survival instincts are enormous. Seed collection, citizen growing and therefore seasonality, low food miles and sustainable cities have to be part of our solution to becoming more resilient. Growing our own food is how we have survived the last few hundred thousand years. It’s how we get through the next few. Personal responsibility for the greater good and collaboration with each other to create abundance. Because if the systems break that provide everything we want, we now all know the most important things we need for our survival. We started Greenback with the understanding that there are ways to take climate action which are triple-wins. They don’t require big business subsidies or governments to implement. For people (making healthy, nutritious food more accessible with health and well-being benefits to add), planet (eliminating emissions, sequestering carbon, climate proofing our landscapes and increasing bio-diversity) and pocket (to everyone collaborating in their action and future generations, through limiting the $700 trillion cost of climate change).

Seeds, the embryos of plants and trees, and their supply are globally largely controlled by only a few corporations. After mergers, 4 dominant companies control over 60% of seed markets.

Our indigenous cultures, marginalised and colonised, know how important it is not only to preserve seed but also to select the best plants which have adapted to the unique local environment. Their close connection with the lands, plants, water, animals, sky is all about observation and preservation for survival. The wealth of different kinds of corns, uniquely adapted for some of the harshest climates in the world are just one example of the importance of diversity as we enter a climatically uncertain period of human history. Indeed the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance state "Seeds are a vibrant and vital foundation for food sovereignty, and are the basis for a sustainable, healthy agriculture. We understand that seeds are our precious collective inheritance and it is our responsibility to care for the seeds as part of our responsibility to feed and nourish ourselves and future generations." There is untold and unrecorded bio-diversity remaining. Grandma’s lemon tree, Great Grandpa’s pumpkins. Perhaps even more so in Aotearoa where we are GMO free and in gardens, pots and communities there is huge potential resource of open pollinated, heritage seeds that have evolved with us over the last few hundred years to perform beautifully in our climate. Although there are a few seed suppliers here, much our seed comes from hybridised varieties bought on the international market from the big suppliers.

PlantMe.io was designed, in part, to record, track and share real-time information on which species of plants do well where, while also making it really easy to trade, buy or sell a wider range of heritage and open pollinated plants and seeds.

It's seed collecting season right now here in New Zealand. Sign up today to receive our newsletter on what's happening and how to get involved with improving our food security, food sovereignty and grow together! Kia ora!