Summer is such a wonderful time to have things growing in pots and garden. So productive in all the best ways. Brassica flower and set seed for the coming years, along with many others, attracting and supporting bio-diversity. If you've spent much time around flowering things, you'll have noticed the bumble bees, honey bees and native pollinators, alongside an abundance of bird life supported by the wealth of insect life. It's a time for harvest, or watching (and watering) daily to see whether things have ripened and whether you might need to race the birds to get those super ripe raspberries or strawberries before they take the lot. It can require some inventive applications of netting or bird aversion tactics, alongside a lot of learning around pests and problems that threaten our crops.

To me, gardening is a wellness activity. Having watched the Netflix film "Don't Look Up" too many times over the Christmas period, at first finding it horrifyingly funny, and then all subsequent times bursting into tears repeatedly, gardening gives me hope. It allows me to feel like I am acting in a way that supports our natural systems, reminds me how long it takes a fruit to ripen and that nature is priceless, often providing the solution to every problem that is presented if we just take the time to observe it and consider it.

According to OurWorldInData, in New Zealand, our per capita emissions sit at 6.94 tonnes per person as of 2020. In Congo, they dropped to a startling 0.03 tonnes per person. We're extremely grateful to Lema for reminding us of our freedoms, opportunities and support systems here in New Zealand and our ability to work together to make sure we all have enough while being kind to our planet and people from other places. We've learnt so much from Lema's experience.

We'd love you to start logging what you're growing so that we can show our collective impact in growing and show the world what's possible. Trading or gifting seeds you've collected on the marketplace allows us to reward you bio-diversity credits because seeds represent the lifecycle of plants. It's time to get harvesting and seed collecting.

As Summer makes itself known and we get more opportunity to notice and get into the garden, I'm reminded of last year and putting a call out on a well known Permaculture Facebook Group asking for people who grow, willing to share their stories, and show us their gardens. We were blown away by the aroha and response and ever since, have been trying to do what we filmed justice.

At a time when New Zealand is in the news for being top of class for all the wrong reasons, it's inspiring to be able to show the literal grassroots movement there is in your community already growing and taking action to create local resilience. Maybe their kamokamo hasn't crept it's way to your garden through or over the fence yet, but it's exactly that we're trying to inspire and show the impact of through PlantMe.io. Neighbourhood garden blitzes where available green space extends the mahi of people like Tai in our video below. We're everywhere - those of us that spot a spare piece of land doing nothing with great light.

Currently being investigated as a mighty mitigator, locking carbon in soils for hundreds, or even thousands of years, bio-char is the product of pyrolysing wood...e.g. burning it without oxygen. As a result, the water molecules evaporate, and you're left with something akin to charcoal, but retaining its original shape and providing the perfect host environment for micro-organisms to flourish.

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

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

• 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.

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.

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!