In permaculture, there’s a saying “there’s no such thing as waste” and because this month is Plastic Free July, every day we are going to be sharing simple tips and ideas for tackling this from all different directions.
I think this focus on going towards being plastic-free gives us a chance to rethink so many things, and to reconsider daily decisions. It is a wonderful portal to explore ways of living that contribute to the wellbeing of people and the planet. Through these clips, we explore a selection of things that can be practised in any month of any year and I’d love to hear your ideas for practical positive change too!
Our first clip is about growing salads. For one, this helps reduce us move away from bagged salad. Also right now, the cost of fresh food is rapidly rising so growing a permaculture garden can help us access fresh good plastic-freed food.
Join me and my daughter Maia in our permaculture home and garden for our first July clip.
To learn more about growing a permaculture gardening simply and easily, check out our course The Incredible Edible Garden and learn how to design your own permaculture landscape in our Permaculture Design Course.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi and welcome back into my garden. My name is Morag Gamble from the permaculture education Institute and our permaculture life. And I’m joined today by my daughter who is one of the cofounders of the global permayouth.
We are going to be exploring different ways that through your permaculture way of life. You can actually look to reduce the amount of single-use plastic that’s in the world. We’re not going to be focusing on this as a single issue, because one of the key things that I’ve found by exploring plastic-free July’s is that once you start to explore that it starts to lift the lid. It’s a bit of a portal to explore so many different things so you know where your foods.
The impact of the food we grow
From how it’s grown, how it’s packaged, to how its transported – the impact that food is having and really looking at how we can create well-being for people and the planet. So each day during July, we went out into the garden or did something in the house to explore some simple tips. These are the kinds of practical permaculture tips that you can use in your everyday life to help improve sustainability in your life. It’s not a small thing that we’re doing, there over 250 million people in a hundred and seventy-seven countries who participate in plastic-free July every year.
The first tip that we wanted to talk about is actually how you can get rid of using plastic in your salad. You know when you go buy salads in the stores they typically come in little bags either as the mixes or as you know like even this the whole salads come in plastic. So in your garden, there are so many different things that you can have as summer green. Maia’s got a little bouquet of greens here that we just harvested. So as well as the lettuce leaves which is really good right.
Doing the planting and pulling the whole lettuce.
You can have just the open-hearted lettuces and you can keep them going for a very long time. Harvest things like the leaves of broad beans so the leaves of that make a really good salad and also the flowers to that Maia just harvested there. You might have some snow peas growing in your garden and so the tendrils and the leaves of that make a really good salad green. Then there’s all the kind of these lovely spicy things that could be Mizuna or rockets and lovely mustardy flavoured greens. So you can have those and then there are all the edible flowers too.
We also have a mustard green and this is a different sort of Brassica and so we just you know come along and pluck those off and toss those into the salad too. As well as you know any kind of herbs and parsley and basil and different sorts of weeds we can find around the garden. So, thinking differently about how we can create beautiful fresh salads that are taking the snips off the wonderful fresh plants that you have in your garden today or around your neighbourhood. And if you haven’t got a salad garden maybe think about how you can create a little pot even if it’s on your brand or a little patch of the garden right next close to your house every meal you can come out and pluck some fresh greens.