By Asitha Jayawardena

By eating produce from his own farm, a man has lost 350 pounds in weight, said Yahoo news story. The story was published on 29 June 2020 and tallies with the lockdown. It has positive points that we adhere to.

Besides, mini-forests will aid climate change, The Guardian said. Ultra mini-forests, called gardens in an urban neighbourhood, will adversely act as mini-forests.

After a lockdown, which has now started easing gradually, we must after three or four months look at the benefits of growing vegetables on our own.

Growing vegetables can kill time

When lockdown started in March, we wondered what to do. I started this blog, sustain-blog.com, while my wife, who was shielding, thought about growing vegetables in the small back garden. She has never grown vegetables before. My cousin sister posted the seeds and my wife prepared potatoes in the meantime. With time, growing was on. Meanwhile, our daughter had online school.

Plants need water but not snails and weeds

We had beans, spring onions, potatoes, chilli, tomatoes and leaks and they need water. The biggest problem is the snails who wanted to chew the plants. Fortunately, there were not many snails. Every morning, we had to look for the snails who were then transferred into the bin. Moreover, weeds – not many – were removed.

Every day is a new day

When we woke up and came into the back garden, we found a new day when the plants grew little by little. It was a time for growth and the plants and vines continued to grow in the lockdown. A WhatsApp group was installed between UK, Australia and Sri Lanka and it showed graphically the growth of vegetables in the different regions of the earth!

Time to harvest crops

After about two or three months, the crops were ready to harvest. Spring onion was the first. Then beans in their vines looked so well to pluck. When I did the first harvest of beans, my wife took photos for the WhatsApp group. Bean curry was lovely! Several potato plants died and my wife dug the soil to unearth beautiful potatoes! Other crops are not ready yet.

Meantime, my blog thrived and 27 posts were published since 24 March.

Except in Leicester, now the lockdown is coming to an end if the second wave is not on its way. This shows that a shielded person, i.e. my wife, started growing vegetables. It’s harvesting time while enjoying the growth every day.

The coronavirus is not yet over. What it has to do to humanity, only time will tell!

More…

Man loses 350 pounds by eating produce grown on his own farm https://uk.yahoo.com/style/man-dramatic-weight-loss-135625579.html

Fast-growing mini-forests spring up in Europe to aid climate https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/13/fast-growing-mini-forests-spring-up-in-europe-to-aid-climate