Luis is looking at his phone checking the temperature of the Greenhouse | Alex Allan | XFM News
London is home to 18 community gardens. But only around 400 of those gardeners are dedicated to growing. “ Not everybody can grow their food, but if a small portion of our population starts in the city, we will make an absolute change”, Agronomist Luis Reyes said.
Vegetable gardens across the city are starting their work for this coming spring. Luis works at the London Food Bank greenhouse. The food bank’s main goal is to provide the most nutritional food that they can to the public. “It’s in the mission of the food bank to produce this food to the highest standard”, Reyes said. He believes that more people should be trying to grow their own vegetables in the city though.
According to Rate Inflation, the current rate in Canada is sitting at 5.9 percent from January 2023. Even though that number did drop from the previous rate, this has not changed much in the cost of buying fresh vegetables. Luis believes this is why people are choosing to buy a bag of chips over a fresh tomato. “It doesn’t bring anything to the nutritional part of the limitation, you’re just feeling the needs of your brain”, he said.
It can be hard to find those nutritional needs if you are working off of a budget at the grocery store. This is why the London Food Bank partnered with the city on building an agriculture area. “ The population keeps growing in the city and We’re going to need more nutritional food”, Reyes said.
The director of the London Food Bank Glen Pearson mentions that their own greenhouse garden has started growing already. “The greenhouse not only feeds food bank clients but also prepares seed plants for other groups”, He said. This is because the area the food bank grows in reaches their limit of plant capacity. This is when Luis will put these plants into small containers and place them out front for other people to start their own gardens.
“ If we can convince more people to do a little bit more growing and to increase their safety of nutrition intake, Even violence could go down”, Reyes said.
Gardening your own fruits and vegetables could be the best approach to getting nutritional food and to saving money. Luis is hoping that more volunteers will come out this spring to get their hands dirty but also learn the culture around gardening.
WATCH THE TOUR VIDEO OF THE GREEN HOUSE HERE:
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