Perhaps this should really be two separate posts but some great inspiring occurances took place today. I bumped into a friend at the co-op yesterday and she mentioned she has a calender on Biodynamic Gardening. In an earlier post I mentioned that a random man at the copy centre handed me some copies on the subject. However, I found it difficult to decipher with it's astrological signs and symbols. But the calendar Ami has, she assured me, is easy to follow. So she emailed it to me this morning and as you can see below, you just have to follow the calendar. For example, tomorrow on April 23 it's best to seed a Fruiting plant, such as peas or tomatoes between 10am and 2pm.

Biodynamic gardening was developed by Rudolf Steiner who focused on the cosmic influences from the Sun, Moon, planets and stars as important factors in agriculture. Simply put, the earth's position in the solar system determines which seeds to sow and when.  Tomorrow I will plant peas outside in the garden and I will report my results. According to Ami, a friend of hers planted corn last year by following the timings of the calendar and no one in the neighborhood had corn as tall and strong as hers. I'm curious...

I just got home from watching NO IMPACT MAN, a documentary about a writer and his family in New York who decides to reduce his carbon footprint to ZERO. He buys local food and eventually lives without electricity. His family's diet is quiet bland because he has to depend on seasonal produce. He does start gardening with a mentor in a community garden but he didn't rely much on his own produce for his meals. I think he was primarily being taught how to garden on the mentor's plot so he perhaps did not take the veggies home. I digress. The point is that, if he did know how to garden or had a more elaborate set up to garden in his apartment or elsewhere, the transition to reducing his carbon footprint would have been easier. His wife complained that giving up the car and everything else was not as difficult as changing her diet because she could eat 'yummy' food. They might have been happier if they were growing what they wanted, rather than consuming a bland diet of potatoes and apples in the fall.

In short, if we have the skills to garden we can have yummy diets AND reduce our carbon footprint. It's win win!