The middle and the lower working class just barely earn the amount of money required to live, and even then, do they? If you make just enough money to be just above drowning, is that a good baseline for a living? Some families don’t even have the luxury of eating meals because money’s too tight. If you don’t have enough money to live your daily life, then how do you have the privilege to save money for the future?
This issue isn’t one of working harder nor smarter or using your money wisely: it’s about people surviving daily. If a family doesn’t have the means to save, what else does this implicate? They can’t prepare for emergencies such as an announced hurricane or a surprising earthquake or much less a pandemic. During an emergency, citizens crowd supermarkets trying to fulfill their cupboards, which produces a chaotic mass of desperate people worrying about how they will survive. In this situation, many could be left behind without the necessary resources to live.
With that said, it’s essential to grow a garden at home or at your community, where you can cultivate and harvest elements that keep you fed during an emergency. Of course, even then, some people don’t have the luxury of time to do something productive during a pandemic. There is a myriad of factors that play a role in this: stress, mental health, time, the necessary means, and more.
That’s the case of Cristina Angélica Rosa Casiano, a 20-year-old woman who always wanted to have a garden, but it wasn’t until quarantine she decided to start. She is in the process of turning vegan, loves mother nature, and likes to exercise. “My natural influence comes from my paternal grandmother, who was a florist,” she expressed. This idea came from her eco-conscious living and her awareness of our impact as a human race on Earth. Cristina believes in the potential we have of self-sustainability based on creativity and a little bit of effort.
Why is it so important to sow?
Based on what we discussed before, growing a garden represents advantages you may not find anywhere else. I consider the next four as the most remarkable.
Maybe the most notable advantage is the economic one.
If you invest $0.70 on orange seeds, how many oranges could you get from the tree for the next five years? Or if you sow sweet potatoes, how many people could you feed without losing out of your budget? Investing in a space where you can plant a garden could turn out to be the best investment. On this topic, Cristina said that it isn’t that expensive to create your own garden and that she invested approximately $50 on it. And think about it for a moment: those are $50 that could let you save even more money in the foreseeable future. In her case, what she consumes the most are vegetables and fruits, so it’s a significant relief to her pocket. Of course, we all need to eat fruits and vegetables, which means we’ll also benefit from a positive economic impact.
Another benefit is the emotional one.
“For me, this is a very personal project. It’s a growing project of becoming independent,” Cristina said, emphasizing that her project is also a guide to understand more of the Bible and how capable she is of doing something by herself. There’s plenty of studies on the topic, and connecting with mother nature can make you feel at peace. It’s a therapeutic process no one can take from you because you’re surrounded by nature, so enjoy it. You can start by walking near your house, a park or somewhere with trees and flowers. Become familiar with the environment.
A third benefit is the educational one.
The result of how we live today is a direct effect of education. No matter the ways we use what we learn, or if it turns out to be positive or negative, we can validate that what we see in others, we tend to emulate if we think it’s good for us. Once you start, other people might see you and grow conscious about the importance of having their self-grown organic fresh food to feed to their loved ones. Additionally, if you don’t have much space in your garden or home, you can support local farmers that cultivate in their lands and contribute to the local economy while learning in the process. As Cristina said, this may help you understand the hard work of these people and why it costs a little more sometimes.
A fourth and final benefit is the improvement of physical health.
Here, we gain two main advantages. First, note that some big supermarkets sell products exposed to high quantities of preservatives and pesticides. With a garden, you can guarantee you’ll have a fresher product. Second, gardening is exercising! Impossible to believe? “It’s a great exercise. I didn’t think that I was capable of doing so many things, so I gained a lot of confidence,” Cristina commented, mentioning how sometimes women are seen as weaker, incapable of doing hard work. The hard labor that naturally comes with gardening made her feel stronger than ever. She admitted she ended up with a bit of pain, but it quickly transformed into satisfaction after seeing the results. So if you’re looking at how to start a routine, this is the perfect excuse. Two for the price of one!
Now that I’ve convinced you, where can you start?
Cristina started searching through Google what the easiest vegetables to cultivate were and which were appropriate for Puerto Rico’s climate. She considered how fast it grew, how much water and how much light the seeds needed. Currently, Cristina is cultivating pigeon pea, kale, eggplant, and peppers. The internet and her grandmother helped her, but her father was also significant support in the construction phase of the area she would use. Now, she has her own space in her backyard and talks to the plants every day. She smiled while explaining that she noticed it worked because today, she has beautiful stems with some leaves starting to grow.
Think for a minute about how beneficial this will be after quarantine, both for you and mother Earth. “I’ve been thinking about how we consume and take over, and sometimes we don’t contribute back to the world,” Cristina said. She added that it’s crucial to establish a relationship between appreciation and comprehension of the resources nature gives us and the response we give back. It takes months to cultivate what you eat in an hour, but the result is delightful, conscious, and responsible.
We here at Her Campus at UPR wish you health during this COVID-19 pandemic, that you can harvest everything you proposed to, and be well prepared for this and any other emergency.