Luke Kirkness: Part of the cost of living crisis could be solved by growing our own produce

OPINION:

The cost of living is a prime opportunity for people to become self-sustaining or at the very least start thinking about it.

On Saturday, it was reported fruit and vegetable prices rose 17 per cent in the year to February 2022, grocery food jumped 5.4 per cent and meat was up 7.1 per cent, along with rises elsewhere.

Fuel prices had risen (although the Government yesterday moved to slash excise duties and road user charges by 25c a litre for the next three months) and inflation is back.

These are not problems easily fixed but there's something we can do in our own backyards to help.

Grow a vegetable garden.

Many New Zealanders take great pride in the appearance of their properties and work hard to keep them top-notch.

This is an easy solution to help restrict the amount we spend at the supermarket. Photo / NZME

Ever since I was young, I've loved mowing the lawns.

Back in rural Otago, where my family grew up, our large garden and lawns were a constant threat of swallowing up our property whole.

As any rural person will know, maintenance is constant and hard work. Luckily, we had an old John Deere ride-on, which made light work of the lawns.

I'm now flatting in the city and take on our big lawn (by city standards) with a push lawnmower. To make matters worse, it's covered by kikuyu grass which grows at a great rate of knots, meaning the next mow is never far away.

I still enjoy the process but on those sweltering Bay of Plenty days, it's not always a great deal of fun.

This gets me to my point.

My flatmates and I should replace the lawn with a vegetable garden - leaving a strip for a cricket pitch, of course.

With such a large area we'd be able to grow plenty of different plants to help sustain ourselves and not require constant trips to the supermarket.

Near our flat, a neighbour has their front yard packed with vegetables and fruits.

It's a wonder more people haven't cottoned on.

Having a vegetable garden would be great for times such as these and help plenty of us eat far healthier than we do now too.

For anyone not sure how to get started, there's bound to be a few community groups or local experts to learn from.

Serious crises such as the one we find ourselves in now present a lot of problems but where there are problems, there are solutions. This is one.

So, I suppose I'll be asking the landlord nicely if we can rip up his lawn.

Next on the agenda is finding a decent second-hand pushbike and helmet.