Free, inventive ways to combat Food Deserts

I was lucky enough today to come across www.instructables.com where hundreds of users have posted their creative ways to do....just about anything. I was browsing through the garden section and discovered several cheap ways to create your own home garden from the materials around you. With a little modification, that tubaware container that you had no use for could be growing tomatoes in no time!

1) The TeraHydro Box (Earth Box hack) http://www.instructables.com/id/Ultimate-Vegtable-quotEarthBoxquot-For-CHEAP/



2) Start your seedlings in that 2 liter bottle that you were going to recycle http://www.instructables.com/id/Ghetto-Greenhouse%3aSeed-Starter/step4/The-end-result/

3) Or start your seedlings the eco-friendly way using newspaper pouches
http://www.instructables.com/id/Biodegradable-Seed-Starters-From-Newspaper-anothe/

4) Hang up some plants with this nifty shoe organizer planter
http://www.instructables.com/id/VERTICAL-VEGETABLES-quotGrow-upquot-in-a-smal/

Inventive and accessible ideas like these and others are helping people take the fight over Food Deserts into their own hands. The creation of farmer's markets by communities takes time and a great deal of facilitation to coordinate. By producing food in your backyard you have consistent access to free produce and have limited your ecological footprint by cutting out the use of petroleum to transport your food. Some things are just more convenient if they come from your own back yard.