Drought Tolerant Food Plants

This year is something else, and it’s certainly making most people concerned.

More and more people are waking up to, what ultimately is the way we have treated this planet. The recent heatwave has become unbearable for many. Whilst we have always adapted our session timings according to the weather, for the first time ever, have we seen organisations all around London cancelling their volunteering sessions, arranging them much earlier, and so on and so forth.

We have always run like this. Sometimes having a session run from 10am-12pm is too much for anyone to take. People cancel. It’s hard to volunteer in the full sun. We have raised the concern re shelter especially last year. Having infrastructure in place to adapt to the increase in temperature, but it has mostly been ignored, or not taken seriously enough. Last year was hot too, it was impossible to tend to food growing during what us considered work hours, so we adapted, we had to, or everything would have just died.

This year feels worse. We also are increasingly concerned.

Perhaps it’s time we change the way we work.

We have always heard about people from the global majority, overseas, who start their day at the crack of dawn, work, come back home and have the rest of the day to rest, spend time with people they love, and enjoy nature around them, whether that’s the beach or their garden. Is the UK prepared to adopt these practises, just like what has happened this Summer, which has just started? Are we ready to look ahead, plan ahead, and start making plans now? Perhaps finally, we will also achieve some sort of work/life balance, something most of us are craving for (if we don’t melt in the heat first, that is).

And what about what we plant? Do we need to adjust our crops to those which are more drought tolerant? With the AI centres becoming a new norm, water being heavily used, if we can’t stop these things from happening, how about preparing before it is too late?

It is truly concerining, but what we need to do is becoming proactive, rather than reactive. Water is a bounty, we are able to cool ourselves with it, quench our thirst with it, water our fruit and veg plants with it, and one of the daily tasks during this weather for a grower is to at least water plants. So many people have come to us to say their plants have died. We have sent over 100 plants to homes, gardens and allotments, because plants have not survived the change in weather.

There is a lot to do, if we can focus on what’s important, we can achieve so much. If you’re someone who can make changes happen, contact us so we can talk about the next steps. Let’s do our bit, because everything counts.