Our Community Benefits from Urban Vegetable Gardening

Communities can benefit from urban vegetable gardening in several ways:

• First, vegetable gardening lessens food purchases, the grower just harvests ripe vegetables for family consumption.
• Second, consumption of garden produce increases nutritional intake since vegetables contain macro- and micro-nutrients essential to health.
• Third, vegetable gardening creates livelihood opportunities through sales of excess produce, seedlings and other gardening-related products like organic fertilizers, seminars, etc.
• Fourth, vegetable gardening on idle lots lessens maintenance costs and fire risks associated with tall grasses (talahib) during the dry season. Gardening requires constant weeding as unwanted plants and weeds pose competition for limited space and plant nutrients. 
• Fifth, vegetable gardening closes the food production and consumption cycle {food production -> consumption --> waste --> composting --> food production} through the use of compost as a gardening input.  Livelihood also come from the collection and sales of recyclable and reusable materials as a consequence of segregating organic household waste for composting.

Why not start a community vegetable garden on an idle lot?