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Sometimes, the sheer enormity of the problems in the world can make you feel that your efforts to help out are a bit trifling. How can small changes on an individual level possibly make a dent? Michael Pollan, journalist, author, and localvore, takes this mindset to task in a recent article that argues that little steps, individual actions and yes, even changing your light bulbs, really can save the world. Pollan maintains that one of the “most powerful things an individual can do” is plant a garden. He admits that it sounds pretty trivial, but says that it’s actually the key to “reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.”
I can vouch for this: container gardening changed the entire way I look at food, food production and my part in the whole system. It didn’t happen overnight of course. Just like my tomato plants, my concept of gardening took a while to flower. I started out small – just a few herbs, like basil, parsley and cilantro. I felt like an abject failure for a while because my coriander plants yielded nothing but a few spindly stems and then promptly bolted in about a month. Why did my plant look nothing like the lavish bunches of cilantro I see at the grocery store? It was maddening. Undeterred, I went bigger and gave lettuce, onions, tomatoes and jalapeno peppers a go.
Little by little, my “separateness” from the food I eat became smaller. I witnessed the entire process – seed to plant to flower to food to table – right there in front of me. Embarrassingly enough, until I actually grew veggies, I didn’t realize how different they actually look compared to the more processed versions available in stores. I had a vague idea of how peppers come to fruition, but now, I get to check in on the whole process as I leave my apartment each morning for work. And I still can’t quite believe how much lettuce six small plants can produce. “I don’t think we have to buy any lettuce until October,” Chris, my significant other, said to me last week, almost giddily.
I recently went to a free container gardening workshop put on by a Portland organization called Growing Gardens. There, I learned how to fertilize the soil, what times of the year are best to plant different veggies, and just how much food one can yield from very small spaces. During the workshop, the teacher mentioned that a local restaurant called Rocket grows the majority of their veggies on the roof of their space using a 
range of containers, including kiddie pools. That absolutely threw me for a loop. If a container garden system can provide a restaurant with enough food to feed hundreds of stomachs each week, then surely I can feed my two-person household with some dirt, a few planters, and a little bit of know-how.
While I’m not quite at the level where I can forgo trips to the grocery store, I envision a summer when all the veggies I eat come from my backyard. Container gardening definitely increased my sense of self-sufficiency and, at the same time, my concept of integration with the natural rhythms of life. None of this is groundbreaking, and it certainly won’t be responsible for saving the world. I can tell you though that my little corner of the world is different. There are thousands of container gardens just like mine dotting the city of Portland and millions across the country. All of those gardeners’ little corners of the world are better for it. Pollan says, “The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices.” Like a virus, or just a really good pop song, making better “little everyday choices” can stick with you and spread, transforming “The Big Problem” into a “Large But Not Intimidating Issue That Can Be Fixed.”
