Food insecurity has become the standard for many households in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, distribution channels for staple food items will be faced with minimal disruptions, as there is limited interpersonal contact involved. This effectively means that, unless there is a global recession, stocks will be replenished in a timely manner. Unlike the food market, however, civilians have taken the pandemic far less calmly, and with hoarders stockpiling both perishable and long shelf life foods in their pantries, nutrition has been added to the stressors of life under lockdown. While this situation is indicative of our inability to function as communities during a crisis, it is also shining the spotlight on our resourcefulness and flexibility, as many people have turned to growing their own vegetables and herbs in view of the food scarcity. 

Household gardening became increasingly popular during the past few years amid concerns for residential food waste and sustainability; agricultural technology companies even caught on to the fact and launched products like the indoors greenhouse, which allowed people to plant and care for their own greens even in cramped apartments. The coronavirus pandemic provided its own urgent perspective: panic buying and the burgeoning unemployment crisis are causing many to revisit the idea of growing their own food, this time as one of the few viable substitutes for the empty grocery store shelves. To reconcile for the lack of technical know-how, many educational institutions have made their gardening and agriculture resources available to the public; Oregon State University, for instance, will be offering its online course on vegetable growing for free throughout April.

Understandably, not everyone has access to a yard or a balcony large enough to fit a vegetable garden. Nevertheless, plant growth is a resilient process, and there are methods that can produce results even in a tight urban setting.

If you are an aspiring gardener held back by the lack of space in your house, using vegetable cuttings might be your best option. The inedible parts of many vegetables and fruits can be used to regrow them; this includes scraps like carrot tops, onion and bok choy bottoms, avocado cores, and garlic cloves. The greatest advantage of this technique lies in its simplicity - regrowing some of these plants requires nothing more than tap water and sunlight. For example, you can make leek, onion, or scallion greens sprout back by placing them in water , giving them access to sunlight, and changing the water every day. Other cuttings, such as celery and cabbage, need to sit in a water container and then be replanted in a pot when their roots start developing. Once harvested, the remains can be composted or regrown from scratch, effectively tackling the problems of food reliance and household food waste at the same time. Even if a batch surpasses your expectations, you can divide the surplus among your neighbors, and do your part in keeping the members of your community fed. 

That being said, plant care can be challenging, especially for amateur gardeners. First of all, it demands patience and time. It can be argued that the quarantine has given us generous amounts of either, but that is untrue for essential workers and healthcare professionals who are now being overworked more than ever. Furthermore, growing vegetables at home requires you to have a home of your own to begin with, as well as the ability to perform the physical labor involved in gardening; and although most of us take these preconditions for granted, that is not the case for those members of our communities who are homeless, elderly, chronically ill or disabled. If anything, taking these demographics into consideration highlights the severity of being reliant on grocery stores and restaurants for food during a pandemic, especially since these groups are highly susceptible to COVID-19.

In times like these, many people turn to community gardens in their area to help vulnerable residents meet their food needs. Even with mandatory social distancing or lockdowns in effect, multiple community gardens are still trying to support their neighborhoods, and gardening associations such as Capital Growth have already published instructions on managing a community garden while following the necessary sanitary precautions. Community gardens play a great part in mutual aid in countries where they are customary, and their significance can be traced back to World World I, when USA citizens grew backyard “war gardens” to combat food and seed shortages. 

A banner hangs loosely from a balcony; it reads: "the romanticization of the quarantine is a class privilege". That is, to an extent, true: not all of us can afford to work from home, to find meaning in the emptiness of our days, or worse - to quarantine at all. But seeing individuals bring the patience of food production down to the small scale of their homes, create community gardens, and find ways to organize with their neighbors even during mandatory physical distancing, one can't help but wonder whether this lockdown will be an accidental lesson in solidarity - a lesson from which we can learn how to practice solidarity, if not how to grow our own vegetables.

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