Gardening, plants and food growing

Partly it's a reaction to concrete. If your view is the wall of the next building, a balcony of herbs or a few pots of orchids is the only green you see all day, and watering them after work is oddly calming. In Vietnam there's a practical motive as well: plenty of families grow morning glory or chillies in foam boxes on the roof because they don't trust the pesticide levels in market vegetables. I do think schools should teach it, though as a small hands-on activity, not another examined subject. A child who has waited six weeks for a tomato understands where food comes from in a way no diagram can deliver, and learns a bit of patience along the way. It's also a rare lesson where the restless children often shine. The objection is that the curriculum is already overloaded, which is true, and a neglected school garden full of dead seedlings teaches nothing. So it only works if a teacher genuinely cares about it. As for the future, I expect more people to grow some of their food but very few to grow most of it. Rooftop gardens and compact hydroponic kits are getting cheaper, and worries about food safety aren't going away. Yet a balcony yields a salad, not a diet. Land and time are precisely what city dwellers lack, so home growing will stay a supplement and a hobby, while the real work remains with farmers.