Monty Don Quotes

From my earliest memories, I loved the farm. My grandfather was a charter subscriber to Rodale's Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine and had a huge, well kept garden with an octagonal chicken house in the corner.

It's become more readily apparent that we need to be growing our own food and growing more things organically.

Garden as though you will live forever.

I thought I'd love to be a gardener because I grew up with a vegetable garden and I love being close to the Earth and growing things. At my home in L.A., I have a great garden and I grow all kinds of things. I even have a worm farm! The worms help create organic compost out of kitchen scraps.

We can move water easily with plastic pipes. We can move shade around with nursery cloth like a tinker toy for animals and plants. Yet we have developed this necessity to grow food with chemical fertiliser because we have forgotten the magic of manure.

That's a big goal of mine, to try and grow as much of my own food as possible.

Bring diversity back to agriculture. That's what made it work in the first place.

Healthy, sustainable food production methods give us food that is nutritionally better and with fewer pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones.

I'm a farmer now, and it's fantastic. My goal is to be totally self-sufficient and grow everything that I eat. There's something about earning your dinner that's cool.

I'm not a Luddite, but I'm outside more than I'm on my computer. We have a micro-farm - it's a step up from a garden. We have a pretty extensive vineyard. We grow about 60 percent of our own food, make our own wine, have chickens for eggs.

There is also a marked global trend towards sustainable agriculture, building on traditional methods which use fewer chemical inputs, carefully manage soil and water resources, and work hand-in-hand with nature.

I find it so exciting to grow your own food.

Let's get government support for farmers to make the transition to organic.

Wherever you have a plot of land, however small, plant a garden. Staying close to the soil is good for the soul.

An almost forgotten means of economic self-reliance is the home production of food. We are too accustomed to going to stores and purchasing what we need.

We've gotten so far away from our food source. It's been hijacked from us. But if you get soil, plant something in it and water it, you can feed yourself. It's that simple.

The winter period between September and March in this country, when land sits fallow and is subject to topsoil loss, we could be enriching the soil and growing all the biomass we need to replace imported gasoline.

The more we pour the big machines, the fuel, the pesticides, the herbicides, the fertilizer and chemicals into farming, the more we knock out the mechanism that made it all work in the first place.

Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.

Keep the soil healthy and the bad seed won't grow.

So organic farming practices are something that, to me, are interlinked with the idea of using biodiesel.

Conventional agriculture has never succeeded in feeding the world, and it's never produced anything good to eat. For the future, we need to look toward alternatives.

Maybe we need to re-engage our smart, energetic youth around the world to be farmers and find fresh, green technologies that will feed the world more fresh greens.

I have fruit trees. Cows for fresh milk, yoghurt. My own wheat. I'm basically self-sufficient.

I grow the vegetables my family eats. I grow enough, and we seldom buy from the market.