Matthew Appleby: Passionate Organic Vegan Gardening

The interest in vegan horticulture and gardening has expanded exponentially, as more people become aware of how typical methods of growing plants and crops involve the use of environmentally damaging synthetic chemicals and practices that harm our precious animal co-inhabitants. "I’m Matthew Appleby, I’m editor for 'Horticulture Week.' I first started about 20 years ago being a vegan. I realized this was quite a sort of doable way of living. What motivates most people to become vegan is because they care about animals. And they care about the environment. And they care about their health, and it’s a combination of those three. Vegan gardening is gardening without exploiting animals. So, it’s using homemade composts and fertilizers, rather than animal composts and animal-based fertilizers. It’s also gardening with wildlife in mind. So rather than exploiting animals or trying to attract animals, it’s leaving the animals to do their own thing on your plot. It’s also gardening for vegan health. So, I’m interested in growing what’s nutritionally right for a vegan. I make vegan compost just the same as anyone else is making compost. You can have your kitchen scraps, your grass cuttings, leaves, you can have any leftover vegetable matter, but you just don’t use anything that’s animal-based. So, you don’t use anything which is from a farmed animal and you wouldn’t chuck in your eggshells, and you wouldn’t chuck in meat anyway because it basically doesn’t compost well, and it attracts rodents. I don’t dig, and I think it’s really common in a lot of areas of gardening now, and non-vegan gardeners increasingly not digging. And that a lot of people see this as a really good idea because you don’t want to disturb the layers of the soil because you know you create erosion, you break up your beneficial animals’ homes. So, I plant covered crops. Hopefully they’ll break down and put some nitrogen back in the soil, get some organic matter back in the soil which will create quite a good sort of soil crumb." Our appreciation Matthew Appleby, for your dedication to assisting gardeners to attain healthy and ecologically-sound green spaces. May the Heavens forever bless you! We hope to see more of your work in the future. Best wishes for your noble prospective endeavors!