Growing our own food will soon become a necessity, argues Julia Stephenson

Rosie Boycott and the National Trust are my heroes this week. In her capacity as Chairman of London Food, Rosie is successfully encouraging large organisations such as British Waterways to turn over their unused land for food production, while the National Trust is creating up to 1000 allotments to encourage us to grow our own vegetables.

Unfortunately, my small patio currently yields a half dead Christmas tree, a surprisingly fecund lemon tree, the stump of a globe artichoke (I never would have planted this had I known how much space it would take to grow just one – and that was barely edible), as well as thyme, bay, rosemary and parsley. Bizarrely, my local supermarkets only sell herbs grown in Israel. Why, when we can grow them with such success in Sloane Square? The sooner Rosie Boycott sorts this sort of mess out the better.

Growing our own food will soon become a necessity. We take our food supply, (most of which comes from abroad) for granted. But this luxury depends on a house of cards balanced as precariously as that of the banking world. It is a disaster waiting to happen. Huge amounts of oil is needed to cultivate, fertilize, harvest, transport, process and package all our food and yet 33 of the 44 oil-producing countries are now in decline. An energy famine could easily lead to a food famine – without oil we’d starve. As the ultra-cautious International Energy Agency puts it:

`The threat to the world’s energy security, especially on oil and natural gas, will reach serious dimensions in the next ten years’.

This is why I’m keen to get my small patch working for me ASAP.

Although I have some way to go before self-sufficiency, I’ve started to get my soil into tip-top condition. I’m doing this with an astonishing range of compost bins that turn my household detritus into superb crumbly soil that my houseplants and lemon tree adore. Such is my enthusiasm these bins and wormeries are proliferating across my roof. My incamorato insists I’m turning into the Bernard Matthews of worm-farming.

Here Monty Don gives the low-down on how to make the perfect compost. It’s easier you think