15 Reasons why you Should Start to Grow your own Food
Vegetable gardening and grow your own food has become very popular with all sorts of different people. They have seen how very easy, cheap, and fun it is to grow at least a few vegetables even if they don’t have a large garden.
If you haven’t yet jumped on the bandwagon here are ten good reasons why you should get into vegetable gardening and start to grow your own food vegetables right now.
1. Healthy Food
Eating a wide range of fresh vegetables adds fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants to your diet. It is thought that fresh ingredients are better than pills because natural plant phytochemicals found in fresh veg helps the body fight disease.
2. Gardening for Physical Exercise
Vegetable gardening is wonderful for toning and tightening flabby muscles. It provides really beneficial all-around exercise for the body, and the food you produce as a result if low in calories. Who needs a gym when you’ve got a kitchen garden.
3. Saving Money
If you grow seasonal crops that are expensive to buy at the supermarket, such as asparagus, artichokes, chicory, salads, and soft fruit, you can certainly save yourself some money.
4. Taste
The freshest vegetables always seem to taste the best. And if you’re serious about food then fresh means not coming from a plastic bag full of gas to prolong its shelf life. Nor does it mean pre-prepared veg that has lost most of its flavor or has dried up.
5. Convenience
What can be more handy or convenient than having a larder of fresh produce ready for you to collect when you want it right outside your back door.
6. Great Lifestyle
Vegetable gardening in your own garden at home or on an allotment is something that the whole family can do together at weekends or on summer evenings. What better way to get the kids involved than to let them grow some radish or lettuce from seed.
7. Environment
Growing your own food also helps the environment, particularly if you grow vegetables food organically. It helps cut down food miles and the use of fossil fuels. If you make recycle waste into the compost it reduces the amount of rubbish that goes into landfills.
8. Local Produce
Fresh local produce is currently the big buzz. And the food you grow in your own kitchen garden doesn’t come more local or fresh. You can also grow specialty foods, such as Thai basil or lemon mint, that you might not be able to source locally.
9. Seasonality
Because we’ve got used to eating certain vegetables and fruits all year round, we sometimes forget that food is usually best when it is in season. What can be better than picking your own tomatoes straight from the vine or gathering sun-ripened strawberries fresh from the plant, or popping peas from the pod? Supermarkets just cannot compete.
10. Satisfaction
There is something immensely satisfying about growing your own food. You feel that all the preparation, planning, tending, nurturing, and hoping things turn out okay are more than worth the effort when you harvest your first lettuce or broad beans of the season and prepare them for the table.
These are ten very good reasons why you should start vegetable gardening right now. You may be able to think of a few more. But before you get started you need to do a little thinking about what you want out of your kitchen garden, even if it’s only a few pots on your balcony or tubs on the patio.
After all, both your time and your garden space are valuable and you can’t take a ‘leave it all to nature’ approach to vegetable gardening. Digging a hole and bunging a few plants it won’t do. It’s much more hands-on than that. Veg growing means an on-going and regular commitment and some attention to detail. But you don’t need to become a slave to your veg plot. Get some key points right at the beginning and you only need to spend time and effort on the things that count most to produce real results.
It’s very easy to get a bit carried away and take on more than you can manage. The result will be poor vegetable crops, wasted time, and disappointment. So my top tip for starting vegetable gardening is that it’s far better to limit what you grow but grow it very well than to try to grow a lot of different stuff and fail.
Spurred by the increasing passion for healthy, locally grown food, many grow-it-yourself vegetable gardeners opt for organic techniques that support nutrition, environmental sustainability, and social good.
Having the confidence to give organic gardening a try just takes education. People think it’s difficult to grow organically, but it’s not. They also assume they’ll be overrun by insects, but that’s not the case. There are five fundamental principles to encourage more gardeners to grow organic.
11. Feed Your Soil And It Will Feed You
Adding organic matter and compost to garden soil improves drainage, boosts water-holding capabilities, adds nutrients, feeds the soil’s microorganisms, and enhances its health and structure. The improved soil increases harvest without the use of synthetic fertilizers.
12. Use Newspaper To Weed Control
Place non-glossy newspaper under mulch for weed control. The paper, which breaks down, helps keep weeds from germinating and eliminates the need for herbicides.
13. Go For Healthier Plants
Strive for healthier plants that are more tolerant to disease and stress. To grow healthier plants, select disease-resistant varieties, practice crop rotation, allow sufficient space for air movement between plants, and compost plant debris after harvest.
Read More: How to Start an Urban Garden Outside Your Home
14. Good Bugs Are Real Friends
Welcome “good” bugs that can diminish “bad” bugs. Not all insects are bad, but the key is identification.
15. Prolong Harvest Through Succession Planting
Additional harvests are accomplished by repeated showings of fast-maturing crops such as lettuces, greens, turnips, radishes, carrots, beans, squash, and tomatoes. Fall gardening with cool-weather vegetables such as onions, peas, lettuces, and greens also multiplies the overall yield.
Growing your own organic food is great exercise, a great hobby and it gets you outside. Besides, it’s probably the most nutritious food you can get.
