Have you ever wondered why an apple picked straight from a tree tastes so much better than one sitting on a shelf in the supermarket? Have you ever wondered why more and more people seem obsessed with producing their own fruits and veggies? Have you ever wondered whether it’s worth the time and effort to start growing your own food? Don’t look further, cause here are 8 reasons that’ll make you finally want to start planting those tomatoes.
1. (Almost) bye waste !
2. Save money !
3. Food you grow is more nutritious.
4. Home-grown tastes better.
5. You know what you put in and on your food.
6. Gardening makes you healthier.
7. Gardening makes you happier.
8. New learning opportunities.
(Almost) bye waste !
By growing your own fruits and vegetables, you automatically cut down on fuel for heavy machinery and transportation. This is something often overlooked as we normally just see the end product on the shelves of our local supermarket, but it obviously has to get there somehow. Besides the reducement of chemicals and transportation, think about the amount of packaging you’ll avoid by growing crops yourself. For the actual food itself, as ‘The No-Waste Vegetable Cookbook’ covers, we miss out on lots of delicious parts of the fruits and vegetables we eat. Growing your own food will thus enable you to use the entire product from top to tail, zero waste on that one.
Save money !
With the cost of groceries jumping through the roof at the moment, growing your own food to save money might not be the worst idea. Like all financial investments, your return depends largely on what you grow and when you grow it. Teaching yourself what and how to grow at a specific time, will result in a more cost effective way than buying foods from your supermarket. Some foods that’ll offer significant savings by growing them yourself are tomatoes, leaf lettuce, beans, peppers, eggplants and cucumbers to name a few.
Food you grow is more nutritious.
Overall, households that grow their own fruits and vegetables consume up to 40% more of these crops per day than those who don’t. Not only does the increase in consumption lead to a more nutritious lifestyle, but the freshness of the products plays a big part too. Once harvested and cut off from the original source of nutrients, the produce starts losing moisture and essential nutrients. So what’s better than diving into your own little garden and harvesting your fruits and vegetables at peak ripeness, thus peak nutrition?
Home-grown tastes better.
When you create a healthy soil for your plants to grow in, it’ll automatically lead to a richer experience in taste.. Choosing the right plant for the right time, being able to harvest at the peak ripeness, and having full autonomy over what you put in and on your food, will only result in mouth-watering flavours.
You know what you put in and on your food.
Why do you think the fruits and vegetables you see in the supermarket look so perfect? That’s right, pesticides. By being the one in control, you can make sure that there are no harmful fertilisers and pesticides being used in the process of growing. Therefore it’s much easier for a home-gardener to grow their produce organically using natural ingredients like compost to enrich the soil.
Gardening makes you healthier.
First of all, the physical activity of gardening will not only provide you with the necessary exercise, but will normally bring you outside of your house too. So all that hard work in your garden will not only give you the fruits of your labour, but will provide you as well with the necessary Vitamin D. Science has proven many times that all that work you put in your garden will reduce heart diseases and strokes, improve your sleeping and will prevent chronic diseases through boosting your vitamin D levels.
Gardening makes you happier.
The satisfaction and happiness you get while ploughing through the dirt is no stranger to anyone. That natural high that you experience after a session in the garden is not merely satisfaction and sunshine though, but there’s a more scientific reasoning for that too. A mood-altering soil bacteria, named ‘Mycobacterium vaccae’, enters your bloodstream by running your hands through the soil. This feel-good bacteria will boost your serotonin, improve your mood, and has stress resilience and anti-anxiety properties.
New learning opportunities.
Through the current state of modern conveniences, it has become easier than ever to be disconnected from the food that’s on your plate. Gardening will help us to appreciate all the steps that go into growing the food that sustains us. While teaching us this, it’ll inevitably expand our consciousness too. So what better way to strengthen our relationship with Mother Earth than getting our hands ‘dirty’ in the garden? Not to mention the gratifying experience you’ll provide your kids with by teaching them how to grow their own food. You know how the saying goes : “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”
We hope that this post will give you the last push to finally start growing your own vegetables and food. Cause at the end of the day, we are what we eat, right?
Happy growing !
PS. Don’t go too far away because next week we’ll post a blog about ‘how to start your own garden’!
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