Why It’s Important to Grow Your Own Food
/
You don't have to be a millionaire to enjoy fresh, flavorful, and nutritious food. Almost anyone can grow food in a container or on a small plot of land. You can have so much fun and flavor by substituting just one or two of your regular grocery store purchases with those that you've grown yourself. With that in mind, here are a few compelling reasons to start your own vegetable garden.
Your Food Will Be Fresher
You can't beat picking your own tomatoes at the peak of their ripeness when they're bursting with flavor and nutrition, and the same goes for plenty of other types of food as well. Grow your own food, and you can reap the benefits at the peak of ripeness no matter what you choose to grow. If you buy from a store, even the freshest items are going to have spent some time traveling to their destination, but this is not something you need to worry about when you grow your own produce.
You're in Control
Organic produce is more expensive at the grocery store because it costs more to grow commercially. Home gardeners who want to grow their own organic food can greatly benefit from using compost and manure as excellent soil conditioners that make it much easier for them to do so. Your crops can be kept pest-free by using organic fertilizers and pesticides. In other words, you can get excellent organic food for a fraction of the cost.
It's Cost-Effective
It is believed that growing your own food is more cost-effective due to the fact that it provides a harvest for several weeks or months at a time. You can get more than one bushel of tomatoes from one tomato plant this year than you can buy at the grocery store for the same price. Other foods in this category include zucchini, peppers, herbs, cucumber, beans, lettuce, and eggplant.
There Is A Broader Selection
For fruits and vegetables at the grocery store, you're limited to what they have available. There are literally thousands of options when you grow your own, however. Growing fun purple carrots for your kids or experimenting with a few smaller varieties in containers are all excellent options. When you grow your own food, the possibilities are endless. Every season, try something new. Around Christmas, why not grow dates so you can learn how to make devils on horseback using your own produce, and in the summer, what would you like at a barbecue or picnic? Decide and then grow it!
It's Better for the Environment
When you grow your own food, you reduce your environmental footprint because you don't have to transport it from the farm to the processing plant to the supermarket. Being kinder to the planet is something we all need to try to do more, so this is a great step in the right direction and could make quite a difference, especially if more and more people get involved in growing their own food.
