Growing your own vegetables – Dilemma or Opportunity?
These days more and more people are choosing to live a healthier lifestyle. They are adopting healthier habits such as exercising, doing yoga, quitting drinking and smoking, and eating healthy food. Now, however, healthy food can sometimes be challenging to find as we are in the age of science and even food can be genetically modified!
Have you ever tried making the choice to “eat healthier,” and then enthusiastically planning out your whole week’s menu, filled with healthy options with dishes made up mainly of carefully selected vegetables? Then, with that same enthusiasm, you would go to the supermarket only to be faced with choices of either ridiculously expensive organic fare or scrumptious-looking produce. It makes you think twice if those vegetables are naturally lush or have been genetically modified.
It can be such a letdown. At that moment, your eyes shift to the more familiar, more tempting, tastier, and definitely unhealthier food, which is a lot easier to choose. Then there goes your healthy lifestyle, out the window.
So what do you do? Do you stick to your old unhealthy habits? Do you give up and just go on eating whatever food you had been eating for the past years? Or do you stick to your choice of living healthy, even though it isn’t always the easiest choice?
Growing your own vegetables – The way to be healthy
Finding the best vegetables to complete your diet does not have to be difficult. Have you ever considered growing your own vegetables? Having your own backyard and growing your own produce has a lot of benefits, aside from the obvious benefit of knowing where your vegetables are coming from and knowing for sure that they are a hundred percent natural.
Let us talk about the many benefits of growing your own vegetables in your very own garden and maybe at the end of this article, you would be racing to the mall to buy tools for gardening!
Nothing can beat the feeling of growing your own vegetables. You can do it yourself in the traditional way or by using modern gardening products, it’s up to you. Both are great when it comes to growing healthy plants.
Benefits to Oneself
- First off, you would save a lot of money if you grow vegetables in your own backyard. If you do your research, you could find out what vegetables would grow and flourish in your garden based on the climate and on the condition of the soil in your backyard. Then you may start planting the vegetables of your choice and all you have to do is wait until they are ripe for the picking! Most vegetable seeds that you can buy online come with guides on how to grow them anyway.
- Another benefit of growing your own vegetables is being able to monitor the growth of your harvest and the amount of pesticide used to keep them healthy. Knowing this will give you the comfort of knowing that when you serve up and consume these greens, you are sure that they are not packed with chemicals.
- Also, the vitamin content of vegetables is at its highest when they are prepared and eaten straight from the garden rather than when they have been harvested, exposed to the elements, and transported to different markets and grocery stores.
- Being able to grow vegetables of your choice would definitely encourage you to eat more of them. You would enjoy these goods more and if you have gotten the hang of planting and harvesting, you can expand your choices by growing more varieties!
- You never know, gardening may bring out new interests you never knew you had. It can also bring out your creative side by using different landscaping techniques in your gardening and by planting different kinds of vegetables.
Benefits to our Family
In line with this, since you have chosen to eat healthier food, you may have also made the choice to have a healthier lifestyle, and growing your own vegetables gives you that too! Gardening is a physical activity you could do on your own or make into a family affair with your spouse or children. Planting, harvesting and everything in between are all activities which you can chalk up to part of your daily exercise routine.
Growing vegetables with your children can also provide them with vast learning experiences, from learning how things grow to learn the names of different vegetables and their importance to our bodies. It can also give you and your family a new appreciation for nature and bring a sense of closeness when sharing a fun and refreshing activity outdoors.
Benefits to the Environment
Going on a larger scale, growing your own vegetables is also very beneficial to the environment. Since you are using fewer pesticides to grow your own crops, it means that there are fewer contaminants in the environment. You can also use your natural wastes such as peels to fertilize the soil to make your harvest even more bountiful and lessen your waste.
Plan your own garden, today
These are only a few of the reasons why it is beneficial to grow your own vegetables from home. There are lots more benefits out there, which is why people are starting to take notice of this healthy and stimulating hobby. All you have to do is make that choice and envision the kind of garden you want and the kind of vegetables which you would enjoy having at your own table. Good luck!
