7 reasons to grow your own fruit and vegetables
A diverse vegetable garden bed - kohlrabi, tomatoes, beans, peas, beetroot, pumpkin
1. Flavour. There’s nothing quite like the incredible flavour of home-grown fruit and vegetables. You can pick it when it’s ripe and bursting with freshness. Your cooking just tastes so much better - and the flavour just explodes in your mouth.
2. Nutrient-packed fruit and veggies. Studies have shown that organically grown food is much more nutrient dense than their industrially farmed counterparts. They have more much-needed vitamins and minerals than vegetables and fruit grown with synthetic fertilisers, which are typically picked before they are ripe so that they ‘travel better’. You can ensure that your backyard garden has highly nourished soil (compost, compost teas, worm castings etc), which means more nourishment for the plants and, ultimately, our bodies.
Plums picked fresh from the tree
3. Healthier food. Industrially farmed fruit and vegetables not only use synthetic fertilisers but also herbicides, insecticides, miticides, etc. Many recent studies have shown how harmful these are, even in very low concentrations, to the human biome (essentially gut health) with consequent impact on the body’s immune system. Growing your own (or buying organic) avoids consuming these chemicals
4. Better health. Tilling the soil, planting, weeding, watering and harvesting gets you outdoors, breathing fresh air and burning a few calories while you’re at it. It’s also a great way to relax and to destress.
“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.”
Garlic with all its flavour and goodness - harvested and dried before storing for the winter months ahead
5. Lower environmental impact. There is a significant reduction in the use of fossil fuels (and hence carbon pollution) associated with home grown food compared to store purchased food - which has likely been trucked across the country or even transported internationally. In addition, growing food without artificial fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides is not only healthier but cuts down on air and water pollution
6. Helping the bee and other beneficial insect population. When you grow a wide variety of poison free vegetables, you are helping the bee and other beneficial insect population. In most places around the globe, we have seen the bee population decline significantly. Bees pollinate around one third of our food sources – so the more diverse and continual pollen available from a vegetable garden makes for healthier bees.
Vegetable and fruit tree flowers provide a great environment for bees and other beneficial insects
7. Fun and enjoyment. Tending a garden is a lot of fun and provides a great deal of enjoyment for the whole family – children just love to be involved. What’s not to like about watching your garden bloom into beautiful produce? It certainly seems incredible to watch
So lots of good reasons to grow your own fruit and vegetables. If you are unable to grow your own fruit and / or vegetables (due to space or other issues) then, as a minimum, purchase certified organic produce - which has many of the advantages of home grown produce.
“The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.”