Why Grow Your Own Food
Growing our own food in our home gardens is, I feel, so very important. It contributes not only to our physical well-being, through the various tasks associated with working with our hands and bodies, but also to the health of our families. It provides us with a true connection to nature and the earth. It also fills us with a feeling of empowerment and self reliance as we ensure for ourselves the supply of a basic necessity - our food.
The quality of our food which we produce in our home garden is far superior to anything that is available in the supermarket. It is superior in both taste and nutritional value. Because so much of our commercially grown food comes from faraway places, the fruits and vegetable varieties are selected for their ability to hold up to machine picking and packing as well as long-distance shipping and cold storage so that they look good when they finally get to the supermarket. It is true that everything in the store looks very similar, uniform and visually appealing but the taste leaves much to be desired and has considerably less nutritional value than their homegrown equivalent.
I learned this taste difference a few years back. I had never been fond of tomatoes. I liked things made from tomatoes like marinara and ketchup but as for the actual fruit - GROSS!!! I didn't like the texture OR the taste. Usually the tomatoes were store bought and although they looked pretty on the outside, they were juice-less and had very little taste. I would always hear people saying that those little cherry tomatoes were like candy, tossing whole handfuls into their mouths - again gross! Once I began getting serious about growing some of our food, I decided to give tomatoes a try. They are after all, the "gateway drug" of the gardening world.
So I planted a few different varieties and nurtured them along. I was amazed how fast they grew. They quickly outgrew their flimsy "tomato cages" and began toppling over, lying on the ground under the strain of their fruit laden branches. I tried to prop them up as best as I could, remembering that I had read somewhere that it was best to keep the fruits off the ground in order to avoid pests and other diseases.
Once these ruby red gems were ready to pick, I still proceeded with caution. I hadn't forgotten that tasteless, juice less experience from the past. I masked the tomatoes under balsamic vinegar and basil or mashed them into a sauce with various spices. I was beginning to notice something though. The homegrown tomatoes that I was cutting into were actually red on the inside, not light pink.
Unlike the store bought, conventionally grown tomatoes that looked fine on the outside but were clearly picked prematurely and therefore hadn't developed their natural sugars, these babies were ripe through and through. Long story short, one day I decided to brave it and try one of our homegrown tomatoes straight off the vine. The taste was incredible! A burst of summer exploded in my mouth, juicy and sweet, with a hint of citrus. Now, each year I look forward to growing more and more varieties and at summers end, we preserve the bounty to enjoy through the dark cold days of winter (although I try to keep at least a couple of smaller tomato plants going in the greenhouse all year).
Another great benefit of growing your own food is the avoidance of synthetic pesticides and their residues. Large, corporate growers use a variety of pesticides to protect the quality of their crops. In certain reports, some types of produce contain as many as 10 different residues. Check out the
Dirty Dozen to see which foods are the most heavily bombarded with these carcinogenic chemicals.
The home vegetable gardener can easily grow incredible produce without the use of these harmful pesticides or synthetic fertilizers. We are able to use organic or semi organic materials and methods with great results, thus reducing or even eliminating these toxins from our food. In addition, we can choose to grow from literally thousands of both common and/or heirloom varieties that we never see in the grocery stores. That is because in "big agribusiness", varieties are selected for their toughness in shipping and ease of mechanical harvesting rather than taste.
Finally, economy is an important reason to produce and preserve food at home. As we have all noticed in the supermarket, produce is expensive, especially those items grown organically. Vegetables are expensive because they are labor-intensive to produce and often these corporate grown veggies are often tasteless and downright unappealing because of the result of modern agricultural practices.
Whether we are on a strictly plant-based diet or simply want to introduce more vegetables into our daily meals, many times, buying "good" organic produce is sometimes simply out of the budget. Growing your own fresh produce can be done at a mere percentage of the cost of purchasing similar items at the supermarket. If we also choose to preserve our own food in order to have a reserve of healthful food during lean times we can further stretch the family budget.
I have listed several reasons why I think it is important to grow your own vegetables. Doing so is less expensive. It will improve your health and the vegetables you grow will be tastier and have far more nutrients than anything that you can find at the supermarket. Of course there are many more reasons, and whatever they might be, I want to encourage you to get out in the garden, roll up your sleeves and
sink your hands into the soil. Perhaps you might stick a few tomatoes (and any other vegetables that you love or want to try) in the ground and begin your journey towards growing more economical, nutritious, and safe food. With minimal effort, you will be reconnecting with nature and continuing a heritage that will enhance your life.
One final note: I have added a Feedburner app to the blog. You can now sign up using your email address so that whenever a new post is published it will appear in your email inbox. It's really quite cool, I think. You can find it in the top right hand corner of the page.
Once again, thanks for reading and happy gardening.
