8 Reasons to Grow Your Own Food

If you’ve never planted, raised and harvested your own food before, be warned. There’s a bit of a learning curve. However, if you have grown veggies, fruit or herbs, you’ll know that it is worth every bit of effort you put into it. There are tons of benefits to growing your own food.Improve your diet, save money, take control of what goes in your body, exercise so that body stays looking and feeling great, be more aware of your food intake, be environmentally friendly, appreciate your vegetables and learn a whole new hobby. Exciting? You bet. Here’s more info on this below…

Eat more healthily

Grow food, cook it, eat it. This is simple food at it’s best. Many vegetable garden owners find themselves incorporating more and more of their own produce into their dishes, and develop a taste for things they might never have eaten before. When you produce ingredients with love and care, you can’t help but want to turn it into something delicious. Growing something yourself means the food is tastier, unlike the mass-produced food in the supermarket.

Save money on food

Growing your own food saves you money! Okay, you may not save money on your first year because there are a lot of initial costs involved with developing a new vegetable garden—you can learn more about the costs associated with establishing a new garden here. After a few seasons, however, you’ll be saving money, and reducing waste associated with packaging as well as food waste.

Be in control of what you eat

Want to eat more veggies? Growing them is a great way to start. Try growing things that aren’t your favorite, but that you’re ambivalent about. This is a good way to acclimate yourself to eating things you might not otherwise. You can get in control of your eating habits by forcing yourself to eat veggies. You put the time and effort into growing them, after all, why wouldn’t you eat them? Try growing unusual veggies like pumpkins, rutabagas, sunchokes and romanesco broccoli! They’re fun to look at and you’ll learn new dishes by cooking them.

Do exercise outdoors

Starting this new hobby will not only get more veggies in your life, you’ll also get out of the house and moving your body a lot more. From carrying soil and materials to squatting down and picking out weeds, vegetable gardening is almost a full-body workout! You’ll just have to get some abs exercises in and you’ll be getting fit in no time.

Increase your food awareness

How much thought do you put into your daily meals? So many of us shop and eat kind of mindlessly, because our routines dictate it. Growing your own food can break you out of this kind of rut by changing your relationship with food. When you grow something from seed to fruit, you will have a newfound appreciation for veggies which will make you more aware of how you prepare them.

Help the environment

When you grow your own food and eat it, you reduce the amount of waste you produce by buying packaged fruit and veggies in the shops. There is a lot of plastic that we buy but ultimately don’t need. Help the environment a bit by being self-sufficient about some of your food, and growing it. If you grow local specialty plants, you’ll support the wildlife in your area too, which is a double bonus! Plus, if you grow instead of buy, think about all the fuel saved by not transporting that fruit and veg around the globe.

Appreciate veggies more

This is especially applicable to people with small children. Vegetables are sometimes a sticking point when it comes to meal times, especially if we are not particularly enthusiastic about them ourselves. But there’s a certain fascination that comes with growing something from nothing. Kids are much happier to eat veggies they had an active part in growing than those that just appeared from the shops.

Learn about new things

Learning a new hobby is always fun. Could gardening be your next new hobby? If you know absolutely nothing about gardening, you might want to contact a gardener about a re-design before you begin. They can give you some advice on how to start. If not, find some information online and start yourself! Surprise yourself with your curiosity and drive to grow your own food

*This is a collaborative post.