Growing your own veggies completely changes your relationship to health. It takes a lot of work to start a vegetable garden in your backyard. The typical household with a vegetable garden tends to have young children, as it’s a happy and exciting hobby for the whole family. Kids, especially, love to get involved with the gardening side of things. Even picky eaters are more likely to eat their greens when they’ve personally watched them grow. Even if you don’t have children, you’ll still notice positive transformations.
For a start, you’re more likely to pile more vegetables on your plate. There’s something joyful about preparing and cooking the produce that you’ve grown yourself. Comparatively, home-growers consume a lot more veggies than grocery shoppers. Additionally, you’ll save money on your food shopping bill. Small vegetable gardens may not make a big difference budget-wise, but you only need to grow a handful of vegetables to cut down on your supermarket spending.
However, the changes can also completely transform your household. There’s more to those tomato plants and beans than meets the eye.
You reshape the garden
Don’t assume that planting a few seeds in a row is going to be the beginning & end of your gardening journey. On the contrary, growing your own veggies encourages you to transform and redesign the garden to make the most of your plants. Depending on where you live, it might be a good idea to add protective barriers and layers to keep your vegetables safe from pests and bad weather. A greenhouse can be a fantastic addition to your garden. Greenhouses are especially useful if you live in a temperate climate that lacks sunshine, as they can help tomatoes, peppers, courgettes and other summer harvests to ripen. You also want a greenhouse to protect your plants throughout the colder months of the year, ensuring continuous access to fresh salad and vegetables. In climates prone to storms, heavy rain or strong winds, plantation shutters will keep your garden in tip-top condition.
If you’re concerned about insects eating your vegetables, planting some of your most vulnerable crops in raised beds can keep slugs, snails, caterpillars and other similar pests at bay.
You become plant smart
Growing vegetables teaches you a lot about Mother Nature’s goodness. For a start, amateur gardeners learn rapidly about companion planting, which leverages the deterring properties of one specific plant to protect the harvest of another. For instance, growing basil amongst your tomato crop will help ward off whitefly. Stinging nettle is a surprisingly popular choice among gardeners as it attracts butterflies, keeping them away from your precious lettuces! Nasturtiums are a favourite companion plant to beans as they attract aphids away from the food crop.
As you gain experience about gardening, you learn how to harness and utilise natural plant properties in your home. Lemon, for instance, can be juiced and used to clean your stainless steel appliances. Lemon also makes a delicious tea that can be fantastic against indigestion. You can pair it with grated ginger for best effects. The plants in your garden are full of surprises. Coriander, for example, can help aid digestion and even remove toxins from the body. For severe indigestion, peppermint helps relieve the discomfort from vomiting and stomach bloating. The more you learn about plants, the more you learn about ways of treating common complaints naturally.
You could even lose weight
How can growing your own vegetables help you lose weight? Eating fresh food that hasn’t been over-processed will help you get healthier. Indeed, as you eat more vegetables and home-cooked dinners, you’ll gradually consume fewer refined meals. Processed food is often high in additives and preservatives and may have lost many of its nutrients during preparation. Often, the more processed and junk food we eat, the more we crave it; it can be hard to break out of this unhealthy, vicious cycle. Natural, home-grown vegetables can be your saviour. Besides, it’s fair to say that the more you cook and eat home-grown, fresh vegetables, the less likely you are to want to snack between meals. In addition, vegetables can keep you feeling full for longer, compared to junk food!
You have more energy
Approximately 10% of Americans have a severe nutritional deficiency. Many more can experience mild symptoms of deficiency, which can be addressed with vitamin supplements. However, they don’t quite match the goodness of natural ingredients. The most common deficiencies in the US concern vitamin B6 which can be found in chickpeas and bananas. Iron deficiency is surprisingly prevalent among young children and women. However, eating home-grown spinach and broccoli can be enough to tackle it. Vitamin C can be found in many home-grown crops, from peppers to strawberries. Kale can be a fantastic substitute for people with lactose intolerance who also have a calcium deficiency. As you address the deficiency naturally, your body begins to feel healthier and more energetic.
You consider becoming self-sufficient
Growing your own vegetables is only the start of a long journey to self-sufficiency. For instance, you could choose to keep hens as well for the daily fresh eggs.
If you want to reduce your home & garden costs, install water butts to harvest rainwater and keep your mains water bills and consumption down. Be advised, you’ll need a specialist filter solution to be able to use rainwater inside your home.
Ultimately, the garden can convince you to take the first step toward a greener lifestyle. There are so many options available from this point onward. It’s up to you to decide whether you should install solar panels to produce your own energy, attempt to go plastic-free or endeavour to prepare all your own food from scratch.
As surprising as it sounds, growing your own veggies can completely transform your home, your lifestyle and your health. But one thing’s for sure; it will always be for the best!
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