5 Reasons Why You Should Start a Vegetable Patch
Growing your own vegetables to many people sounds like something of the past. Why would you go through all that trouble of starting and maintaining a vegetable patch when you can just go around the corner to buy your vegetables at Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods (if you like them organic)? Home gardening has actually started gaining in popularity again in the last few years, for a number of good reasons. Working on your own little vegetable patch can provide you some healthy exercise, give your mind some rest after a long day at work and supply healthy, delicious vegetables to cook some amazing food with.
Fresh, Delicious, Organic Veggies
There’s no better way of getting the best quality, freshest and most delicious vegetables (and herbs) than to grow them yourself. Only by growing your own vegetables you can know for sure that no chemical fertilizers were used and that they were grown in an environmentally friendly way. Once you’ve had a taste of your own vegetables, you’ll likely never want to go back to supermarket veggies. The taste of fresh, homegrown, non-GMO vegetables is just a world apart. Don’t forget to plants some fresh herbs. Cooking with fresh herbs is great and much cheaper if you grow them yourself than if you’d buy them at the supermarket.
Growing your own veggies will likely also improve your diet since you’ll be much more likely to cook with fresh vegetables and herbs when you have them available in your garden.
Cheaper Veggies
After the initial investment in soil, seeds, and gardening tools has been recovered, growing your own vegetables will be more cost-effective than buying them at the supermarket. Especially if you normally buy organic vegetables, which you now will be growing yourself. Of course, if you don’t like gardening and you count your time spent in the garden as lost time, you probably won’t really find it to be that cost-effective.
Healthy Exercise
While you probably wouldn’t think of gardening as exercise, growing vegetables is actually more physically demanding than you’d think. Spending time in your garden will also help you get more sun exposure, which will help you top up your body’s vitamin D supply. Make sure that you apply sunscreen though if you are staying outside for a while, especially if you are gardening during midday.
Calm Your Mind
After a hard, stressful day at work, the last thing you need to calm your mind is to spend the night in front of the television. Instead, you can tend to your vegetable patch, which will help relax your mind. Spending time outdoors has been show to be beneficial for your mental health, helping stave off depression and increasing your overall happiness.
Family Activity
If you have kids, getting them to help you out with growing vegetables is a great way of spending some quality time with them and teaching them about the importance of nature and spending time outdoors. Growing vegetables can be a fun and rewarding family activity. It can also help to get your kids to eat more veggies.
Originally posted 2014-01-29 17:35:47.