Lately I have been thinking about why growing your own food is good for you. So over the last few weeks I came up with this list in no specific order of importance;- Children learn about the cycle of life
- It is relaxing working in the food garden, especially with music
- Exercises your body regularly
- Reduces food miles
- Teaches important skills for the future
- Helps combat climate change by sequestering carbon
- The food is tasty and nutritious
- Uses less water than normal agriculture methods
- Fun watching plants grow each day
- Keeps you in touch with the seasons and the way nature works
- Provides cheap food
- Easy to maintain
- Better variety of foods than one would normally buy
- In season food tastes better
- No packaging other than what nature intended
- No refrigeration required for most foods, just keeps on the plant until required
- Great talking point with friends
- Food gardens attract wonderful insects (and some not so wonderful ones)
- You get to find out where real food comes from
- There are beautiful flowers on most food plants
- Left over plants get recycled into compost as nature intended
- There is no waste by-products
- It delays Peak Oil by not requiring any fossil fuel to make
- You can pass on your food growing skills to others
- The joy of spending time in the food garden with family
- Your own food is healthy
- Excess food can be swapped with other food gardeners
- You can grow good not readily available in supermarkets
- It is all grown with human power!
- You don’t need advertising to convince you to buy or use your own food
- Saving seeds from the previous harvest is simple
- You can preserve excess for the off season
I don’t think that this list is comprehensive, but it kept me thinking for the entire week! Have fun food gardening.
So, why don’t governments realise it and stop penalising those of us who grow our food by confining us to ridiculous water restrictions. I read the other day that non-food-growing people should add 5,000 litres / day to their water consumption figure because that is what is used by market gardeners!! It therefore is very water-wise to grow your own and must be acknowledged before I get a fine for watering my seeds and some baby seedlings daily.
Even fussy eater kids are more likely to eat food they’ve watched grow and had a hand in growing. It’s also enormously satisfying to watch kids picking veggies and stuffing them in their mouths.
I agree with both of you entirely. If I didn’t have a rainwater tank to depend on, my seedlings would have been dead ages ago. Growing our own food will soon be a necessity, as some families are pushed to the wall financially due to rising commodity costs.
Also Ben, my youngest loves showing visitors all the herbs and giving each one of them a taste test. He gets very offended when they refuse. Nasturtiums are his favourite taste test, and he like to see peoples faces when they eat it for the first time! Cheeky little boy.