With the cost of living rising rapidly in almost every country around the world, many people may be wondering whether it is worth growing your own food at home. What are the advantages and what are the disadvantages?
Growing your own food is extremely rewarding provided that you have the space, time, and inclination to create a reasonably sized garden to produce your family’s food. The biggest advantage of growing your own food is the quality that you can produce at home and the cost. So let’s go through all of the upsides and downsides.
The Advantages Of Growing Your Own Food
The Quality
The main advantage of growing your own food is the high-quality produce that you can produce which cannot be measured in the food’s appearance. Generally, homegrown food such as tomatoes, lettuce, cabbages, etc…. may not look quite as perfect as the specimens you get at your local grocery store because there are some blemishes on the skin or holes in the leaves. However, the flavor that you get from these vegetables in many cases is far superior to anything that has been purchased.
The fruit and vegetable that is most noticeable is tomatoes and strawberries which are incredibly sweet when grown at home. However, it is also highly noticeable with things like peas, corn, and lettuce which is significantly sweeter and fresher than anything you can purchase from the supermarket. However, there are some vegetables that pretty much taste the same such as potatoes and pumpkins.
The Cost
the cost of growing your own vegetables can be extremely low and will save you a great deal of money provided that you grow most plants from seed and do not spend excessive amounts on beautifying your garden with lavish borders and other ornamental things.
You can pretty much start a vegetable garden with the things that you purchased from the supermarket in most cases because it is possible to grow plants in many cases from seeds within purchased fruit such as pumpkins, tomatoes, peas, corn, peppers, cucumbers, and melons. You can even use many of the seeds from your spice aisle such as coriander and fennel to produce plants.
However, I generally recommend that you do spend the time purchasing vegetable seeds as they don’t cost a lot of money and you will be able to get a really wide range of unusual varieties. To check out all the different seeds that you can purchase we recommend that you visit seeds now as they have a terrific range of different seeds that are available.
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Health Benefits
Having your own vegetable garden has several direct and indirect health benefits associated with it. The first thing is that generally you will be encouraged to increase your intake of healthy vegetables and fruit because much of the food is already in the garden ready to go.
Additionally, because you are spending time in the garden producing the food that you are eating your activity levels in many cases will increase significantly from what you currently do which is highly beneficial.
It Is A Highly Educational Experience For Your Children
If you have children in your house the experience of growing their own food is highly educational because many children have never had the experience of growing around food and have no understanding of where the food comes from.
Additionally, it is an excellent teaching tool for a range of different skills which includes mathematics for tallying up your harvest, planning crops and having a general knowledge about how food is produced.
What Are The Disadvantages Of Growing Your Own Food
Time
The biggest disadvantage and usually the biggest impediment to people growing their own food is the amount of time that they have to spare to tend to their own garden. As it is common for many households to have both parents working, many people are extremely time-poor and therefore simply lack the time to put in the effort required. In most cases, it will require an hour or two a week depending upon the time of year.
Additionally, at certain times of the year, you will need to also deal with a glut of food either by storing or processing it which is also quite time-consuming.
The space
Vegetable gardens take up a great deal of space in your backyard which many people may not have available.
Knowledge
The other key disadvantage is that growing your own food and making a really productive garden does require a certain degree of knowledge about how plants grow and when to plant them. So to become efficient at producing your own food you really do need to spend the time building up your knowledge.
Conclusion
I am personally an avid gardener and I believe that it is definitely worth growing your own food at home provided that you have the time and are willing to put in the effort. Having your own garden improves your lifestyle and gives you a lot of sense of satisfaction and a degree of self-sufficiency from the rest of the world which for many people I cannot put a price on. So where do you start with your garden at home?
Where To Start With Your Own Vegetable Garden At Home?
If you are starting out in a vegetable garden for the first time it is highly recommended you start small and use what you already have lying around at your house which could be pre-existing garden beds that perhaps have ornamental plants in them currently. Or if you are struggling for space then using containers or pots to start the plants going is highly recommended.
Gaining Knowledge
Developing your knowledge about the garden if you are a complete novice can be really challenging because there is a lot to learn when you first start out. However, there is one particular source of information that I think is by far and away the best that is available and is free to access. This is Charles Dowding’s YouTube channel which is dedicated to the growing of vegetables.
Charles is a professional market gardener and has been doing it for over 35 years. He has produced a range of books that you can purchase along with his YouTube channel which in my opinion is the best resource for getting a hands-on feel of what happens with your vegetables. Many of these videos focus on a specific vegetable and take it from planting seeds all the way through to harvesting and also provides many tips and tricks along the way. An example of one of his videos is provided below to get you started.
The other free resource that I would highly recommend that you utilize is a website called hdclump.com which contains a whole heap of gardening programs that you can work your way through to get inspired to grow your own food. On this site, you will see that there are 10 to 15 years of gardeners’ world programs along with other specialist gardening programs which are not as detailed as Charles Dowdings’ videos but nonetheless are really worth having a look at over time.
Selecting The Vegetables
When selecting the vegetables to grow in your own garden we highly recommend that you make a list of the vegetables that you buy regularly because there’s no point in growing things that you’re not going to eat or don’t already routinely eat. However, when selecting these vegetables there are certain ones that are extremely easy to grow, will produce a substantial harvest, and can be stored for a period of time.
Selecting these vegetables will allow you to make the most of your time. Here is a list of some of these vegetables that we recommend you try first.
Potatoes: Potatoes are among the easiest vegetables to grow and you will be able to produce masses of potatoes with very little effort. Typically, a seed potato in a garden will produce around 2 kg of potatoes if allowed to fully mature.
Zucchini: Zucchini is also known as courgettes in some countries and is one of the most prolific producers of fruit that you will ever see. The plants take a while to get going but once they do you have more Zucchinis than you know what to do with. Typically you only need two to three plants for a family of four to have excess.
Chard: Chard is by far and away the most prolific leafy green vegetable that you can grow. The biggest advantage of this over many other leafy cream plants including lettuce and spinach is that chard plants last for up to 12 months and they will produce several kilos of greens per plant throughout the season.
Pumpkins: These plants are also extremely easy to grow and have the added advantage that you can store any produce that you grow for months on end. I personally produce around 100 kilos of pumpkins every single year and I can’t remember the last time that I purchased pumpkins from the supermarket.
Tomatoes: Tomatoes are another plant that is extremely popular to grow not necessarily because it produces a particularly large harvest but rather because the quality of the produce that is grown is so much higher than what you can get from your local supermarket.
Cucumbers: Cucumbers are also extremely prolific but again they do take a little while to get going but they do produce huge numbers of fruit provided that you water them enough during the season.
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