Gardening: Growing Your Own Food Has Health Benefits

Planting your own food or flowers is a hobby that many people look forward to each year. Not only can it save you on the grocery budget, but gardening has also shown to have other benefits as well. It can help environmentally, it can help your health, as well as economically.

Some people may worry about the daunting task of growing their own food, but anymore it is very easy. As long as you take the effort to tend to it a little bit each day, watering, weeding, and making sure it is getting the right enough sun, planting a garden can be as easy as plopping some seeds in the ground and waiting for the food to appear.

Planting a garden doesn’t mean you have to start farming. It can be a small raised bed with just a few things in it. The goal when first starting a garden is to pick things you will eat. If you don’t want to start from seeds many nurseries or gardening stores will have plant starters for you, where the seeds have started sprouting. This allows your plants to be harvested sooner than with seeds.

Chemical Free

Using a raised bed allows you to pick what kind of fertilizer and soil you want to use. This can be healthier than buying foods at a grocery store because you get to pick what chemicals, or lack there of chemicals you want in your garden bed. Along with this you can pick and choose what pesticides you use on your plants. You can even find recipes for homemade pesticides made of entirely all natural materials that keep the bugs away just as well as the chemicals.

Confidence & Pride

Gardening can help boost your appreciation for foods. You will have grown, taken care of, and harvested food you are consuming. This can help with confidence. It can also make you feel very proud when you go to your family get together and your tray of vegetables is all home grown right from your backyard.

Good Exercise

It is also a great way to get some outdoor exercise. Gardening is definitely a form of exercise, bending over, watering, and picking all move your body. Check out Heath Surgeon’s Calorie Burned Calculator to find out how many calories you can burn gardening or 100 other different activities.

Boosts Vitamin D

It will also boost your vitamin D intake by getting you outside daily to watch over your garden.

Teaches Responsibility

You can get your children involved if you have family. Teach them the responsibilities of gardening, and how it can make them feel proud and confident too when they start growing and harvesting their own vegetables they planted.

Learning New Skills

Once you start growing your own food you might start wanting to learn more about it. This can help open yourself up to a whole new realm of knowledge. What plants grow best when, what grows best in your area, how to grow things more effectively. It is all open for you to learn if you have the desire or if your family has a desire to learn too.

Improves Mood

It can help alleviate symptoms of depression or anxiety. Gardening allows you to focus on something else and focus your mind. This can help stop stress and allow your mind to do some mindless work all the while benefiting your stress, anxiety or depression and your healthy eating goals. It can also help you see things growing and thriving. It has even been shown that some bacteria that is in soil when breathed in can increase your serotonin levels, meaning that gardening can make you feel happier.

Healthier Eating

Gardening can also make you eat healthier. Now that there is fresh readily available fruits and vegetables you would just be wasting if you didn’t incorporate them in your meals. Vegetables grown in your own backyard are picked when they are ripest. When a vegetable is at its most ripe stage the nutrients are so much more packed. Gardening also helps you eat what is fresh and in season. The fruits and vegetables from your backyard taste better too. They aren’t having to be seasoned up to bring out their natural flavor, their flavor is bursting.

Cuts Back On Food Waste

Food waste is one of the top most wasted things. If you find that you have some excess fruits and vegetables you can’t eat you can share with friends or family. Or you can learn to compost. You would be surprised at how much you can put into a compost bin that then can be repurposed as garden soil for the next year’s garden.

Gardening can help you save time and money. It can also help you build confidence, and self esteem. Home grown food has been shown to be healthier, taste better, have better nutrients, and lack the chemicals that grocery store food has. Growing your own food can also help reduce the danger of food contamination, like salmonella. Gardening can help with heart health, giving you daily exercise and boosting your vitamin D levels for being out in the sun daily as well.