I grow a vegetable garden for two reasons:
- Nothing is more satisfying than eating food that you have grown yourself.
- Nothing is healthier than eating food you have just picked yourself.
That’s it. Nothing more. I don’t do it for the exercise. I don’t do it to save money (although you do start saving money after the first couple years). I don’t do it because I have a deep passion for gardening.
May I make a confession? If there was a small farm within ten minutes of my house that sold freshly harvested, organically grown vegetables, I would let them do the work and shell out the bucks for their labor and product.
But we have no such small farm that close to us, and we won’t when we move to our rural homestead, either. And so I garden.
The heavier reasons of the two given above is for health.
Why I Became A Gardening Freak
Until a couple years ago, I was happy just experimenting with a couple of small beds and thrilled when anything produced. Then I started reading up on the longest-lived people groups in the world. These groups have a larger portion of their elderly live to be well over one hundred years than any other societies in the world – and hardly anybody dies of degenerative disease. I paid attention to what they all had in common:
- Zero processed foods in the diet.
- Low stress.
- Tons of exercise every day.
- No man-made chemicals in anything.
And finally, the clincher for me…
They all eat a lot of vegetables and fruit every day that they have grown themselves.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to say that I have zeroed in on gardening as the silver bullet for perfect health.
Duh.
But as someone who is ever-searching ways to improve her health, I took notice of the fact.
So right now, under my plant lights upstairs, I have probably three dozen soil cubes in which are growing seedlings of plants varying from petunias to tarragon to kale. I’ve even got a couple of tomato babies started.
And I am gnashing my teeth at the fact that I had to skip last week’s seed-sowing because the nursery was out of my favorite organic potting soil – which just happens to be perfect for making soil cubes.
Why freshly-picked produce is healthier
In about three weeks, the shelves will be packed with seedlings. All for the sake of:
- Consuming more nutrients, and
- avoiding mold or otherwise “bad” spots.
The fact is, even the organic produce at Whole Foods isn’t nearly as nutritionally complete as it could be. It was harvested at least two days ago, during which time it has lost a good deal of nutritional alue.
Not to mention that a fruit or vegetable with mold on it is completely toxic to your body – even if you cut off the obviously bad spot.
So, yeah, I garden for the health of it. And you might consider it, too. Even just being able to eat a home-grown salad once a week will be like a spa vacation for your body.
Try tomatoes or peppers in containers. Or a small bed of greens. Or a cucumber vine growing up your fence. And be sure to check out my resource page for books that will help you not only to garden, but to be generally healthier in every way. Click here to visit the page.
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