Grow Your Own Food: Benefits of Self Sufficient Food
Thinking of growing your own food? These benefits will have you mapping out a list of homegrown food in no time.
You’ll soon have a new guilty pleasure (but really, guilt-free) — digging your hands into the soil of the Earth beneath us, and witnessing firsthand as your food is grown from the backyard to your table.
The benefits of growing your own food at home are turning eyes left and right. Having all of our food made, packaged, and delivered by strangers has us feeling cut off and removed from the natural world. The path to feeling less alienated from nature is just one step out the door, shovel in hand.
Benefits of growing your own food
Stronger nutritional benefits
Fresh fruits and veggies from your own garden are more nutritious than your standard store-bought variety. That’s because foods grown right in your backyard can be picked at their ripest, when the vitamins and minerals in your produce are at their height and before they have to be transported across the country (or world).
It also doesn’t help that common produce like tomatoes and kale are coated or given additives to make them look as appealing as their natural-grown competition. They’ve gotten really good at looking the part, without having the nutrition you’re buying them for in the first place.
So yes, it’s healthier to have organic, freshly-grown food on hand.
Environmentally friendly
Growing your produce at home also means that common pesticides and synthetic chemicals aren’t making their way into the surrounding soil. Homegrown food also cuts back on waste and pollution by reducing the need for transportation and limiting the amount of food that gets tossed in the process of getting you the ingredients for your next meal. Not to mention all the pesky packaging materials that are used to get produce from the farm to your house.
More affordable
One of the best benefits of growing your own food is the good bit of cash you can save. Homegrown produce means fewer trips to the grocery store and less money spent on gas. More importantly, if you're already trying to do the right thing and purchase organic fruits and veggies, you know just how much more expensive those items can be.
And, once you’ve maximized your plot-usage and have seeds leftover, those can be reused next year or for nuts and berries — this is known as seed saving.
Other benefits of homegrown food
You know how when you labor over your own home-cooked meal, it just somehow tastes better? Now imagine that feeling magnified by knowing that you grew those very ingredients in your backyard. There is something unspeakably delicious about growing and eating your own self-sufficient food.
One of these is pretty dang simple. Homegrown food is healthier food. Healthier food means a healthier mind, and, in kind, better emotional stability. Your microbiome and all the little creatures and beings that are going into making you, you, will thank you.
Knowing that you’re making a difference, however small, for the environment can be a great relief for anyone, especially if you’re already concerned about the effects of your lifestyle on the planet.
Gardening, growing, and pruning your vegetable garden involves an underrated amount of exercise. Getting a bit of sun and some sweat going is one of the most reliable ways to improve your mental wellbeing. And this can all be done in an activity that, while physical, many find to be calming and restorative!
Lastly, but absolutely not least, is the feeling of interconnectedness and wholeness that being closer to nature and having a more self-sufficient food relationship provides.
As Audrey Hepburn said:
“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”
You are what you eat
Hopefully, the benefits of growing your own food have made the idea enticing enough to try! Setting a goal as small as replacing 5% of your food products with homegrown produce can make such a meaningful change in your life.
If that’s too much of an investment at the moment, there are a few places where you can purchase organic, more healthily, sustainably grown farm produce online. For other sustainable life choices, check out these posts or follow us on Instagram.