If you’ve been reading Get Fit Fiona for any length of time you’ll know that I’m a gardener and plant person. I’m surrounded by native plants at work. During the summer I grow a garden. Plants and flowers are my thing. Today I thought I’d share 5 reasons to grow a garden.
It’s environmentally friendly.
If you don’t use pesticides or fertilizers, growing your own food in incredibly environmentally friendly. Plant the vegetables that do best in your part of the world. Find out how long your growing season is and plant things that will grow in that time period. When the growing season is over, make sure you put the plants (minus the seeds of course) into your compost pile to create compost for the next year to nourish your garden. I like to buy my seeds from Baker Creek.
It gets you being active outside.
Anyone who’s spent time gardening will tell you that even though it looks deceptively easy, it can get tiring. Just preparing the garden for planting can be a lot of work before you even get one seed into the ground. It also gives you a good excuse to spend time outside. Plus there’s something therapeutic about digging around in the dirt and caring for plants.
It doesn’t get any fresher.
There’s nothing better than picking basil five minutes before you use it in your spaghetti sauce for dinner. Tomatoes are the absolute juiciest the day after it rains. Although you can get fresh produce from the farmer’s market, there’s something about growing it yourself that just makes it taste better.
Your vegetables are bigger and taste amazing.
The zucchinis I grew last summer were two or three times the size of the ones that were at the grocery store at the same time. Grocery store tomatoes can sometimes have no flavor, but the ones from my garden were delicious. My peas are incredibly sweet, and once I start eating them straight from the pod I can’t stop.
It’s affordable
Since I had so many seeds leftover from previous years, I only spent $20 on seeds last year. I would have spent that much just on the tomatoes I grew if I’d bought them at the grocery store, not to mention the zucchinis, beans, peas, carrots, radishes, and greens that I also grew. This year I’m not planning on buying any seeds because I still have so many leftover. Don’t let the seed companies tell you otherwise, seeds from previous years are still good. You just might have to plant a few more to get the same germination rate.
Do you grow a garden?