5 Reasons To Grow Your Own Fruit And Vegetables

More and more people are returning to the old tradition of growing their own produce, ranging from as little as a small herb patch right u...

More and more people are returning to the old tradition of growing their own produce, ranging from as little as a small herb patch right up to full self-sufficiency producing all their own fruit and vegetables. Why is it becoming popular again, and why should you start your own food garden?

Having your vegetable patch or fruit garden was once commonplace, but fell out of favor as the food industry become more commercial and supermarkets began to take over. In recent years, however, more and more people have started to explore growing their product again. Here we give five reasons why you might consider starting your kitchen garden.

- Freshness

Fruit and vegetables taste better and are healthier if eaten as soon as possible after picking. Most fruit you buy from supermarkets and the like is picked well before it is properly ripe, to extend shelf life, and this usually has an impact on flavor. Growing your lets, you taste the freshest possible produce as it's meant to eat.

- Quality

Commercially grown crops are often selected for their high yields, uniform appearance, and long shelf lives rather than for quality and taste. When you build your own, you can concentrate on the quality rather than the economics.

- Price

Much supermarket fresh produce is hugely overpriced, despite their advertising claims. Growing your own from seed is about as inexpensive as you can get, and even growing from small plants you buy is likely to provide you better food at a lower cost. With many plants, you can use the seed from one growing season to provide plants for the next - a self-sustaining cycle that will cost you only time and effort to keep going.

- Provenance

More and more people have concerns about how our food is produced, with chemical pesticides and GM food a particular worry. With your vegetable patch, you know exactly where your food is from and how it was grown.

- Variety

There are literally thousands of different varieties of fruit and vegetables, but supermarkets tend to concentrate on only the most profitable and easy to sell. This means that our choice is often limited to a few select varieties of apple, for example, rather than the hundreds of traditional kinds that exist. Growing your own lets you pick the varieties you like the most, and experiment to find new ones you'll rarely see on sale.

There is of course a downside to all this - it takes time and effort. In these increasingly busy times, we might not think we have the time to spare, but starting small with a few herb plants on your windowsill, or even the odd tomato plant, will give you a taste of growing your own and might even be enough to hook you into it for life!