There are many excellent reasons to start your home garden which benefit both you and the environment, if you do it right. We could spend hours delving into the extensive discussion on obvious reasons gardens are great. Instead, to save you a bit of time and provide a “fresh” take, we’ve compiled a list of 7 benefits you may not consider. You’ll soon long for your own slice of paradise in the form of leafy greens and earthworms.
1. Turn Your Outdoor Spaces into Living Spaces
If you’re like most new veggie gardeners we encounter, you started (or are starting) a little patch to try your hand at growing your own food, so you know it’s truly organic and truly fresh. What you might not anticipate is the beautiful transformation your space, big or small, will undergo once you’ve begun your journey into home gardening! You may think your paved patio or barren yard may be nothing more than open space that you’ll never use, but a few garden boxes can double as your patio shade, your cover for an ugly fence, or perimeter for an outdoor seating area, all while actively producing high quality food for you.
2. Organic Gardens : The Entertainer’s Dream
Move over, waterfalls, veggie gardens are the new conversation piece for beautiful landscaping that has a purpose. People love to talk about fruiting plants. They just do. Fruits and vegetables are something that most of us, hopefully, see, touch, and taste every day. However, in spite of this frequent association with food, modern society pushes many of us away from truly engaging with it, to focus on more “valuable” pursuits. This disconnect between growing and consuming has left many a guest of our gardens to stand in awe of a flourishing tomato plant towering overhead, or a Romanesco’s enchanting spirals. Picture yourself, delighting in your new veggie-scaped yard while enjoying a glass of wine with friends, as you share the story of how you discovered the perfect variety of tomato for your famous Caprese, as they eat up every bite!
3. Saving $$$
Many novice gardeners are apprehensive about taking the plunge into home grown organics, either for fear of failure or sticker shock at the upfront costs associated. What is often left unaccounted for in that calculation, however, is the money you’ll be saving once your garden starts producing! When we moved to a new home, we tried for a bit to source fresh local produce from our hometown farmers market, but were struck by the limited availability and high prices. Unlike much of North America, we are lucky to have a year-round farmers market, however it is not one filled with full-time farmers offering whole fruits and veggies. Instead, it’s more of a crafts and snacks market, full of vendors offering unique art pieces, processed sauces, juices, breads, and the like. We gave up there, and leaned on Aldi, the best grocery store ever, to fill our produce needs until our beds were established. With just a few beds, filled with seeds sown for plants we love, not solely for highest yield, we’ve been able to forego a trip to Aldi for weeks on end during the summer months, and fill in with what we have in the winter. Were we to try to obtain the same high-quality organic produce from even our best local store, it would be insanely unaffordable, and still a few steps below what we get right at home. Our homegrown produce is sweeter, has more depth to the flavors, and often we require less to get more flavor out of things like herbs and mustard greens.The shift from cold hardscaped patio to welcoming lush oasis is neither as time-consuming nor as expensive as you might think, and the rewards really are far greater than the costs. If you’re still not ready to go it on your own, and are located in Orange County, CA, EarthWorks is happy to help you get your garden growing, and continue producing through the years.
4. Super Sustainable
A big part of why you save money by home gardening is that our food system is not designed for local eating. Consumers spend a great deal on the delivery and transportation of food, and surprisingly little on the cost of producing the food itself. The costs of this system go beyond dollars you see at checkout; the environmental impacts of shipping all this food are becoming more and more important as we see the negative effects of changing climates around the world. Home gardening, micro-farming, or urban-farming, whatever you call it, you’re guaranteed to be eating as locally as possible. By growing your own food, you reduce the environmental impacts of eating. This is especially true if you source plants/seeds locally or make your own compost, reducing the fuel consumption (and thus emissions) required to ship heavy and large batches of plants and compost to your garden store, and then to your door. Furthermore, we’ve often had friends and clients say they’re drawn to a more plant-based diet when high quality fresh vegetables easily available outside their doors; this of course further supports a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way of eating.
5. It’s Full Cycle
Compost is key. For any successful garden, and great lawns too, high quality organic compost is absolutely essential. Ensuring the compost you have access to is actually organic and free of any undesirable chemicals is often difficult. The great news is, with a little bit of space and a simple compost tumbler, you can turn your kitchen scraps into garden food! Few things have brought me more joy than watching my end of summer tomato plants’ leaves, artichoke trimmings, or eggplant tops turn into compost that will be used to feed our next season’s crops.
6. Grow What You Like
Growing your own food means you can grow whatever your climate allows you to, which often opens up new home farmers to a whole world of produce that was previously out of their budget, or wholly outside of their awareness. From kohlrabi to pineapple mint, purple potatoes to watermelon radishes, there is a world of produce options that are tasty and easy to grow across many climates. However, when these rank low on marketability or shelf-stability, they are uncommon or expensive. Growing your own food allows you to discover the bounty that’s available, and grow what you actually like! The cost difference between many “standard” and “fancy” plants or seeds is typically far less than the cost difference between their respective produce, and so long as you care for each plant as instructed, and maintain a healthy garden overall, you will be greatly rewarded. We have a place in every box for my fancy picks, and I’ve always been glad we did. Though an abundance of cherry tomatoes is certainly nothing to complain about, I feel a real sense of joy when cutting into a new-to-me vegetable for the first time, starting a new flavor journey.
7. Dog Snacks
If you have a doggo, and you’re like me, you often will have a stockpile of treats. Since our first harvest last summer, I have placed myself on an indefinite treat-buying-ban, as garden scraps make great dog snacks! Our lab-shepherd mix will salivate over some broccoli stems, and do tricks for a nubby misshapen carrot. I get so much joy out of watching her enjoy our would-be-compost, and it’s much healthier for her than many of the processed treats I’d been purchasing for her prior.
These are just a few of the unexpected awesome aspects of home farming we have experienced in the past 3 years, as we shifted from patio-farming to raised beds. It has been a winding journey, and we have tried many things that did not come out as expected, for better and worse, but we are so happy we’ve invested time into our food, in the process creating ourselves a happy healthy garden.