Grow Your Own Vegetables and Herbs for Health

A garden full of flowers is an aesthetic pleasure; but a vegetable patch at one side of your backyard is both functional and rewarding, health-wise. There is nothing like eating fresh food. Whether these are cooked or eaten raw, taste and texture are a gustatory delight compared to food that has sat in freezers for days before it sees your plates.
The taste of a succulent tomato right off the vine is simply divine than that of one picked from a freezer shelf in a supermarket. Vegetables and herbs are sensitive to taste and nutritional breakdowns when exposed in their picked state uneaten for many hours. For people particular about what goes into their mouths, it makes sense to grow their own food. One can start with a vegetable and herb garden.
While the thought of gardening may make a lot of people balk at the idea, growing your own vegetables and herbs is really not that complicated. That is, if you choose the right plants, have some time on your hands, the will to eat healthy, and some good advice.
The health benefits of gardening for your table may be worth the effort. Growing your own vegetables and herbs can encourage one to…

Get More Servings of Fruit and Vegetables in the Diet

Did you know that cucumbers, peppers, pumpkin, squash, and tomatoes are technically fruits? This is why fruits, aside from veggies, can be your garden crop and ultimately a large part of your nutrition.
Grow the vegetables/fruits/herbs that favour your palate. Your efforts at cultivating your food will prompt you to savour more of it. Plus home-grown plant foods are so much tastier than store-bought ones because these are consumed fresh with all the nutrition intact as soon as they are harvested. Great tasting veggies equal more demand for them, right?

Trim that Waistline

Depending on your crops and garden size, gardening can be hard work. If you have the advantage of large garden size, you may achieve a caloric deficit akin to gym exercise with activities such as planting and mulching. Carrying weight around the garden can count as resistance training so there you get exercise with two major benefits: a trimmer figure plus some horticultural accomplishments.

Improve Your Mental Health

Plants are a soothing balm to the spirit. Just looking at a beautiful garden can lift moods. Puttering about the garden can actually help relieve stress, lower blood pressure, and improve feelings of well-being.
The very activity of growing your own food is a mental boon. Gardening can be a meditative exercise which may distract a person, at least for the moment, from his hurts and depression and offer a sense of control over something. Growing one’s own vegetables---planting, cultivating, and finally seeing and tasting the fruits of one’s labours--also gives the gardener a sense of personal accomplishment that goes a long way to shoring up flagging egos or self-esteem.

Have Control over What You Eat

You grow it, you control it. When you pick up a head of lettuce at the supermarket, you don’t really know what went into growing it. You also do not know how your food was handled until it was dumped on that shelf for your consumption.
With your home-grown vegetables and herbs, however, you know exactly what fertilizers or pest control measures you applied on your plants. You have control over when to harvest your produce and what to do with these. In addition, you garner some peace of mind that what you and your family eat from your garden is safe and healthy.

Make and Eat Home-Preserved Food

It is painful to see part of your harvest go to waste especially if you worked hard on growing this yourself. You are apt to cut down on food wastage by making your own home-made preserves. These preserves can be produced in the form of jams and fermented food.
Fermented food has presently gained popularity as a healthy addition to one’s diet. Healthy fermented food does not refer to the pickled variety you find on grocery shelves. These refer to the home-made probiotic kind only the right fermentation process with lactic-producing bacteria can make. Fermented food lends a lot of health mileage to our gut by enhancing the flora balance within our digestive system. A healthy gut often translates to an overall healthy physical system.
Growing your own vegetables and herbs need not be complicated and you don’t need the acreage. If you lack a backyard, a community garden can be the answer. You can also grow some vegetable varieties and herbs in pots.
Get your fingers green by learning more about the hobby of vegetable and herb gardening. Tomatoes, carrots, basil, and green beans make great starter crops for budding green thumbs. So, go ahead and grow your own salad. You will probably never go back to the store-bought variety.