Growing your own food

Growing your own food at home is a great way to save money, get the freshest food, and take care of your health and the environment at the same time. If you are dedicated to gardening, even a small piece of land is enough for you to grow a lot of fruit or vegetables, which you will definitely feel in your bank account and on your taste buds as well.

Growing, however, requires time, patience and small expenses for the purchase of seeds and various tools that you need to take care of the garden. However, in the calculation, this is a negligible amount, because when you take into account the time spent on the way to the store or the market, you will definitely find a few minutes a week to take care of the plants.

In this article, we’ll look at tips that will help you grow fruit or vegetables at home, but also at the benefits that such cultivation brings to our environment.

Growing your own food will save you money

Like any investment, your return depends on what you choose to invest in, in our example, what you choose to grow. What crops are actually worth your time and patience? 

First you need to find out how much they cost on the market and in the store. Prices may vary depending on the season and geographic location. Here are a few examples of vegetables that are worth growing at home: Tomatoes, Peppers, Lettuce (including other leafy vegetables), Pumpkins (including zucchini) and, for example, Beans.

You may notice that there are no root vegetables on the list, and that’s on purpose. The main reason is that when the root vegetables grow and we harvest them, we cannot reuse them. This example can be carrots, radishes or turnips. These foods are not high value in terms of the return on investment in growing them.

Guaranteed freshness

This headline may sound like a supermarket’s attempt at advertising, but don’t be fooled. In the example, we found that the UK imports about 85% of tomatoes from the total amount of 460,000 tons. This means that tomatoes travel several thousand kilometers to reach your local store. Do you think they would have rot during such a journey? 

A huge amount of imported vegetables is harvested unripe and is forced to ripen in a truck trailer or in warehouses under the influence of ethylene gas. This is the main reason why your tomatoes from the store are always so red, supposedly fresh and taste like polystyrene.

There is no debate that the fruit you grow is fresher than the one from the supermarket. And since your fruits are only a few steps away from you, you can pick them at the moment when they are freshest and enjoy their true taste.

The difference in nutritional values

Despite scientific progress and the most modern agricultural practices of growers, today’s vegetables have less nutritional value than, for example, in the 1940s. Research has shown that this is up to a 40% drop in nutritional content.

Scientists attribute the main part of this decline to these two causes:

• Farmers are mainly interested in their profit from cultivation, rather than the quality of food. In order to increase yields, it is therefore necessary for the majority of crops to survive, and therefore growers use various fertilizers or other means, the consequence of which is a reduction in the concentration of minerals and nutritional values of crops.
• The modification of crop genetics by scientists for high resistance and fertility is the second reason why nutritional values are not what they used to be.

A large proportion of commercially grown plants that have been bred to be resistant to pests or diseases, to grow quickly and thus produce high yields in a short time. This makes the work easier especially for farmers, it brings them reliable production with less effort, but the main sacrifice is the nutritional value, which suffers a lot today.

So we have shown the main reasons for ordinary people to decide to try growing their own fruit at home. But if you don’t have a garden and have little space, there is still a way to start growing.

We pay attention mainly to the companies Gardyn and Agrotonomy, which invent products for growers that will allow you to maximize your results from growing in the smallest possible space.

Benefits growing food at home has for the environment

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Plastics, plastics and more plastics

Despite the recent efforts of many countries to limit plastic packaging of products in stores, many foods are still wrapped in multiple layers of plastic. This is mainly to keep food fresh in the store or during transport.

UK households still use more than 500,000 tonnes of plastic food packaging, with less than half being recycled. The result is great damage to the ecosystem and the environment.

Therefore, crops grown in our garden do not fall into this sector, which negatively affects the environment, because you simply do not have to pack them. They can be grown in the garden, but even in the apartment on the windowsill. Also, no piece goes to waste, because rotten or failed pieces can be composted.

Less food waste

Instead of throwing vegetable clippings in the trash, you can use it for composting. It is a simple method to improve the quality of your soil and, consequently, your cultivated crops.

For example, did you forget a spring onion in the fridge? Simply cut the roots and place them in a glass of water. In a few days the spring onion will begin to grow again.

Reducing your carbon footprint

In 2020, up to 84% of fruit and 44% of vegetables were imported to the UK. To get these products to your supermarket, they travel many kilometers, which count towards the carbon footprint. By reducing the consumption of these foods, we reduce our carbon footprint and help the environment.