Veggies

One of the cornerstones of living more sustainably is producing, using whatever capacity we have, to produce at least some of our own fruit and veg. This is generally recognised as a good thing for a whole stack of reasons, but what actually are those reasons? Ten are listed below -

1. It will save you money – you can actually save money by growing your own produce and the more of the process you do yourself, the more you save. Growing from seed (rather than buying in seedlings), saving and using your own seed, making and using your own compost and making your own seed raising mix can all help keep your costs down. Fruit trees are a larger investment but can pay back for many years once they are established and with the right care.
2. Growing your own provides fresher produce, improving your family’s nutrition – Once a fruit or vegetable has been picked the vitamin content starts to decrease so that the older they are the poorer nutrition they provide. While we like to think that we buy only the freshest produce, there is no real way to tell how old it is at the time of sale. If you pick it from your backyard or balcony and cook it straight away or even eat it raw, you are giving yourself and your family the best nutrition available.
3. Taste - Also, there is nothing that beats the taste of fresh, home grown produce! Fresher fruit equals sweeter fruit - it has not been harvested unripe then stored for months before getting to the retailer.
4. Lower food miles – it has been calculated that a typical Australian food basket, including fruit and veg, has travelled 70,000 miles to get to you. Each of those miles consumes fossil fuels and pumps greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (and travel by air generates 177 times more greenhouse gases than shipping). If you only have to step into your backyard or onto your balcony to gather the ingredients for a feed, the travel is measured in food feet not food miles, and no fossil fuels are consumed at all!
5. No chemical residues: you know where your food comes from and that it is not contaminated by pesticides – If you grow your food organically you can be sure that there are no residual nasties waiting for you. You know what has and what hasn’t been using to grow your produce so you can eat it with confidence.
6. It shows kids where their food comes from – If you have kids it can be a real eye opener for them to see that carrots, onions and potatoes actually come out of the ground and lemons come from a tree, not a supermarket. Also, getting them involved with growing the food they are going to eat is a great motivator for them to develop healthy eating choices. Years ago my kids would love it when I brought carrots in with the foliage still attached, that they could eat raw (we used to call them Bugs Bunny carrots).
7. It enables you to eat a greater variety of foods – If you source your fruit and veg from retailers, you can only buy the types and varieties of fruit and veg that they are prepared to sell you. Take tomatoes for instance, if you are lucky you may find 3 - 4 varieties in the supermarket, but there are over 200 different varieties available from heritage seed companies which you can grow. Think of all the taste treats awaiting you out there that you don’t even know about, growing your own can open up a world of taste!
8. The satisfaction which comes from growing and eating your own produce is amazing. It may be only one of two ingredients but it can transform a whole meal, and it really is special when you make a meal mainly from ingredients you have produced yourself.
9. No packaging to try and recycle or send to landfill – Even organic produce can come packed in layers of plastic film, on a polystyrene foam tray, in a plastic bag and all of that packaging will wind up polluting the environment sooner or later. A big difference I noted when we started to get serious about producing our own food was that the amount of garbage we generated reduced significantly and the amount in our worm food/compostable bucket increased significantly.
10. Reduced environmental impact of fertiliser and pesticide use – The chemicals used in industrial agriculture have a detrimental effect on the soil, ground and surface water, biodiversity and the environment in general. By opting out of that system and growing your own (as well as buying organically grown what you can’t produce yourself) you don’t encourage the continued use of these damaging chemicals.

We have been growing our own fruit and veg for over 30 years and doing it seriously enough to provide 80% of our needs for over 10 years in our medium sized backyard. You do need to know stuff but the information on this site will help you, whether you have a balcony, a back yard or no outside area at all, you can grow some of your own food. The time to start is now!