Top 12 Reasons to Grow Your Own Food

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Survival Gardener A Garden For the End of the
World http//survivalgardener.com
Top 12 Reasons to Grow Your
Own
Food
Why do a top 10 list when you can do 12?
1. IT TASTES BETTER
One cool thing about growing your own food is the
ability to try new varieties of produce.
Seed catalogs and garden centers offer numerous
options in varying colors and shapes. For
example, thousands of varieties of tomatoes are
available, versus the simple red, round tomato
in supermarkets. A large-scale tomato farmer
needs to grow varieties that ripen all at once
for a more economical harvest that can survive
shipping in good condition, while a home gardener
can select tomatoes for flavor, size, and color.
The same is true for many other crops. It's an
adventure in food!
In addition, store-bought veggies are not fresh.
You won't have that problem when you can
pick them straight from the source and put them
in your dinner that night. Produce found in the
grocery store is typically picked half-ripe,
having an effect on its flavor. This is why
there's a new emphasis on "vine ripened" produce.
2. SAVE MONEY
Having a garden supplements your household food
supply and saves money on food. Instead
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of spending your dollars at the store, spend time
in the garden, outside, exercising, and
learning to grow your own food. With many plants,
you can use the seed from one growing season to
provide plants for the next. It's a
self-sustaining cycle that will cost you only a
little time to keep going. All you need is a
plan.
3. PROTECT FUTURE GENERATIONS
We have not inherited the Earth from our
fathers, we are borrowing it from our children.
Lester Brown
4. PREVENT SOIL EROSION
The Soil Conservation Service estimates more than
3 billion tons of topsoil are eroded from
the United States croplands each year. That
means soil erodes seven times faster than its
built up naturally. Soil is the foundation of
the food chain in organic farming. However, in
conventional farming, the soil is used more as a
medium for holding plants in a vertical
position so they can be chemically fertilized. As
a result, American farms are suffering from the
worst soil erosion in history. If you grow your
own food, you'll be contributing less this and a
plethora of other problems related to mono
culture food production.
5. YOUR HEALTH WILL IMPROVE
Not only will you end up eating more fruits and
vegetables, but you will be getting
added exercise. Did you know that you can burn as
many calories in 45 minutes of gardening as you
can in 30 minutes of aerobics? And, working in
the garden is a natural stress reducer. (I can
attest to this) Your garden is also a great way
to beautify your home environment and your
community with sustainable eatable planting.
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6. SAVE ENERGY
American farms have changed drastically in the
last three generations, from family based
small businesses dependent on human energy to
large-scale factory farms. More energy is now
used to produce synthetic fertilizers than to
till, cultivate and harvest all the crops in the
United States. If you are growing your own food
in the city, you are cutting down on
transportation and pollution costs. Think of all
the energy it takes just to move food to your
local market. Isn't it funny that we don't even
think twice about eating a banana in the middle
of a cold North American winter?
7. KEEP CHEMICALS OFF YOUR PLATE
Many pesticides approved for use by the EPA were
registered long before extensive research linking
these chemicals to cancer and other diseases had
been established. Pesticides are poisons
designed to kill living organisms and can also
harm humans. In addition to cancer, pesticides
are implicated in birth defects, nerve damage and
genetic mutations. Both organic and
conventional pesticides have health risks. While
some studies show them as safe, why bother when
you can grow your own food and not use them at
all? You have the control over what goes into
your food!
8. PROMOTE BIODIVERSITY
Monoculture is the practice of planting large
plots of land with the same crop year after
year. While this approach tripled farm production
between 1950 and 1970, the lack of natural
diversity of plant life has left the soil
lacking in natural minerals and nutrients. To
replace the nutrients, chemical fertilizers are
used, often in increasing amounts. Single crops
are also much more susceptible to pests, making
farmers more reliant on pesticides. Despite a
tenfold increase in the use of pesticides between
1947 and 1974, crop losses due to insects have
doubledpartly because some insects have become
genetically resistant to certain pesticides. In
addition these mono crop fields have totally the
destroyed bio-diverse ecosystems that once
thrived.
9. HELP BEAUTIFY YOUR COMMUNITY
Besides being used to grow food, community
gardens are also a great way to beautify
and connect a community.
10. TEACH YOUR CHILDREN
Pass on important skills to your children. Teach
them that food doesn't come from the supermarket
but from the soil, the earth that we all depend
on. Walk them through the cycle of life that
begins with a seed and ends with a harvest.
Teach them how the animals also play a role in
the cycle. Teach them that like plants, animals
also become food for other animals. It's
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a beautiful cycle of energy. Prepare the little
ones to be self-sufficient so that they can be if
the need arises!
11. EMBRACE SEASONAL EATING
Growing your own produce allows you to reconnect
with the natural cycle of life through
the seasons. It's eating more fresh produce when
it is in season, and preserving produce for times
when it's not available. Our paleolithic
ancestors lived, hunted and gathered based on the
seasons. A garden is a good way to take a
small step back into our roots. You can even
garden in animal skin briefs if you'd like!
12. BE READY FOR DISASTER
This final and important fact is that having a
food source that you control keeps you more
'food secure' in the event of disaster. Nuclear
wars, Jesus coming back, alien invasions, and
zombie apocalypses are a few reasons to build a
survival garden and grow your own food. I would
like to be ready with a some tomatoes, a rifle,
a cup of Juanilama tea and some tasty moringa
chicken salads to ride it out.....whoohoo!
Survival Gardener OUT...
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