6 Reasons to Plant a Vegetable Garden

What are the best reasons to plant a vegetable garden? With rising food prices, it makes more sense than ever to grow your own fruit and vegetables.

We live in increasingly unstable times but how reliant are you on the supermarkets and stores for your food. If pressed, do you know how to grow a few simple crops.

Do you want to plant a vegetable garden but aren’t sure if it’s a good idea? Do you like the thought of eating fruit and vegetables that came from your own garden? If so, then this post is for you.

So sit down, take a few minutes and I’ll convince you of your need to get them fingers greenified with my six reasons to plant a vegetable garden.

1. Planting a Vegetable Garden Keeps You Active and Fit

If you think going to the gym is hard, try digging compacted and semi frozen ground for an hour or two. Working a vegetable garden is hard work – and that means it’s good exercise.

If you struggle for motivation to get active and fresh air, planting a vegetable garden might be just what you need.

If you are calorie-conscious, digging or working a garden can burn up to 400 calories per hour (Source). Gardening has been shown to trump aerobics when it comes to overall health and well-being. Wearing a green spandex leotard is, of course, optional.

2. You Will be Ready for the Next Zombie Apocalypse/Extinction Event

Right now we live in a time of plenty. You can buy just about any kind of food you want at rock bottom prices. But what if that stopped suddenly?

While the chances of an invasion of zombies ala The Walking Dead is unlikely, global upheaval and rising food prices is not. Are you going to be better placed to meet this kind of adversity head on if you know how to survive? You bet.

And if survival depends on growing your own food, is that not a skill you’d want to foster in yourself and your kids? Too right it is.

An author who’s written on this subject is David the Good (check out my review of his book here)

One of his tips is to focus on growing high energy, low input vegetables like potatoes, pumpkin/squash and other root crops. Once you’ve mastered these you can move onto more sensitive crops like kale, cabbages and tomatoes.

The great thing about root crops is that they are easy to grow – this year I planted some Jerusalem artichoke tubers. I dropped them in the ground and forgot about them. They are now over 6 feet tall and I’m looking forward to some winter artichoke soup.

Pumpkins also create loads of organic matter which is just what your compost heap needs – another vital aspect of an apocalypse-proof small holding.

3. Every Dad needs to eat more fresh fruit and vegetables

Here are three easy ways to live longer, look better and have better sex (no I’m not even kidding).

• Get more sleep
• Take a bit more exercise
• Eat more fresh fruit and vegetables

All of these things have been scientifically proven to improve your mood, your testosterone levels and make you a healthier man.

But it can be a challenge eating fruit and veg right? First there’s storing it – you know how it goes down: you buy loads of green stuff on your Monday shop but by the time Friday comes, most of it is looking a bit tired.

Let’s face it – you would too if you’d hung out in a refrigerator all week. So you chuck it and don’t eat it.

This problem stacks up until you haven’t really eating anything particularly fresh for a long time. But imagine if you had a huge store of fresh produce growing right outside your house. You could just go outside and pick whatever it was you needed or wanted – apples, plums, beans, peas or potatoes.

No more trips to the store on the way back from work or little bags of sad little steam veg that takes 2 minutes in the microwave.

Plus for added value you can get your kids involved in the harvest. Which brings me neatly on to number 4…

4. You can get the kids Involved

The UK, prisoners and convicts get more exercise than some kids. So it makes sense to get your kids outdoors and active. But how do you get them involved in an activity that will stimulate them as well as giving you the opportunity to pass on your years of hard-earned wisdom.

Thankfully, that’s where growing your own food comes in. You can easily get the kids involved at all stages – from ground preparation through to sowing and harvest.

Even a small vegetable plot will provide hours of stimulus as well as opportunities for you to show your wee ones where their food comes from and what it takes to produce it.

That’s how I learned about gardening and growing food – by working at my own father’s elbow. Through watching him and copying in my own little vegetable garden, I learned the foundations of a craft I’m attempting to master – and pass on to the next generation in the process.

If you don’t know where to start, go small first. You can grow an amazing variety of crops in containers. Innovations like potato growing kits can make food growing fun and easy.

Get young children to do simple tasks like planting large, easy to handle seeds. Or you could have them apply fertiliser or manure (my son loves this job). Older kids can have more responsible jobs like weeding or pruning fruit trees.

5. It Saves You Money on Your Food Shop

Fresh fruit and veg is super healthy and super tasty. But it can also be super expensive especially if you buy imported produce out of season.

I love eating apples – I’ll snack on them all day along with cucumbers and carrots. But there’s a price tag to all of this and it can sometimes make your eyes water how much the weekly food bill comes to.

But what if you had a near endless store of produce within a few feet? You would save a considerable amount of cash on fresh produce.

Added to this is the value you can ascribe to what you grow yourself. There is almost no comparison with the flavour of home grown potatoes and kale compared to the long-stored, refrigerated store bought options.

The writer and gardener Steve Solomon reckons he saves around $3000 per year from his acre plot. Even saving 1/10th of that amount would make a big difference to any family’s expenditure.

6. It’s Good Return on Investment for Time

As a busy Dad, I judge almost every activity on ROI for time. Is there a good return if I invest my time in this activity. Gardening and yard work scores high as it shows you take pride in how your little slice of the planet.

But when you add in the benefits of growing your own food, teaching yourself and kids valuable skills and potentially surviving the next mass extinction event, you have something that has a good ROI for time.

Things that consistute bad ROI for time for fathers include:

• Internet porn while your wife is out
• Lone drinking on a Thursday night
• Netflix box set marathons
• Craft beer webinars
• Tinder

Learning new skills, keeping fit and healthy and surviving apocalypse on the other hand…

Gardening in general and food growing in particular takes up different amounts of time at different times of the year.

In the spring time it felt like all of my free time was caught up in the garden but into summer and autumn and it’s a case of a bit of maintenance here and there.

The best approach is to start with the resources you have. There’s no point starting a half-acre plot if you’re already pushed for time. Start with a small area and work from there. Be in it for the long term. No one became an expert overnight.

Reasons to Plant a Vegetable Garden: In Summary

There you have it: six of the best reasons why you should be growing your own food. If the arguments of surviving the impending end of civilisation as we know it, then at least you’ll get some good exercise and free vegetables out of it.

I’ve learned these skills by doing and by learning from others more experienced than me. Make use of the resources available to you in books, web, YouTube and local experts and you’ll pick this stuff up quick.

Oh and be sure to send me some pictures of your gardens either by email or on Twitter.

Neil

P.S. I wrote more about the reasons for planting a vegetable garden in my book A Father’s Mission. Get it here.