Gardening is good for Everyone

I can only grow so much. Only certain kinds of vegetables can be grown where I live. And I cannot live on just vegetables. So lots of things I would still have to buy.
It takes a huge amount of expertise to setup a garden. It is not just putting seeds in the ground when I realized that Gardening is good for Everyone. It is the time I have to learn about gardening.

Before setting up a garden these are the things to consider:

• How to prepare the soil.
• What to plant.
• When to plant.
• Where to plant.
• What tools to use.

How to put the seeds in the ground.
How far apart. Thinning out. When to harvest. It goes on and on.
It’s a ton of unpleasant work. Weeding alone is an unending nightmare. It’s dirty, backbreaking labour, and you can’t ever neglect it or it all goes to hell. And this is to say nothing of the wide variety of critters that sneak in to eat your precious stuff.
And even if you put yourself through all that, sometimes the damn things just don’t grow. Who knows why?
And even if it all goes well, you have a new problem. What to do with all your produce? You can’t eat it all. So maybe you could preserve it. But now you have a whole new set of skills to learn, and there’s a chance of poisoning yourself with botulism.

Why don’t we grow our own food?

We do, it’s called farming.

If you mean why you personally don’t grow your own food, I really can’t tell because I don’t know you.

If you mean why people in rich countries generally don’t grow their own food, it’s mostly for efficiency reasons. It takes time, effort, tools and good land to grow a decent crop, and it’s more efficient that specialists do this and sell their produce to the rest of us than that we all do a crappy amateur work at home.

Do you repair your own car? Do you make your own movies? Do you build your own furniture and toys? Do you create all the web pages you wish to browse? Do you construct your own TV:s and radios to watch the movies you made earlier and listen to any radio shows you might have done?

I’m guessing you answered no to most of those (fairly silly) questions, and the reason is that it’s probably not worth your time and effort to do all that stuff when there are lots and lots of people who do it better and cheaper than you yourself can. The same goes for farming.

But the same way as it’s entirely possible to tinker a bit on your car, replacing light bulbs, tires and exhaust et c, it’s certainly possible to grow a small crop of vegetables yourself. It’s just not very easy to make enough to last you an entire year and in great enough variation that you won’t get sick from vitamin/mineral deficiencies.

            Isn’t it nice to bit into a fresh red tomato and you can feel so proud that it came out of your garden.  I know I am.  I have been garden for over five years.  I started when I was living in Kalamazoo, and I had an apartment.  I wanted to start a hobby which I could benefit from my education because I have a degree in biology, so I feel that I should start a garden. I started my first garden in plastic planters and grew just a few different plants.  Peppers and tomatoes were the easiest for me to grow.  There were the practical reasons such as I like to eat peppers and tomatoes.  I got a lemon seed to grow, also took some seeds from a cantaloupe to grow.

 I started a small garden in planters, and I grew peppers.  My wife also so she uses a lot of peppers in her cooking.  Finally,  I have a backyard, and so the first year I started working on my basic garden, I put it alongside the fence.  I made a border with large stones I found in the backyard, tilled and turned over the ground with a spade.  I filled it in with dirt from the back of the yard because it had the most fertile soil.  A couple of years ago, I got lucky, and I found a whole bunch of starter containers in the trash.  They ranged from smaller individual planters to large planters for trees.  There was a collection of plant starter kits and flats that were real cost savings.  I still look for them when I am driving around during the spring. 

              Everyone should have a garden; everyone benefits from better health: physically and mentally. It also provides a clean environment and saves energy, saves money and helps the economy, and it is an educational activity for both, the young and the old.  Having a garden would be the best decision a person can make.  There are a lot of benefits for a person, the community and the whole world which receives from having a garden.  As a biologist, I have to look at the entire circle of life.  It is my personal opinion that everyone has a moral obligation to have a garden; you could say you are saving the planet by having a garden.  There is a myth that you have to have a green thumb.  Gardening is a learning experience and process. You are not born as a gardener; you must learn how to garden.

 “I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation.  It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.” , from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse.

            Basic horticulture goes back ten thousand years to the Fertile Crescent with the domestication of wild plants and cultivation.  So gardening is as old as civilization. 

            Gardening is fun and easy.  Gardening doesn’t have to be a lot of work, but it does require some knowledge and patience.  If you plan ahead the job isn’t too bad.  If you plan over several months, you won’t be overwhelmed with work.  I usually start in the fall.  My garden I started was in the fall.  I moved my stones in an outline of where I was going to plant my garden, then I started tilling.  It is better to do the work in the fall because the ground will be easy to work, especially if the field is only partially thawed from the winter.  You can also plant some of your seeds.  You have to look at specific species of plants to know.  If not then you can plant in the spring, this can be seeded.  The ground will be already worked so it will be easy to plant.  If you really don’t have the time you can buy plants from the nursery or grocery store.  Once they are in the ground, you need to water, but the plants will grow without any assistance.

             Gardening provides health and tasty fresh vegetables for the dinner table.  Whether you are organic gardening or not there is a real benefit.  You know where your food is coming from.  The only person handling your food is you.  You decide whether or not to use fertilizer or pesticide.  And even if you do use it, you control how much, and how often.  The vegetables will be allowed to ripen on the vine, and not having to pick early, therefore having underripe vegetables because of shipping.  You can also select the types of vegetables and the variety of vegetables you want to plant.  As an example, there are several varieties of tomatoes to choose from, and that fact remains for several vegetables.  There are “Hundreds of varieties of Heirloom Tomato seeds and open-pollinated vegetable seeds for your garden,” quoting Bob Price also known as Tomato Bob from his website TomatoBob.com. This means a variety of tastes.  The taste can vary significantly between plant breeds.  You also don’t have to worry about GMO or genetically modified organism getting into your garden or the environment.

               Gardening is inexpensive.  Some people think gardening is expensive.  The cost can vary, but it can be very reasonable.  Again this requires planning.  If you save seeds even from the vegetables, you buy from the store or use seeds from the spice rack that can save you money.  You can purchase seeds from several suppliers, but the cost isn’t that great.  You can also trade seeds with friends and family.  You can save seeds between seasons.  Plastic planters can be reused from season to season as well as rescuing them from the trash if your neighbor throws them out.  Building a border can be made from stones, bricks, broken cement, even branches and sticks may be used.  The most significant cost is water.  You can store and save rainwater using old barrels, and if you have the time, you could build a cistern. 

 The garden benefits the environment.  The plants you are cultivating contribute to the environment.  As most people know plants convert carbon dioxide into oxygen which reduces greenhouse gases thereby reducing the carbon footprint.  Growing your vegetables you also use up less energy because you are not transporting those same vegetables from the field to the market. It also brings in wildlife such as birds and bees.  The garden also provides a calming and a serene scene which has a psychological benefit to the gardener and for the community.  The gardener also has to interact with the environment of the garden by working the land: watering, and weeding.  Along with other activities such as fertilizing or composting. The gardener gains health benefits from the exercise and business in the garden.

 Gardening can provide a learning opportunity for adults and children.  Children are always curious about where their food comes from.  Some children if you asked them where their food on their table comes from, they might say the supermarket.  Nothing is more exciting for children to water, wait and watch a seed poke through the black soil into a young plant.  Then later in the season, they can watch the fruits develop on the vine.  This also encourages those same children to try new vegetables because it is something they have grown.  You also learn ways to prepare food as you explore those new vegetables and new breeds of vegetables you have never tried.  

 There is an economic benefit for the gardener.  Growing your own vegetables can save money if you plan carefully.  Depending on the yield of each plant you will have a lot of vegetables over the summer and into the fall.  You can put up those vegetables for the winter by pickling, freezing, canning, and drying.  Also, gardening brings the community closer together. Plants can be traded and shared.  You can help your community establish a community garden open to all.  This is an excellent way to provide food to those in need by leaving it open to gleaners. Gardening is a low-cost hobby and activity with many benefits.  Growing fresh vegetable are healthier and tastier to eat. The gardener also can experience new vegetables and new breeds of vegetables. The environment benefits from the new plants as well as the gardener and community by beautifying the landscape.  If everyone gardens then everyone would save money from the vegetables they are growing, along with sharing what they produce, building a healthier and happier community, maybe changing our relationship with each other and with the environment.  Garden is also an excellent way of teaching some basic biology, and ecology to children young and old.  If everyone garden, we the gardeners might change the world, so get involved.