Growing Food to Eat

Gardening is becoming popular in cities and in urban areas. Communities are using empty lots and parks for communal gardens and even apartment dwellers are raising food on patios. A few packets of seeds planted in patio pots can give you salads and herbs all summer. In communal garden plots, the garden is divided into units for each gardener to plant seeds of their own choosing. Gardeners can often plant enough to use all summer and surplus can be canned or frozen for the winter.

It’s especially wonderful for those in areas where good food is almost impossible to get. Often in poorer parts of the city residents have no means of travel. The small stores available carry very little to no produce. Garden plots means the difference in having green, healthy food and living on junk food. Some people say community gardening is something permanent and a return to the way things used to be when communities were built around food.

Backyard gardening is also coming back in vogue. If you have a back yard, you can have a garden. A mattock and a hoe can be used to dig up the soil, to lay off your rows, and directions for planting are on the seed packets. It doesn’t take any other equipment to have a back yard garden. Or a communal garden. Grow what you and the family like to eat a lot of. If you only have pots on the patio, you might want to grow salad greens. They grow back as you pick off leaves, add a few pots with radishes,tomato plants and bell peppers and have salads for the summer.

To become a good gardener, talk to other gardeners and look at their gardens. Gardeners love to give pointers to newbies. If you don’t know other gardeners, you will still do okay by following package directions. Growing your own garden completely eliminates any excuse for not eating healthy. You can grow anything your family likes, broccoli, eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onions, green beans, okra, squash, peas, beets, cabbage, and have a bountiful table. If you plant anything that doesn’t grow well, eliminate it next year and plant something else in it’s place. You don’t have to be a farmer to grown good, healthy vegetables. It does take the willingness to get out and do the work, but gardening is also good exercise.

Healthy, fresh vegetables are pricey at the grocery store. Growing your own will cut the cost of your groceries considerably. People in the know say the new food revolution will be fueled by young people who range from farmers, chefs, city dwellers and everyone interested in the family’s good health.