Grow Your Own Food

Ultimately, you eat food not just to survive, but to thrive.

You can try to achieve optimum health through fitness routines, the right amount of sleep, and opting for a more holistic lifestyle. But all of these practices may be nullified without you eating real, nutrient-dense food.

And that's the kind of food that money can't buy.

The healthiest food is the food that you grow yourself

In the study, "Maximizing the Nutritional Value of Fruits & Vegetables" from the University of California, Davis, author, Diane M. Barrett details the nutritional differences between refrigerated and processed foods vs. their freshly harvested counterparts. A nutritional example is found in comparing Vitamin C.

But Vitamin C isn't the only nutrient lost in the storage and transportation of fruits and vegetables. Pretty much all the vitamins and minerals in fresh produce are gone over time. If you've ever eaten store-bought spinach and wondered why you're not full after consuming this supposed superfood, the degradation of its nutrients may well be the reason.

Growing your food means that your freshly harvested backyard kale is more nutrient-dense than a store-bought one. And that nutrition translates into you feeling fuller for a longer period of time.

The article "Why Nutrient-Dense is More Important than Caloric Content" from a triathlon website states that:

A 2014 analysis of multiple studies by the British Journal of Nutrition, concluded that organic crops contained higher antioxidant levels than their non-organic counterparts. A diet high in antioxidants may reduce the risk of heart disease and certain cancers. 

Organic foods are foods that are produced using methods that do not involve synthetic inputs such as pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

According to Statista.com, there has been a steady 4.5% increase in the demand for organic food in the US in the last decade.

But the fact that we can purchase organically labeled food from a store, does not necessarily mean that we know how pesticide-free or ethical the supply chain process was.

By growing your own you can vouch for the safety and lack of pesticides in your food. There is immense power not only witnessing the entire lifecycle of the plant but nurturing that plant into an edible crop.

Numerous studies cite the detrimental health effects of pesticide-laden food.

In an earlier blog on Pesticides in Food, we talk about the rise of human diseases alongside the use of pesticides.  

Food grown conventionally with the use of chemical fertilizers have shown to be responsible for 

• Autoimmune Disorder
• Allergies
• Cancer

And a host of other human diseases.

Hence, by growing your food you can be sure that no toxins were used in your food production.

The chart below from Our World Data.org shows how extensive the use of chemical fertilizers is in agricultural lands around the world.

The US Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) reports that

But chemical fertilizers are not as efficient nor as effective in the long-term as their organic counterparts.  

When chemical nitrogen is applied to the soil, for instance, more than half is lost to leaching.

This study on the impact of chemical fertilizers on soil health shows that continuous use of these products results in the decline of organic matter in the soil. This in turn hardens the soil and reduces its fertility over time, contributing to soil erosion and loss of minerals.  

In the short term, by using chemical fertilizers, you may get a bumper crop one year, but you will see the fertility of your agricultural field drop in the following years

Water is life. Life on earth began in waters and is sustained by water. However, the effects of chemical pesticides and fertilizers extend to our water ecosystems due to runoffs from agricultural farms.

The EPA reports that agricultural runoff is the leading cause of impaired water quality in the US.

This, in turn, affects the ecosystems in our lakes, rivers, and oceans.

"We know that some of these chemicals that we're finding in the runoff from the ag fields can affect [aquatic] reproduction and egg production," says USGS biologic Diana Papoulias 

Because of water's molecular characteristics, water is crucial for the survival of life on earth.

The problem of climate change according to author and scholar, Eric Toensmeier must be addressed in a twofold manner. 

Homegrown food reduces emissions as it eliminates the need to use fossil fuels to transport, package and preserve foods to your local grocery store.

You don't need to get into your car as often to make the trip to the grocery if you grow at home.

By growing food, you naturally go "zero-waste" and do not bring home the often plastic packaging that comes from the groceries.

Moreover, by growing your food you sequester the carbon from your surrounding atmosphere into plants. As your plants grow up they capture carbon in their roots in the soil below ground (belowground biomass) as well as the above-ground (aboveground biomass). The more backyard crops you grow, the more you can capture carbon into living plant tissues for growth and development.  

HERE's an image of the carbon density captured by aboveground and belowground biomass

Curious to know how much your growing your own organic backyard garden can affect the state of the overall carbon emissions? 

You can find the answer in the work of Project Drawdown. Project Drawdown is an initiative whose mission is to help the world reach “Drawdown”— the point in the future when levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to steadily decline.

Drawdonwn's article on the Powerful Role of Household Actions in Solving Climate Change sums it up this way:

"The Drawdown Solutions analysis reveals that individual and household actions have the potential to produce roughly 25–30 percent of the total emissions reductions needed to avoid dangerous climate change (>1.5°C rise)."

When you compare the common popular solutions for sustainability such as using solar panels or driving an electric car, at-home food production makes the biggest ecological impact as shown in this article, Best Sustainability & Climate Change Solution: Grow Your Own Food!

If saving the planet isn't enough reason for growing your food, how about keeping more money in your wallet?

A Consumer Reports article did a nationwide survey of organic produce vs. non-organic, and stated that "the difference is often $1 or less per unit."

This may not seem a lot more to pay per item, but it cumulatively adds up the more fruits and veggies you buy. Herbs are particularly pricey to purchase compared to growing them yourself.  

You also save money when you account for the fact that by growing your food, you are eating healthier food. As such, saving money from your at-home growing efforts comes in forms that cannot easily be calculated.  

One example is the decreased medical expenses that come from eating a healthier, nutrient-dense diet and getting outdoors more.

Another is that you can opt to make your Christmas gifts rather than purchase them.

Homegrown food allows you to even make money and create a new home economy. If you have an abundance of garden vegetables you can opt to sell your produce at local farmers' markets.

Don't think you can commit to tending a stall at the farmer's market year-round? Try contacting your local farmers market vendors and talking directly to farmstands about them carrying your particular glut of zucchini or sunchokes is also a viable option.

This blog details how a blogger mom got paid $80 one summer for her harvest simply by connecting with a produce stand.

One online site in Australia called, RipeNear.Me supports home grower economies.

Another way to make money when you grow your food is to sell your plants or seeds on places like Etsy.com.

The universe has a natural order. This is evident in the regularity of the seasons, and particularly, in the intricate patterns found in nature.

As a gardener, you experience these natural patterns in plants, as well as the patterns of the seasons more intimately.  Knowing that you cannot grow summer crops such as tomatoes, corn, and green beans in the cooler months is different than experiencing it as a food grower.

You start to pay closer attention to details such as your first and last frost dates and even whether it is a full moon or not.

When you garden, you start to ask questions. Questions such as, "Where does this universal order come from?"

"Why is there an order in the first place?"

"What can I learn from these patterns?"

Ask many more questions or simply gaze in awe at the wonder of your backyard garden alone, and you will eventually come to experience a little bit of the spiritual. You may start to come to experience the fingerprint of the Creator in creation.

Growing food in a permaculture way, allows you to develop a profound respect for the infinite diversity of species in the flowers, fruits, medicinal herbs, and vegetables that we grow.

Commercial farms that grow a monoculture of species do not have this appreciation for diversity. And they impose this limited view of food available on their customers when they sell only one type of tomato, one type of cucumber.

A century ago, commercial seed houses offered 288 varieties of beets. By 1983 only (17) seventeen of those varieties were found in the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation, a US government facility in Colorado.

When you grow your food at home, you will be amazed at the differences of varieties, out-of-this-world flavors, textures, smells in food all available at your fingertips.

Another benefit to learning to grow food using permaculture is realizing how abundant nature is. Each sunflower you grow will yield (1) one to (2) two thousand seeds!

A quintessential symbol of abundance used in the Philippines is the many uses or yields of one coconut tree. The coconut tree yields the fruit, but also the coconut "milk" or juice used in flavoring many curries. The oil from the coconut is used in cooking and making lotions. Its bark is used as firewood and in homebuilding. Its leaves as thatched roofing for nipa huts. The husk of the coconut fruit is used for polishing wooden floors, and the coconut coir is used as a medium for growing food or even for starting fires.