Why Now Is the Time to Create a Home Vegetable Garden

It's been over a year that the world is fighting against the pandemic. While things have certainly improved it seems that the battle is yet to be over. While you are locked down at home, it allows you to take your home garden more seriously. However, before you search for gardening supplies and landscape companies near me, it’s important to dive deeper into the topic.

Reasons for Creating a Home Vegetable Garden

1. A lesson from the past - Whenever the system is under immense stress, the country pulls together with collective effort. During both World Wars, there were millions of victory gardens planted throughout the United States to overcome a food shortage. The nation got almost half of its fresh veggies from them. People made innovative use of all kinds of spaces like empty lots, backyards and fire escapes to grow fresh produce. While there is no food shortage today, growing your veggies can be very rewarding.

1. Empty shelves - While there is no food shortage, certain items are flying off the shelves with the hint of new news or even rumors. Necessities like potatoes and beans are cleared out with the news of shipments getting stuck. That’s why growing your veggies can be a fail-safe measure to have access to some vegetables and have a nutritionally balanced diet in uncertain times.

1. More nutrition - Industrial farming helps to feed a lot of people. However, it also makes absolute use of land to the point of abuse. As a result, a lot of plants grown today have less nutrition compared to half a century ago. With your vegetable garden, you can grow organic vegetables with minimal and preferably no use of synthetic materials. You don’t need to depend on GMOs that sacrifice nutrition in favor of size so that you can get more productivity per acre of land. Hence, your crops grow healthier and more nutritious.

1. A way to spend your time during the lockdown - When everyone is locked in their home, they are watching hundreds of DIY videos to pick up a new niche or get back to their old hobbies. Gardening can be a great way to spend excess time during the pandemic since it can be laborious and can give you a bit of workout and also helps you spend time outdoors even if it’s within a few feet of your door. In the end, you get delicious fresh veggies to cook at the backyard barbeque.

Benefits of a Home Vegetable Garden

It may be simple for suburban homes with backyards, and it may seem complicated for urban apartments with small balconies and rooftops. However, it’s undeniable that you will get a lot of benefits in the end:

1. Fresh veggies taste better - If you have ever taken a bite out of a fresh tomato from the field you know it tastes a lot sweeter, delicious, and fresh compared to store-bought tomatoes. Even with the existing efficiencies of modern supply chains and cold storage, vegetables travel hundreds if not thousands of miles to reach your nearest store. That means there are a few days or even weeks between the harvest and when the veggies are eaten. It’s only natural for the quality to drop. With a vegetable garden at home, you can take the vegetables from the soil to the plate on the same day. It tastes better and has more nutrition.

1. You get vitamin D - While you may get vitamin D from the fresh produce, you get even more from working on your vegetable garden under the sun. you get your daily dose of vitamin D from the sunshine. It’s an essential nutrient that helps you maintain bone health and also prevents many diseases.

1. Physical activity - When you aren’t rushing to catch the subway, run from one department to another or, even getting your daily walk, it’s easy to put on a few pounds. The pandemic has locked everyone at home with no exercise and working out at home can be difficult for many. Gardening requires you to make or buy your compost, mix it with the soil, sow the seeds, and water them regularly. It’s a lot of manual labor and physical activity that’s good for your body. It’s a mild form of both strength and stamina training that keeps you healthy and in shape.

1. You save money - When you buy seeds for a few bucks and make them grow with nothing but hard work, water, and sunshine, you can save a lot of money at the supermarket. If you decide to grow highly valued and exotic vegetables, you can save even more. Other than that, you also get a lot of exercise without paying the monthly gym subscription.

1. Reduce your carbon footprint - Even when you decide to buy organic produce from the supermarket, you have to spend gas money to reach the store and the vegetables have to use a lot of transportation to do the same. That’s a lot of fossil fuel that burns and pollutes the atmosphere and contributes to global warming. Every time veggies are ready for harvest in your garden, you don’t buy from the store and reduce your carbon footprint. This helps the environment, even if it’s a tiny little bit.

1. Relieve stress - When you are outside with nature and fresh air, free from the confines of your home, you are more relaxed and feel rejuvenated. You feel less stress that otherwise builds up from confinement. It also improves your mood, and you take away a sense of accomplishment when you pick up your gardening tools one last time for the day.

As you can see, the pandemic is a great time for growing your home vegetable garden and developing a new fulfilling hobby through it. However, your backyard may need some work to segregate an area for growing your veggies. A google search with “landscape companies near me” might be a good start.