Introduction
Raising your own fruits and vegetables in a personal garden provides one with a very satisfying experience. The taste of the home-grown fruits and vegetables is incomparable to those that are sold in the supermarket and such organic produce is even healthier since there no use of pesticides or herbicides is made. Also, most of the vegetables lose some of the healthy nutrients in them after they have been picked (Bruning & Lierberman 22); growing your own greens means that you can have them right after gathering them, thus obtaining the maximum possible health benefits from them.
Main body
This is certainly a great advantage to the vegetable gardeners. However it is not the sole one. Home grown fruits and vegetables are popular due to other reasons as well. One such is that gardening offers with a wide variety of benefits to your body. The fresh air and the exercise together make a perfect combination for a perfect health. In addition, it is said that working in natural surroundings leads to reduced stress and increased wellness (Francis & Hester 6).
Another major benefit of home grown fruits and vegetables happens to be the financial savings that result due to this; this is more the case if the home garden is planned to be for a long term. The prices of food have been rising (Geneflow 28) and at such a moment the best option could be to grow your own fruits and vegetables. Home vegetable and fruit gardens have become extremely popular now, that is during the recession.
There is an opposing view that home gardening does not lead to any economic benefits. The argument for this is that although you are working hard in order to grow your very own fruits and vegetables, you can easily get the very same items in the market and even at a lower cost. This is certainly possible since the professional growers would be having their huge farms on which they produce on a large scale. The result is the same products as yours but at a reduced price.
Although the above argument has some weight in it, there are various factors that prove otherwise.
Caring for your very own vegetable garden would certainly allow you to save money. Such a garden should be growing all kinds of vegetables and fruits that you require in everyday use. All you would need to do is to buy the variety that you want and you can simply cultivate that in your personal garden. This would result in a whole harvest of vegetables and fruits which you might want. The money spent for the purchase of the seeds will be only a small percentage of the money that you would spend for buying the same products in a market. You can produce huge amounts of fruits and vegetables, all in your backyard. The extra can be distributed or sold, or you can even get it canned for later use. That again means less purchasing of items from supermarkets.
Apart from this, it is much cheaper if you buy a packet of seeds and grow the plants yourself. For example, you will be spending less if you purchase lettuce seeds as compared to if you purchase a head of lettuce. Seeds certainly are cheaper than the fully grown plants.
A varying point here can be that there are expenses other than just the seeds in home gardening. For example, there have to be purchases made of certain other things, like tools and the gardening clothes. Plus, there has to be some planning done and effort is required for the job.
Although all these above mentioned factors may lead to the view that home gardening is more expensive than simply buying the required items from the market, it is not wholly true. In spite of these factors there is a belief that producing your own fruits and vegetables does result in substantial amounts of savings. The tools only have to be bought once and if you find them too expensive there is always the choice of second hand stores from where quality implements would be available at a cheaper cost. Plus, these would last for at least a couple of years and so the cost of them would not need to be repeated every often, which is again a benefit. Therefore, it is rightly said that home gardens lead to advantages in the financial area.
One such saving is in the transportation. If you have your garden you can obtain the required food whenever you wish, and without even going far or spending money. In the case of no garden you would have to go to the market and make the purchases. This would result in spending on transportation as well. Thus, one economic benefit of home gardens is savings from transport. This is a hidden saving and it might possibly seem to be inconsequential but if you go ahead and add up the costs that incur due to transportation only then you would realize the savings that you can make by travelling less in this era when the fuel prices are soaring higher and higher.
It is possible that initial expenses of home gardening are high but once a person gets into it he can save a lot. For example, seeds from the tomatoes can be saved and used instead of buying packets of seeds before each season. Also, there is no requirement of chemicals for the plants and the produce would be free from herbicides and pesticides; another advantage for good health, and this means that you would be healthier plus saving money. When you would be growing such “organic” food you would be saving even more since the cost of organic food in the markets is much higher than that of non organic produce.
There can be the expenses of soil builders. However, this can also be avoided by using manure instead of fertilizers; the former being cheaper as well as more environmentally friendly. Manure can even be obtained free of cost if you look around and see if there are any pets (for example, guinea pigs) in the neighbourhood. Or compost can be built using just anything at all, like the kitchen waste that includes egg shells, tea bags, peels of fruits, apple cores, etc. Then there is the option of heaping up leaves in the autumn season and allowing them to rot. This could then be used later. Thus, you would be getting your soil better which would allow for better quality of your fruits and vegetables, and this for no payment at all.
Also, water would be required for the gardening of fruits and vegetables and that would also lead to an expense. Although this would be the case in spite of it there would be savings. Water can be easily obtained. In the case where a person has no issues with having inorganic food, he can even use the water from washing to irrigate his fruits and vegetables. Apart from saving water expense, this would also allow for the soil to become more fertile due to the detergents in the water from washing. Probably there would also be no additional need of fertilizers or manure and this would again result in savings, since there would be no need to spend on fertilizers.
There are direct and indirect cost savings from having a home garden. The direct ones have been mentioned above; that you would not have to spend on transport to get the required items nor would you need to spend much to get the food. Apart from this you would also save because now you wouldn’t be paying the price for the transport of those fruits and vegetables from farms to the grocery shop, or for the salaries of the drivers who transported the produces from the farm.
Another way of saving up would be to offer your pet rabbit or guinea pig with the vegetables from your garden instead of going out and buying special food for them. This would not mean that you do not care for your pets. In fact, the natural and home grown fruits and vegetables would turn out to be healthier than the canned food that you might have been previously buying for them.
The more indirect savings involve issues like health. Since you would be having home grown fruits and vegetables you would eat more of natural foods as compared to the industrialized ones. This would lead to improved health and there will be savings since you would not need to visit a doctor, or to purchase medications for matters like heart disease, stroke, and obesity. This would also be due to the fact that you would be having organic foods, absent of any chemicals which are normally present in the market items.
Recently there had been a book published which deals with a study conducted regarding the choice of food that people normally make and how it affects them (Pollan 2008). The author of the book also presents a conclusion, stating that we only need to change our eating habits in minor ways and we would be much healthier. Some of his suggestions include eating more of leaves rather than seeds, eating more of organic instead of the processed and industrialized foods, and eating more of grass-fed rather than corn-fed when considering meat. The first two suggestions can easily be complied with if one has a home garden where he grows fruits and vegetables himself.
Also, consuming more of natural food, and specifically fruits and vegetables, allows for a person to reduce his weight. He does not need to waste his money at slimming centres neither pay a doctor to suggest him a controlled diet that would allow him to lose weight. His medication would be right there in front of his house, and without any hassle.
Conclusion
Taking into consideration all the factors discussed above it can be said that home grown food certainly allows for substantial savings and helps in the tougher economic times. Also, it is fun and easy, making it all the more attractive.
Work Cited
Bruning, Nancy Pauling & Lierberman, Shari. The Real Vitamin and Mineral Book: The Definitive Guide to Designing Your Personal Supplement Program. 4th ed. United States: Penguin Press, 2007.
Francis, Mark & Hester, Randolph T. The Meaning of Gardens. Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1992.
“Nutritional Security and Biodiversity: Meet the Women who strengthen the Link.” Geneflow: A Magazine about Agricultural Biodiversity. 2008: 28-, Bioversity International. Web.
Pollan, Michael. In Defence of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. United States: Penguin Press, 2008.