7 Amazing Reasons to Grow Food -

Growing my own food is absolutely one of the best ideas I’ve incorporated into our family’s life. If only I had started this earlier, but as the saying goes: “better late then never.” Growing food is as natural as it comes. After all, grocery stores have not been around forever. Who knows if they will always be around.

Seven Amazing Reasons to Grow Food

There are many reasons to grow your own food but I’ll just list the seven amazing reasons that come to my mind.

1. When you grow your food, you know exactly what you’re getting.

You’re able to source good seeds, especially non-GMO. You know the source from which your food is coming from, your own hands. You know the food is sown and grown in love. From the time it’s a seed in the ground until it hits the table, its authentic. No harmful chemicals and sprays means no fake foods.

The food you grow does not sit in a truck or plane for days or weeks waiting to arrive at a store. Nor is it sprayed with more chemicals or dipped in a solution to look as though its fresh so it can sit for more weeks on a shelf. Its not touched by a stranger who is doing who knows what. It’s touched by your hands and the hands of the ones you love.

2. Growing your own food is quite therapeutic and so good for your mental health.

There are no words to capture how it feels to be in nature, touching the earth, hearing the birds of the morning. Whether I’m sowing seeds, transplanting seedlings, pulling a few weeds, or whatever, there’s peace. Patting the soil around a seedling or picking a ripe green bean or pepper sends the feels right to my soul.

It can be quite busy or hectic in my home, but when I get in the garden and start touching the soil or watering the plants and seeing the water stream, I am put in peace and all is calm in the world. It’s time to reflect and hear my own thoughts. It’s a time to see the beauty all around that we so often ignore. When the weather warms up, I take my shoes off and ground my feet to the earth. This practice has so many documented benefits and I see why.

3. Many life lessons are learned while growing food.

One of the biggest life lessons I have learned and am continuing to learn is patience. You don’t get the harvest as soon as you plant the seed. There is time and work to be put in. I’ve also learned that the fruit tells the truth. There were times I forgot what I planted but as soon as the food came in, I knew. I saw a pepper or tomato or okra and then I knew what I had planted.

Growing food teaches you how to get ROI (Return on Investment). You see how you will plant one seed and get an abundant harvest. In addition, there seeds within the food that can be planted for the future. Seeds keep on giving… indefinitely. The best ROI, in my opinion, are fruit trees. You plant one tree, one time and the fruit keeps coming back year after year. This of course is with a little yearly maintenance.

4. Being self sufficient is one of the main reasons it even occurred to me to grow food.

In the back of my mind, I always thought it wasn’t good that someone else could literally control whether my family ate or not and we had no say so at all. We were at someone else’s mercy to feed our family. I knew this was not always the case but it was the fact.

Now I’m relieved to know that we can grow food and store it. I’m relieved that if the grocery stores ever shut down (not so farfetched), we know what to do and how to put food on the table. We cannot be controlled because we can feed ourselves. Growing food gives you peace of mind. I need all the peace of mind I can get!

5. Growing food allows you to teach real life skills to your family, whether they are your children, nieces or nephews, etc.

Growing food is knowledge you can pass down that cannot be taken away. At the end of the day, we all ant to eat. We all need to eat. When you think about it, we work to get money to buy food. Therefore, growing food is the real flex.

6. Growing food is easier than ever because of technology.

If you have no idea where to start (start with this blog of course) there are SO many avenues with which you can learn. Tons of internet resources exist that did not exist a few decades ago. Books are unnumerable, as well as magazines.

Anything and everything you want or need to know can be looked up at lightening speed, including how to grow your own food. There’s simply no excuse. Space is no longer an issue because you can grow in containers indoors or outdoors. You can grow with water or soil. The ideas are endless.

7. Growing food saves money!

In addition to being fresh and handled with love and care, the savings is incredible. Growing food costs you patience and persistence. The amount of food that comes from one seed supersedes all expectations.

Whenever we grow food, we always have more than enough. There is no greater feeling better than needing some cucumbers, tomatoes, and lettuce for a salad and going to the grocery store located in your own back yard.

No gas spent. No time spent standing in long lines. No jacked-up prices. Just fresh, yummy produce from your own garden. Makes me smile just thinking about it. I love sending the children out to get okra and then watching them cook it and we all enjoy eating it and all it costs is time.