Growing Your Vegetables Organically

In this day and age people are finding that they have to tighten their wallets and one way that they are doing this is by growing some of their own food. Yes the old veggie patch is becoming popular again as people try and save the environment, their health and their bank balance.

The carbon emissions cost of bringing food to the shops for people to buy has had a big impact on our environment. The ‘green’ side of us is thinking about buying local, but growing is even better. Gardens are a little way in which we can all help our planet.

The cost of food is going up all the time and while we can’t control the cost of a lot of things food is the one thing that we cut back on when times are tough. Growing our own fruit and vegetables is a great way to help the budget. Some things don’t cost anything to grow for example shallots/scallions/green onions whatever you call them are a great thing to pop in your garden. When you cut the end off of the green onion you plant it into soil and it will grow, just think you never have to buy green onions again!

As far as our health, if we’re growing our own food we have much more control which is why a lot of home gardens are grown using organic gardening techniques. What is organic gardening? In a nutshell it’s growing things without the use of chemicals.

Well it is true that studies have been inconclusive about whether or not organic foods are better for you or not, but consider these two facts –

1. 60% of all weed killers are considered potential cancer risks.
2. 30% of insecticides are also seen as possible cause of cancer.

Do we really want to put chemicals that are considered cancer risks into our bodies?  

Another reason to garden organically is that a lot of the chemicals that are used in fertilizing, pesticides and weed killers actually leech a lot of the minerals out of our soils.   This is why so many soils are deficient in minerals such as selenium which is a mineral that is essential to keeping our immune system healthy.

According to the Rodale Institute if we could switch our agricultural industry to an organic industry the US could reduce it’s carbon emissions by 10%.   Now as one person it’s hard to change the whole agricultural industry, but if everyone who decided to grow their own food did so organically, doesn’t that have to help?