Growing your own food is possibly the single most rewarding aspect of gardening. The knowledge that the food on your plate is the product of your own work and the method of its growth is entirely controlled by you holds a great appeal for many gardeners.
Once you start growing your own food you begin to appreciate the seasonal nature of food. You will know when is the right time to pick a ripe fruit or vegetable and will understand the difference of taste between a forced in a greenhouse fruit or vegetable to a fruit or vegetable grown at its right time. Nowadays we are used to have a wide variety of fruits and vegetables available to buy all year round, no meter if is their right time to grow or not. Growing your own food is enjoyable and highly rewarding and removes the uncertainty that can come from buying food.
You don’t need acres to grow your own fresh food. You don’t even need a dedicated vegetable garden to grow edible plants. You can very easy to incorporate vegetables into an ornamental garden, especially those with attractive foliage such as salad crops and swiss chard or those with flowers like chives. Containers and window-boxes can also be used to grow vegetables, as now you can find small variety of almost any vegetable. Tomatoes, peppers and even potatoes are suitable for this kind of cultivation.
If you decided to grow your own food in your garden and this is the first time your are doing this than it is worth remembering few starting tips: start small, grow what you want to eat, work out how much you need to grow and not the last one – learn from others.
Start small – it is better to get a feel for how to grow edible plants and gradually build up from there. Underestimating the time commitment required can turn what should be an enjoyable adventure into a chore. First start with a small patch, see if you have the necessary time to maintain it and then consider a larger plot.
Grow what you want to eat – it sounds obvious, but sometimes it is easy to be tempted into growing plants that you think you should grow, rather than those that you actually enjoy eating. Grow plants that you and you family consume, don’t try to grow plants just because they look good or other people grow them because it will only be a waist of time and you will never eat them.
Work out how much you need to grow – a large family will, of course, need more food than a small one. You also need to decide whether your plot will supplement purchased fruits and vegetables or you intend to aim for self-sufficiency. In the last case you should also think that you might need a larger plot.
Learn from others – go to a gardening club if there is one in your local area, attend to their meetings, read books about vegetable gardening and look for practical advice. Don’t give up if you fail in the beginning, no one was born gardener.