Ten Good Reasons to Tend a Vegetable Garden
We Americans spend a lower percentage of our annual income on food than
do the citizens of any other developed nation. With food so cheap and
abundant and time so scarce, why do some of us continue putting up with
the blackflies, the blisters, the backaches, the sunburns, the struggle
with beetles and root rots, deer and woodchucks, arming ourselves with
trowels and hoes to put in yet another vegetable garden?
This spring, I'll plant my 35th vegetable garden in the hardscrabble till of
the hillside behind my house. I can hardly wait! I could come up with 100 good
reasons to tend a vegetable garden, but I offer these 10 of the best Flavor
when you grow your own, you can select fruits and vegetable varieties bred for
flavor and pick them at their peak of ripeness and taste.
- Health Growing your own makes it easier to get the minimum "five-a-day" servings
of veggies and fruits the experts now recommend for health. Recent research confirms
that most common fruits and vegetables come packed not only with the vitamins and
minerals already known to support good health, but also with "phytonutrients"
demonstrated to boost the immune system, retard the aging process, and help heal
or prevent many chronic diseases.
- Exercise Gardening is good exercise, especially if you take a pass on all the
latest power tools and put your muscle to the tasks of digging, turning and spreading
compost, collecting and spreading mulch, hoeing and picking rocks. Activities like
these burn calories, build muscle and strengthen the heart and lungs.
- Energy savings Food gardening is one of the few human activities that can actually
produce more energy than gets consumed in the process. That's because plants make their
own food from soil minerals, water and solar energy. Of course, a garden that maintains
a positive energy balance requires making thoughtful choices about how many gasoline-powered
garden tools and how much fossil-fuel based fertilizer and pesticides you'll use and how many
synthetic materials your garden will consume.
- Dollar savings Even a small vegetable garden can save money. To ensure savings, though,
a backyard gardener needs to stick to the basic tools and supplies and keep a tight rein
on the temptation to own all the newest gadgets. For the biggest savings in energy, dollars
and space, look into intensive gardening, the art of producing a lot of food in a small
space. With good planning that includes strategies such as succession planting,
intercropping and cool-cellar storage of cabbage, squash, carrots beets and onions,
New Hampshire gardeners can eat something "fresh" from their own gardens year-round.
- Education No other venue comes close to a backyard garden for providing children
(or adults, for that matter) with hands-on lessons in botany, invertebrate zoology, weather,
hydrology, the cycles of life, death and physical decay, and the fact that we all depend
utterly on green plants for our sustenance.
- Waste reduction/recycling Compost piles can transform kitchen scraps, leaves and yard
wastes into a rich soil-improving amendment. Households can recycle newspapers and flattened
cardboard boxes into weed-suppressing mulch materials. Gardeners find new uses for plastic
milk jugs, old tires (great potato planters) foam meat and vegetable trays from the
supermarket (seed-starting containers) and a host of other household castoffs.
- Maintaining a desirable natural aesthetic, even in cities The sight of a well-maintained
vegetable garden delights the eye of neighbors and passers-by alike. Gardens brighten the
landscape and attract birds and butterflies. Gardens help people feel connected, to the land
and to one another.
- Stress relief/healing You can't beat gardening for stress relief. The simple acts of
planting seeds and tending plants can restore balance and perspective during the most
wrenching life crises. Research has demonstrated that people heal faster after surgery when
exposed to natural scenery - even looking at photographs of green plants speeds recovery.
- Developing respect for "real" farmers Anyone who's ever made a serious commitment to
putting food on the family table from a home garden knows that success requires time, effort
and knowledge. A home gardener knows the heartbreak of having an almost-ripe melon crop
decimated by bacterial wilt. A home gardener who has endured three months of summer drought,
a mysterious failure of the corn crop to pollinate, or an after-dark scramble to protect
the tomatoes from an early frost can't help but develop a deep respect and gratitude for
the folks who put it all on the line and do this for a living, our living as well as their own.
With seed catalogues in the mail and retail outlets filling with seed packets, now is the time
to begin thinking and planning for this season's vegetable garden. If you didn't get your
favorite catalogue in the mail, go take a look at it on line. Locate tried-and -true varieties
as well as hot new favorites this winter so you aren't stuck this spring with what's leftover
after the early birds get theirs.
Call the UNH Cooperative Extension's Family, Home & Garden Education Center's Info-Line toll free
at 1- 877-398-4769 for "Practical Solutions to Everyday Questions." Trained volunteers are available
to answer your questions Monday through Friday from 9:00am to 2:00pm.
By Peg Boyles, Writer/Editor University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension
