Joys of Growing Your Own Food (Some of them, at least)

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I love plants! I love growing them and eating them..and a whole lot more.

One of the top reasons I love growing my own food is being able to grow things I want to eat, and especially things I wouldn't be able to have access to otherwise.

Cabbage leaves harvested from my garden yesterday.

Case in point: the cabbage leaves I harvested yesterday. Believe it or not: these two leaves are the smaller leaves from a plant I have basically neglected for a while! (It is on an automatic drip watering system).

They are an open leaved variety that is simply beautiful to me, grows well where I am, rarely gets spicy hot (if ever), is bolt resistant (so does not go to seed fast and I can keep harvesting for longer), and is great for wrappers in wraps (or chopped in ways cabbage is often used).

Another example: the top pic here is "Janie" created by arranging "Armenian" Cucumbers I grew last year (and a tomato for the dot). Yes! They did grow in those shapes all by themselves (no coaxing or training or manually bending or anything). They made lots of great meals.

Plants are amazing!!

Of course there are SO many other reasons as well, like: there's no way to have food fresher than fresh picked (or even eaten straight off the plant if you feel like it!); reduces needs for you to go somewhere to buy the things you grow and the need for those things to be transported to where you would buy them (eco-friendly, time-saving, and budget-friendly all in one!); you know what conditions they have grown in (and you can do something about that directly); it covers many of the elements of health all at the same time (fresh air, sunshine, movement, nature, nurture, creativity, sense of accomplishment, etc).

I could go on and on with all the benefits, but I'll stop at that.

As the readers of my blog know, there have been times when we had organic farms where we grew produce for a living, and other times when I had a garden in my yard.

I have also had times when I went on long hiking and/or camping trips where I grew some fresh things on the go. When we were full-timing it in our RV travel trailer around the US Mainland I had a couple long planters with herbs and some baby greens, occasionally settling in a place where I could garden in the ground for a while too.

My latest foray has been experimenting with gardening in a semi-arid high desert in the Southwest.

Until we figured out irrigation. the seasons, and the weather extremes, the only things I planted were in pots and doing sprouts.

While growing sprouts doesn't check off as many of the elements of health as growing other plants, it does a lot of them, and is a great place to start if you have interest in trying this out.

Warning: it could lead to other more seriously addictive and joyful gardening behaviors! ;)

Like the cabbage leaves in my pic, the sprouts I grow are ones I want to eat and wouldn't have access to otherwise.

If you are up for trying growing your own sprouts you should know that I am in the process of completing a mini video course on growing sprouts with me. This can be the first step toward growing more of your own food. I will send out another email with the details when it's ready.

In the next post, enjoy this recipe of what I made last night with freshly harvested homegrown: very large cabbage leaf (pictured), sprouts, and herbs.