Growing Your Own Food

Growing your own food can be intimidating and time consuming if you’re new to the idea. However, the health benefits of growing your own food and immediately eating fruits and veggies after you harvest them are totally worth spending a little time, energy and money into growing your own food.

When you’re buying produce from a conventional super market, the amount of nutrients left in the fruit or vegetable has been significantly reduced. The amount of available nutrients that are lost from picking fruits and veggies before they are ripe, and during the transport time to the store shelves means you are not getting the nutrients you think you are by eating store bought veggies. Not to mention, the nutrient deficiencies in our over-used soil decreases the available nutrients in our fruits and vegetables before they are even picked. Insuring you are buying locally grown vegetables through a CSA or Farmer’s market is one way to get more nutrients from your food. However, even with certain vegetables, like broccoli, which loses about half its nutrients within 48 hours of being picked, buying locally still means you are not getting the maximum nutrient content (see this article by Chris Kresser for more info).

Luckily, growing your own food doesn’t have to be as complicated or as much of a time commitment as you may think. Even if you don’t have a lot of outdoor space, which we don’t, it’s still possible to grow some of your own food and have the benefits of fresh fruit or vegetables.

When we found VEG Buddies, we knew they would be perfect for our patio. We were excited that we could still supplement our CSA with some of our own homegrown veggies, despite having just given up our yard and garden when we sold our house.

We’ve had the VEG Buddies for about 6 months now. For our first round of plants we grew kale, mint, basil, salad greens, heirloom tomatoes, Anaheim peppers, and beets.

We are currently growing bok choy, broccoli, thyme, oregano, rosemary, kale, cherry tomatoes, and spinach.

I decided to plant lots of leafy greens because I use them quite often to make salads, and those are the most important vegetables to eat as close to harvest as possible to maximize nutrients. I also love having fresh herbs around, as they add a ton of flavor to cooking, but can be expensive and tough to keep around without them spoiling.

If you’re looking for more plants, you can also get the VEG Hub, but this requires a bit more space than we have available at the moment.

We have been incredibly happy with how easy it is to plant and maintain the VEG Buddies. It took just a few minutes for us to plant initially, and then we just fill up the containers about once a week (sometimes less pending on how hot it is). Some plants require some pruning (i.e. mint and basil need to be pruned before they flower), but I’ve found it quite enjoyable to go outside and maintain them for a few minutes here and there. All of our plants have grown quickly and have produced good quantities of veggies.

If you think you might be interested in one of the VEG products, check out the VEG website and contact them with any questions you may have!