The farm to table movement in the last few years have brought back the joy of growing your own food. This activity is not limited to the lucky few with a large back yard. You can have a veggie garden from the balcony of an apartment. If your balcony is too small for your passion, there are community gardens like the one just started at O'Donnell Park in Belmont. We often times visited the community garden at Beresford Park in San Mateo when we were living in an apartment nearby. These days we enjoy looking at front lawns that have been converted to a veggie garden.
So much has been written about the health benefits of gardening. My personal thoughts on how gardening contributes to good health is that it brings you outdoors where you get fresh air and sun which contributes to the production of vitamin D. Most people are vitamin D deficient and don't even know it. This vitamin regulates blood, reduces stress and tension, helps fight depression, improve overall skin health by reducing wrinkles, etc. Aside from the health benefits of gardening, growing your own food gives you a sense of connection to nature. You become more aware of the creatures living in the soil you walk on everyday. You come to appreciate the earthworms working your soil (and some not so good pests!). You welcome the bees polinating your fruit trees and the ladybugs that eat the aphids. If you ever sow your own seeds, you know how satisfying it is to nurture that seed to a mature plant (it's like raising a child). And if you have provided everything it needed (sun, water and nutrients), you get a bountiful harvest. By growing your own food, you will experience flavors in those veggies that are often times lost from commercial production because you can wait to harvest the veggie/fruit at its peak flavor. One summer I brought our over abundance of tomatoes to the office to share and one gal said that it has been a long time since she tasted tomatoes so good! You can also experience new flavors by planting heirloom seeds which are non-GMO...more to come on this topic at a later date. I hope the farm to table movement continues for years to come as there are many benefits to growing your own food! Would love to hear the benefits you have experienced from growing your own food and any favorite variety of veggie that you have found to have amazing taste!
