Nothing Like Fresh Produce!

Where vegetables are concerned, if you are buying it from a shop the nutritional value is but a tiny percentage of what food should be.
There ain’t nothing so healthy and health giving, tasty and nutritious, fresh and flavoursome as home grown vegetables, picked directly from you garden only minutes before you eat it.

And it just makes sense. Lettuces for instance could be grown by almost anybody, anywhere – perhaps even in trays on your windowsill. Supermarket lettuces may have been sprayed 20 times with various poisonous things, grown hydroponically, using massive amounts of water and oil-derived energy, and then transported half way round the world. Farm workers are paid a pittance, water tables are depleted, supermarkets and other corporate chronies are enriched and empowered even more, and traditional old heirloom varieties (specifically suited to place, weather and people) disappear – to mention just a few of the problems caused by the global market in food.

Its all very well campaigning against environmental destruction, or moaning about the power of global corporations, or the poor quality of food these days, or the increasing cost of living but one small thing that we can all do to counter these things is to start on the path of growing food for ourselves. Once you start you may well find that it escalates and you just can’t stop. Gardening is massively addictive!

At a guess, I would say that we produce 50% of our food – which increases substantially in the summer months when the gardens are jam packed full of amazing tasty delights. Each year as the soil in our raised beds improves (with the regular addition of compost, manure and woody matter) we see our work decrease and the results increase. This winter we have been able to pick leeks, lettuce, beetroots, chard, parsley continuously.

And the asparagus, brussels sprouts and broccolli that have recently been adorning our plates are outstanding!