Spring is months away. You’re craving a salad. All you can find at the grocery store are overpriced, tiny heads of iceberg lettuce or mass-produced bagged salads, neither of which are terribly appealing. You begin to dream of fresh, organic, healthy, exotic greens, then dismiss the idea as impossible.
Growing your own salads is not impossible. In fact, growing your own salad greens and other vegetables, in a chemical-free way, is so easy, once you get started you’ll wonder why you didn’t do this sooner.
“Ruby Red” Swiss Chard seedlings.
I started growing vegetables from seed in my basement with an inexpensive and simple grow-light set-up about six years ago, and I quickly became addicted. There’s something so wonderful, so instinctive about watching seeds become seedlings, and then plants, and then larger plants from which you can harvest and cook and eat food that makes it impossible to stop once you start growing your own food.
Bronze amaranth seedlings growing in my basement.
Great Reasons to Grow Your Own Food
There are a lot of very good reasons why everyone should learn to grow food. Here are just a few of them:
- The world is an uncertain place these days. The cost of fuel is certainly on the rise, and with it, the cost of food. It is much cheaper to grow your own vegetables and some fruits and herbs than it is to buy them.
- Growing your own food means you’ll know exactly what goes into the food you harvest. If you’re opposed to using chemicals to control pests and weeds in your garden, then your food will be chemical- and pesticide-free, too.
- When children see where their food comes from, they gain an wider understanding of the world’s food system and the energy and time required to grow it. Growing your own food is a great way to teach kids some basic science skills. And kids provide cheap labour in the garden!
- When you grow your own food, you have complete control over which foods and which variety of foods you can grow and ultimately, enjoy at your dinner table. The selection of foods available for growing is much wider than what you will find at your local grocery store. We’ve grown many different kinds and colours of heirloom tomatoes, Asian eggplants, jewel-toned beets and beautiful squash and pumpkins, most of which we’d never find locally.
- Gardening is excellent exercise! Digging and weeding burn calories. And if you get the munchies while you’re working, the closest food will always be healthy.
- Gardening is good not just for the mind, but for the soul. My favourite moments last summer took place in the evening, when the yard had cooled and the birds were calling out their evening songs. I would bring my son Nate outside after his bath, put him in his exersaucer, and he would watch me weed the vegetable garden. It was a wonderful way for us to wind down for the evening.
I call this “Trippy Tomato Salad,” made from several varieties of heirloom tomatoes. The basil and nasturtiums on the plate were grown at home, too.
Getting the Gear for Growing Your Own Food
Convinced, but don’t know where to start? This is precisely the situation my sister-in-law found herself in recently. I went on a little shopping trip with her to show her what she needed to get her new little grow-op started. Here’s what we bought (all prices are approximate, in Canadian dollars):
- A basic shop light fixture, Home Depot, $16.99. It was wired already, so all she’ll have to do is plug it into the timer she also picked up (also Home Depot, $14.99). Seedlings need 14-16 hours of daylight, so using a 24-hour timer takes the memory work out of turning the light on and off.
- A two-pack of cool fluorescent bulbs, Home Depot, $7.99. A two-pack of warm fluorescent bulbs, Home Depot, $8.99.
- A bag of seed starting mix, Canadian Tire, $6.98. A seed-starting tray containing 72 cell packs for sowing, $4.99, Canadian Tire.
The total, not including seeds, was about $65.00 including taxes. She had everything set up and ready to go that same evening. You can, too!
What’s Next?
This is just the first in a series of posts here at Curvy Girl Guide this spring and summer about growing your own vegetables to create wonderful home-grown dishes. In the next post, I’ll tell you exactly how to get your seedlings started with the equipment listed above! I hope you’ll join me this gardening season in growing your own food, too.
Oh this makes me SO jealous. Our number one “con” to our city condo is tht we have no outdoor space- no balcony, no roof deck, nada. The city owns the small patch of grass in the front, so I have to beg my gardening coworkers to bring me boxes of goodies that I cook or bake for them in return. (For instance, a box of zucchinis will earn you a loaf of zuccini bread from me….)
What you need is a plot in a community garden! Good idea, though, offering to swap baked goods for vegetables.
There are some breeds of lettuce that will grow and you can pull the outside leaves off them for dinner but the plant carries on growing
You can grow potatos and carrots in buckets on your balcony or yard (if you don’t have somewhere proper to plant them). The carrots might come out a little bent and knobbly in places but I promise they still taste like carrots lol.
We grew tomatoes too – they can be planted in buckets and then tied to a wall to hold them up.
That’s right, Han, they’re called “cut and come again” lettuce varieties. I usually harvest all of my lettuce that way, anyway.
Some other great ideas there for small spaces!
I’d totally let you grow vegetables for me.
Someday when I retire and have a condo in Florida, I’ll totally grow vegetables for you.
your trippy tomato salad ALMOST looks too good to eat! I’m jealous, maybe this will be the year I attempt to outsmart the raccoon, bunnies and deer.
Heirloom tomatoes are my favourite kind to grow because of all the funky colours!
Squirrels steal EVERYTHING here and what they don’t get, the birds do. So we got some self-watering containers that we keep in the screened-in part of our backyard. The area with sun is pretty limited…just about 3′ around the perimeter of our pool. Only thing I’ll suggest if you have limited space and are doing patio gardening is to make sure to get “determinate” plants, not “indeterminate” – at least for tomatoes. I planted an indeterminate grape tomato plant a few years ago and the ends of the vines (not branches…these things had 10-12′ VINES!) were dipping into the pool because there was no more room on the patio!
My latest blog entry: The 2011 New York trip http://sharonheg.wordpress.com
Squirrels steal EVERYTHING here and what they don’t get, the birds do. So we got some self-watering containers that we keep in the screened-in part of our backyard. The area with sun is pretty limited…just about 3′ around the perimeter of our pool. Only thing I’ll suggest if you have limited space and are doing patio gardening is to make sure to get “determinate” plants, not “indeterminate” – at least for tomatoes. I planted an indeterminate grape tomato plant a few years ago and the ends of the vines (not branches…these things had 10-12′ VINES!) were dipping into the pool because there was no more room on the patio!
My latest blog entry: The 2011 New York trip
You’re so right, Sharon, I’ve had both determinate and indeterminate tomatoes in my garden and the indeterminate plants just keep going and going…
Those tomatoes are making my mouth water!
Mine too! I can’t wait until it’s time to harvest the Paul Robeson tomatoes I have going in my basement right now.
My parents have a garden that’s as big as my house! Seriously. At least now that I no longer live there, I no longer have to weed. Although the last two years, the deer have eaten EVERYTHING. No fresh green beans. No cantaloupe. No tomatoes. It’s so very sad.
I love this post encouraging people to get out there and grow their own produce when/if they can..but there are a few things I just want to put out there..
First..you mention organic..as if it’s the ultimate thing to achieve to..and while I would love to be able to grow everything without any pesticides/etc. (we have 300 acres of fruits and vegetables) …it’s just not always possible. While it would be great if everything could be grown without pesticides, herbicides and fungicides – that’s not actually what organic means… There are actually organic chemicals that are approved for use..they simply have to be derived from a natural source….they just can’t be synthetically made….and a lot of THOSE chemicals which are natural…are actually MORE toxic then other chemicals available for use by non organic farmers. And while on the topic of toxicity and LD levels, the levels used in foods grown in north america work out to be far less then things that most people are exposed to in other things in their daily life…caffeine, cleaning things, the list goes on and on – all MUCH more toxic then chemicals used on fruits and vegetables…so so SO many more times toxic. If you’d like to read more on that..I can send you links/articles…but as a farmer in south/central Ontario..just something that resonates with me and makes a little frustrated because I feel like people just don’t know/don’t understand a lot about it. It would be nice if we didn’t have to use anything..and while it may be possible on a small scale..on a large scale, trying to provide healthy, fresh, local food for thousands of people..it’s just not possible unless people are REALLY willing to pay what it would ACTUALLY cost..especially if you think of things like weevils that can take over entire ACRES in no time, before you even know they’re there. Plus, food prices right now don’t even come close to reflecting what they SHOULD be…let alone if you accounted for the possibility of losing tens of thousands of dollars worth of crops because you weren’t using a pesticide that has a lower LD level then bleach, soap, etc.. The pricing of produce is a lot of the reason why the numbers of farms is dwindling and so much more of the produce we have available is from far away places…where laws on chemicals is sometimes non existent…but I’m rambling and getting into completely different topics and probably not making sense anymore.
Secondly…you say that it’s much cheaper to do it yourself..and while yes, it TECHNICALLY is….you do have to account for your time. One of the hardest things for me..is trying to explain to people WHY produce costs so much..is because it is so labour intensive. Planting, weeding, watering, picking, etc. etc. etc. – it all takes lots of time – which costs money…because..well..if I’m going to keep doing this for a living…I need to produce enough to make a living..but I have to PAY myself to do it…and I have to pay people to help me…so while if may be cheaper to grow it yourself..if you were paying yourself for your TIME to be able to do that..you’d find what you were ACTUALLY paying for the produce you grew yourself..and you’d be shocked at just how much growing your own stuff costs you – if you want to make minimum wage, that is…
While I know that your doing it because you love it, because you want to know what goes into your food, for that self satisfaction – things that are the reasons why I’m doing this for a living – just like anyone else who has a job…I also have to make ends meet..and I think it’s important to realise just how expensive those things actually are…and why you do pay what you pay for produce.
Sorry if I seem like a debby downer..I really don’t want to be..and am excited that you’re talking about something that I’m actually really passionate and interested in (you don’t find too many 20 somethings farming for a living these days..) …but there are just some issues which make me want to share information because it is so pertinent and personal to my entire existence..and really – everyone elses too…things that I feel people just don’t know..because they don’t have access to information..or..just haven’t looked into it..I’m not really sure…because it seems so second nature to me as I’ve grown up doing this..
ANYWAY. Just wanted to put some of those things out there…don’t want to be a jerk..and hope i didn’t come across as one! And on that note..I have to go back outside and do some maple syrup stuff…the season is upon us!
PS – I love heirloom tomatoes..we’ve been growing more and more of them each year..and they make your plate come alive with colour! Colourful plates are one of my favourite things of summer!
My grandfather had a huge garden for as long as I can remember (mmmm, corn), and my uncle still grows a garden now. My husband has a small garden in the back yard. This year he planted beans, cucumbers, squash, peppers and tomatoes. He wants to double it in size for next year. I want to plant some spinach and broccoli when fall is here.
He built a fence around it and overs it with netting to keep the birds and squirrels from getting it.
My husband built a great veggie box for us a couple of years ago – it’s a raised bed, in a U shape so we can reach everything. It has lattice on the back so the viney stuff can grab on. I love it!
We’ve done seeds a few times, but I’m wondering – would it be as good/better to just start with veggie plants from the greenhouse locally? It seems to me that we’ve NEVER used a whole seed packet and I feel like it is more wasteful .
I always tried to grow different veggies in my garden. When I moved to an apartment and only had a small balcony, I put a pot out full of soil and placed some tomato seeds inside. It bloomed so fast and I could eat my fresh salad every day!
Thanks so much for this post. I have a few packets of seeds from Seed Savers that I was motivated enough to buy but then I got bogged down in the actual GROWING of them. The people out there make it seem so freaking complicated I got totally intimidated.
Now can you tell me … is it true about having to acclimate the seedlings to the outside temps doing a few hours at a time outside in increasingly longer intervals? I’d love to know your thoughts.
I put it into practice … my seedlings are growing well!
http://jesser.org/?p=2301
That’s awesome, thanks for following up to let me know!
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