Right now folks all over Houston and the nation are swinging into garden mode. It starts in February with the perusing of seed catalogs and culminates in a frenzy of seed starting, garden cleanup, tilling and finally planting. This is a ritual I enjoyed as a kid (although I would never admit as much to my parents) and it’s a ritual I’ve come back to as an adult thanks to my boyfriend’s mom who shares her yard with me so I can have a garden. What’s interesting is people often ask me why I garden. Last year the answer was “because it seems like a fun thing to do”. And this answer still holds true, but with all that I’ve learned over the past year, I have a other reasons why I choose to garden.

1) I know exactly where my veggies come from and how they are raised. One of the questions that I realized most people don’t ask about their food is “Where does my food come from?”  While movies like King Corn , Food, Inc., and Super Size Me, have made American consumers more aware about their food and where it comes from, I’ve taken the lessons learned and made a commitment to grow my own veggies.

2) The shift to growing my own veggies has opened my food budget so that I can support local producers of beef, pork, chicken and other products. It’s nice knowing where my meat comes from and the fact that the people who are growing it LOVE being farmers and love treating their livestock as they should be. Chicken get to scratch in the dirt and forage for bugs. Cattle get to eat grass. Pork is raised so that the pigs can wallow in mud and they are not confined in pens not much bigger than they are.

3) It saves me money in the long run. The money I spend in seeds  is equivalent to the 1 weeks worth of groceries and many of these seeds will last me for the next few years.  The investment of a few dollars will benefit me and others for years to come.

4) I can share with my friends. One of the funnest things I did last year was share what I grew with my friends and co-workers. This year I’ll probably do the same and I’m planning on sharing my leftover plants with friends (I’m planning on canning a lot of food this year).  This year I’m also helping them start their own gardens.

5) It helps the waistline two ways. Not only is it good exercise, but most veggies are low-cal.  An hour of gardening can burn approximately 250 calories an hour (this will depend on height and weight). 

What are your reasons for gardening?