 EnviroCitizen.org is sure it probably comes as no surprise to hear that growing your own garden has many benefits. It's certainly an enjoyable endeavor, it yields edible rewards and it can be quite a therapeutic, calming task.
Gardening also saves money. A packet of seeds costs is very economical, usually only costing a few dollars. If you've been able to save seeds from last year, then the seeds cost you nothing. Compared to produce at the grocery store ( or even the farmer's market ), you're spending pennies instead of dollars!
Gardening and growing your own fruits and vegetables also lowers your carbon footprint. When you garden, you are using your own body energy to maintain your garden. In contrast, large agribusiness uses machines ( which are fueled by fossil fuels ) and chemicals to maintain their crops. However, if you garden you can walk out of your back door and pluck the ripe fruit right off of the tree or bush with your own body power. In large agribusinesses, machines are again used to harvest the crops. Then the produce is processed—washed and packaged. The packaged produce is transported, usually by semi-truck or boat, to a grocery store near you. Once at the grocery store, produce continues to accumulate a bigger carbon footprint as the grocery store is lit and powered by fossil fuels. Finally, you get in your car and drive to the grocery store, buy your produce and drive home. All of that activity adds up to a lot of carbon emissions.
Much of the produce we purchase is from out-of-state or even out of the country! For example, if you go to the grocery store and buy some tomatoes in January, those tomatoes probably came from South America. Let's say that those tomatoes came from Argentina ( as many winter tomatoes do ), the average carbon cost of the transportation from Argentina to your grocery store is about three thousand pounds of carbon! That means that for a few tomatoes you can add those three thousand pounds of carbon to your own personal footprint. That amount of carbon does not take into account the chemical fertilizers and pesticides used ( which take a lot of energy to make ), the machines that managed the crops or any other factors.
On the other hand, growing your own tomatoes yields almost no carbon emission at all. If you can your tomatoes in the fall, whether they're simply steamed or turned into a pasta sauce, you can enjoy your own organic tomatoes in January without the guilt of a bigger carbon footprint! Plus, you'll have the satisfaction of having done it all on your own! So, if you would like to lessen your carbon footprint, EnviroCitizen.org suggests that you consider gardening to produce your own produce! Whether yielding all or some of the produce you consume during the year, your garden is an extremely eco-friendly way to join the green movement.
EnviroCitizen.org offers a wide variety of eco-friendly gardening tools to help get your fruit and vegetable yielding garden started!
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