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Published by Tereska Gesing
You too can fit a lush, delicious vegetable garden into your busy urban lifestyle. With a little space, lots of sun you too can enjoy homegrown food. Fresh-picked organic vegetables right outside your back door, it doesn’t get more local than that. Join us for a biweekly step-by-step guide to your very own organic vegetable garden.
Why a vegetable garden?
Living in the city has its challenges. Running after kids, activities, a demanding career not to mention trying to squeak out a social life. With so much going on, why should you have a vegetable garden anyway? Food is a cornerstone of life, and good, fresh and nutritious food is the cornerstone of living well.
Fresh-picked high-quality organic vegetables It doesn’t get more local than your own backyard
Fresher-than-fresh veggies right outside your back door. Even the best organic vegetables often travel thousands of miles and spend up to a week in the back of a transport truck. They are picked un-ripe to ripen en route. Vegetables are at their tastiest and most nutritious when they’re fresh picked, and when they’re picked ripe!
Know where your food comes from
The only thing going into your food is fresh air, sunshine and compost and natural fertilizers when your plants need an extra boost – all-natural all the time. No chemicals, no contamination during packaging, no packaging! Natural organic vegetable gardening relies on creating a healthy ecosystem to care for your plants as they grow. Healthy plants make for healthy food.
Learn how to grow your own food
Being able to grow your own food is empowering. Planting a seed and watching it grow is its own little miracle. And when that little miracle is putting the tastiest, most nutritious food on your table, while at the same time reducing your environmental footprint, well that’s fantastic.
Children and adults alike are disconnected with the provenance of our food. To put even a bit of that back into your own hands, and to show your kids that their food doesn’t come “from the store” is very powerful.
Reduce stress and get outside, get in touch with nature
In our climate-controlled lives, allowing your garden to bring you outside every day [http://richardlouv.com/]to take a breath, connect with the passing of the seasons and take a moment for yourself is arguably the most valuable thing your vegetable garden can do for you.
Let your vegetable garden take your stress away and slow your life down. Even for just a moment. Spending 10 or 15 minutes a day strolling around and enjoying your garden will alert you to any problems before they get out of control, and will keep you harvesting your food at its best.
Create community and share with neighbours
It’s amazing how something as simple as a vegetable garden, especially one in the front yard [youtube], can get neighbours talking to each other for the first time in years – sharing tips, ideas and great food. Time to get planting.
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Writer Byline: Tereska Gesing is the owner of Urban Seedling [www.urbanseedling.com], an edible landscaping and vegetable gardening service in Montreal. She grows 65 different kinds of vegetables, berries and fruit trees with her husband and two young children in her Verdun backyard. Find out more at www.urbanseedling.com