Grow your own vegetables.

In this week's challenge you must Grow your own vegetables. Growing your own vegetables is easier than you might think plus saves money, tastes better, and ensures you know where your food came from. Start with herbs and tomatoes for a cheaper, fresher, and easier way to cook.Many fruits and vegetables can be grown from a packet of seeds (and can be purchased with SNAP benefits!). No space for a garden? Use empty milk jugs or coffee cans for your own container garden.

Benefits of Growing your own vegetables:

1. Nutrition

   Fresh and nutritious fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables from your own garden are higher in nutrients than the ones that have traveled several thousands miles to get to your grocery store.



2. Health

   Growing your own fruits and vegetables can offer you the opportunity to reduce the amount of pesticides that you use in your garden, making them healthier.The fruits and vegetables grown in your garden will promote health because they are rich in nutrients, especially in phytochemicals, anti-oxidants, vitamin C, vitamin A and folate.



3. Save Money

   Growing your own fruits and vegetables will save your money at the grocery store.



4. Physical Fit

   Gardening increases physical activity. It is a great way to engage the whole family in physical activity and lets them help to take responsibility for the garden.Gardening gives you’re a real sense of appreciation when you can see the bounty of your efforts.



5. Opportunity

   Growing a garden gives you a new appreciation for nature, when you can have the opportunity to see how things grow.Gardening gives you the opportunity to give back. If you have an abundant garden, you might give some of your produce to the local soup kitchen or food bank.



6. You can make time for exercise

   When you have an early dinner and go to bed soon, it gives you a chance to wake up early and exercise. And we all are aware of the value of exercise and its contribution to a healthy body.

Why garden, you ask? If you’ve never tasted garden-fresh vegetables (lots of people haven’t!), you will be amazed by the sweet, juicy flavors and vibrant textures. There’s absolutely nothing quite like fresh veggies, especially if you grow them yourself—which you can!

Growing your own fruits and vegetables is one of the ultimate acts of green living. Not only does it cut down food miles (the distance food travels from where it’s produced to the consumer) to zero, but it saves you money as well. And if you use organic techniques, you can contribute to the world’s food supply without contributing to the use of toxic pesticides and herbicides.

It’s easy, inexpensive and fun to grow your own vegetables, and you don’t need a big garden or an allotment. They will happily grow in pots! If you place a strawberry barrel in a sunny spot it should produce plenty of fresh fruit.

Here are a few ways grow your own vegetables :

1. Sow salad leaves throughout summer harvest 3 weeks later. Plant seeds in pots, keep well watered, and cut leaves when required. Plants produce leaves until late autumn.


2. Radishes they're easy to grow in containers, or sow them directly into the ground throughout the summer for a succession of crunchy, colourful crops.


3. Peas are a trouble free crop that enjoy cooler weather. Sow them directly into the ground from March to June and look forward to the incredible sweet flavour of fresh picked peas from June to August. All they need is support for their stems - simply erect some chicken wire or netting between supports at each end of the row.


4. Sow Broad Beans in spring in small 7.5cm (3") pots of compost, and within a few weeks these quick growing beans will make sturdy plants that can be planted out in the garden. Pinch out the top few leaves when they're about 3' tall to encourage the plant to produce more pods.


5. Sow runner beans from april to july. Runner beans are climbers so give them plenty of space and train them onto wires or a plant support frame. Keep them well watered and they will reward you with a constant supply in summer.


6. Tomato plants are so quick that you can almost watch them grow, so they are the ideal easy vegetable for kids to cultivate. Sow february to april harvest july to october.

Suggested Reading:

Vegetable Gardening for Beginners - Learn more here.

Perfect vegetables to grow at home - Learn more here.

Why grow your own food? - Learn more here.

3 Reasons to Grow Your Own Vegetables - Learn more here.