3 reasons why growing your own vegetables is great for you

As the old saying goes, “Gardening adds years to your life and life to your years”, and it’s not wrong. Here’s why:

1. It’s much healthier

Not only will growing your own vegetables provide you with bucket-loads of fresh veg right on your doorstep. The vegetables themselves are actually healthier than what you can buy in the supermarket – yes, you read that right.

There’s two reasons to this – firstly the time between picking vegetables and eating them matters. The fresher they are the healthier they are.

The second reason is more worrying. Intensive use of fertilisers in industrial farming has depleted the worlds soils of many important nutrients. This is because the fertilisers just supply the 3 most important nutrients to the plants - Nitrogen, Potassium & Phosphorous - to keep crops growing on the same land, leaving the rest of the nutrients depleted.

Vegetables grown on these lands have shown a consistent decline in nutritional value over the last 80 years.

With a Sprout subscription, we will teach you how to care for your soil to keep it productive and healthy.

2. 

   It improves mental health

Caring for young seedlings and watching them grow, and having a closer connection with soil and nature has been shown to improve mental health and reduce stress. There are even benefits just by having greenery nearby.

Growing our own vegetables provides us the opportunity to take time out of our busy lives to look after our own mental wellbeing – something which is getting increasingly important as our pace of life in the cities increases and we become more removed from mother nature.

3. It’s great fun to do, and even better to share

There is something magical about growing what you eat, it’s a really amazing experience – and one that only gets better with sharing your veg with your friends and family.

Whether it’s just a few peas on the side of the plate, or a whole summer salad, because it’s your own, it will transform the dish. It’s hard to describe it – you’ll have to give it a go to know what we mean!