Read the text.

Growing from Scratch

With the convenience of supermarkets, it might seem like a lot of extra work to grow your own food. After all, why would you spend months watering and pulling weeds when you could just buy what you want? Growing your own food is certainly not quick. However, there are a lot of good reasons to consider growing food from scratch in a garden.

You might think that a pepper is a pepper, no matter where it comes from. However, you can have a more nutritious and delicious pepper when you grow it yourself. In your own garden, you can let your veggies ripen and choose exactly when to pick them. This means they are full of nutrients and flavour right when you eat them. Your food is also as fresh as it can possibly be. It didn’t have to travel from far away and then sit in your supermarket, waiting to be purchased.

In addition to the wonderful food you’ll get, the act of gardening may be good for your health. Gardening in the fresh air can be an excellent form of exercise. This is because it requires lots of standing, leaning over, digging and carrying. Working outside in your garden can also help you get vitamin D from exposure to the sun. Furthermore, studies have shown that gardening reduces stress and improves overall well-being.

While the benefits of growing your own food are numerous, not everyone has the space to do it. However, some areas have community gardens, where you can sign up for a garden plot to use during the growing season. And it’s always possible to start small at home. Many vegetables, like tomatoes, grow well in pots. To start even smaller, you can grow your own herbs, like basil or dill, in small cups on a windowsill. You can add these to your food to put a little bit of fresh-grown goodness into whatever you’re eating.

Gardening might be slower than other ways of getting food. However, the time it takes makes it extra rewarding. You’ll feel a special kind of excitement and pride when a seedling finally pokes through the soil you’ve been carefully watering. It’s the first step on the journey towards enjoying the food that you grew through your own hard work. Plus, it might turn out that you have ‘green fingers’, meaning that you’re very gifted at making plants grow. If that’s the case, you could have baskets full of tomatoes, cucumbers and courgettes to share with friends and neighbours at the end of the summer.