Grow Organic
Vegetables
by Vince Apps
There are more reasons than
ever why anybody with access to a few square feet of the
outdoors should grow their own organic
vegetables.
You may be shocked at how much of the produce at your local
supermarket has been genetically modified. Some estimates now
put this at over 50%. While there is no strong evidence that
genetically modified foods are immediately harmful to your
health, there are no long term studies
either.Do you want to take that
risk?
Let’s take a look at pesticides and fertilizers. Farmers no
longer use crop rotation or natural manures to improve soil
fertility, so they are forced to use ever increasing amounts of
chemicals to improve yields and multiple pesticides to protect
the weakened plants. Pesticides penetrate deeply into the
leaves of plants and pestiside residues remain even after you
have scrubbed them.
To quote from The Environmental Protection Agency – “Pesticides
are designed to kill pests. Many pesticides can also pose risks
to people. The health effects of pesticides depend on the type
of pesticide. Some, such as the organophosphates and
carbamates, affect the nervous system. Others may irritate the
skin or eyes. Some pesticides may be carcinogens. Others may
affect the hormone or endocrine system in the body.”
Sure you can, and should, buy organic fruit and vegetables but
have you seen the prices? Anybody with even a modest vegetable
garden can grow healthy organic vegetables at much lower cost
than those at the local supermarket. Not only can you grow them
at much lower cost, but you can grow them one hundred percent
better.
Even the long-keeping vegetables such as potatoes, onions and
squash are noticeably tastier picked straight from the home
vegetable garden; but when it comes to peas and corn and salad
vegetables- well , there is absolutely nothing to compare with
the home garden ones, gathered fresh, in the early slanting
sunlight, still gemmed with dew, still crisp and tender and
juicy, ready to carry every atom of savory quality and taste,
without loss, to the dining table.
It is not in price or health alone that home gardening pays.
There is another point. Agribusiness has to grow the things
that give the biggest yield. They have to sacrifice quality and
taste for quantity and long shelf life. You do not. The
strawberries on the supermarket shelves may look bright and red
and uniform but you will soon find they taste more like the
cardboard of their containers when compared to a home grown
variety picked straight from the vine.
And this brings us to what may be the most important reason you
should garden. It is the cheapest, healthiest pleasure there
is. Give me a sunny garden patch in the springtime, give me
seeds to watch as they find the light, plants to tend as they
take hold in the fine, loose, rich soil, give me succulent and
tasty springtime salads. And when you have grown tired of the
springtime, come back in summer to even the smallest garden,
and you will find in it, every day, a new vista, new pleasures
and, yes, new challenges.
Better food, better health, better living -- all these the home
vegetable garden offers you in abundance. So, turn off that
computer, pull out some old clothes and find a spot to
dig.
About the Author
Vince Apps
http://manualofgardening.com
| 
