Growing Your Own Food At Home
June 13, 2020 Adrienne Brown 0 Comments
It can be so rewarding and tons of fun!!!
Hey everyone, Adrienne here! We are so very excited to share our gardening journey with you and we want to share with you how easy and fun it is to grow your own food!
It does not matter if you have a big yard, small yard or just a balcony. You can grow some of your own fresh food.
Why am I so excited and encouraging you to do this? Well, it is because the health benefits are so massive for the whole family. But, it is especially because of the abrupted life change forced upon us these days.
What we as Americans have been through in our country? No, not just in our country but in the entire world, it is shockingly serious.
Safety and preservation
Our food supply is under attack and the availability of fresh produce is shrinking rapidly. While we are waiting out this coronavirus plague, our food supply is at risk of being contaminated and in danger of disappearing altogether.
Fear of constant contamination and deliberate poisoning of our food supply is a real and present threat.
I don’t know about you but these things have changed our country’s safety completely. It makes me realise that we as a people need to be self-sufficient.
We must learn how to how to plant seeds, how to care for the plants and the soil. We have to learn how to harvest the crop and preserve it.
These are skills that all Americans had at one time. Simple survival skills that are easy to learn and teach to our children.
My family and I have decided to try to cultivate these important skills in our new way of living. We want to learn self-sufficiency for our own survival. So we have been working hard every day to change our own lives and to be able to help someone else if we are called upon.
Growing your own food as a beginner.
Wait, wait, I know this may sound hard or ridiculous to some, but let me assure you it will reward you in so many ways.
Even if you are a beginner, and you have not put your fingers in the dirt since you were 4, you can still grow some of your own food.
I am about to share some tips and tricks with you that are sure to blow your mind and feed your inner spirit.
If you choose to try growing some of your own fresh food you will become more centered with your surroundings.
Your spirit will open up to the natural elements surrounding you and you will begin to feel a healing, satisfying energy
It is surprising how easy it is to grow your own food. There are so many different ways to garden that the beginner only needs to choose one of them.
Some such as backyard in the ground gardening, raised gardening, balcony container gardening, rooftop gardening, or tiny apartment gardening.
We have watched many videos showing just how easy it is to grow some of your own food, you can do it to.
Growing your own food using Kitchen scraps
Growing your own food at home can be as easy as replanting your kitchen scraps.
Did you know that you can regrow lettuce from the part that you usually throw into the garbage as scraps?
It is so amazing! All you need is an old jar and some water! No joke, we did this just this month. We have romaine lettuce growing in a water jar.
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As a homeschooling family, we are always trying to prove if a thing is valid. We like to test them for ourselves and come to our own conclusions. My kids were fascinated that our lettuce scraps were actually growing! How cool is that?
The same thing can be done with onion bottoms, potatoes (white & sweet). Although the potatoes will need to be put into some dirt, eventually! which brings me to another way to garden.
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Growing your own food in containers.
This has got to be the coolest thing for all time! Why do I say this? Well, because it allows anyone to garden. Even if you live on a small piece of land with multiple neighbors all around you, you can still grow your own food.
We have put dirt in many different containers and have been successful in growing some of our food.
Everyone is familiar with growing herbs in a pot, right? Well, you can grow many other things in a pot and enjoy some homegrown freshness in your life. Check out some videos on youtube to discover the many creative ways that people are doing just that.
Our container garden
Here are some of the things that we are experimenting with growing in containers. We put some ginger in a huge round container and covered it with loose, well-draining soil. Ginger is a rhizome and needs to stretch out to multiply.
This will be our first time ever trying to grow ginger. I think that if we can get this to work for us we will reap the benefits of having fresh ginger on hand at all times.
We planted white potatoes and sweet potatoes in our normal backyard ground, but we plan to try growing potatoes in a big container this year. You just need to fill it with some nice soil and let them go. From our research, the yield of potatoes is surprisingly good.
Our family cooks with a lot of garlic and it is another crop that does well in a container. Just imagine walking out your back door and harvesting your fresh garlic. If you have never tasted fresh garlic, you are missing a scrumptious treasure.
You really can grow enough food to feed your self and your family.
Those are just a few ways that we are growing our own food this year. If you have the ground space then you can really feed your family well. Now, I am not saying that it will be easy, but I am saying that it will be so, so rewarding.
Surveying the land surrounding us made us realize that we should be growing something. The kids were motivated just from this coronavirus scare. They began to understand just how fragile our food system really is. So, they became willing participants in the gardening project.
We have two gardening areas and we planted similar things in each. Based on my experiences with gardening, I knew that we needed to stagger the plantings.
What foods we are growing
At this time we have planted corn, black-eyed peas, lima beans, green beans, snap peas, white beans.
Our planting includes beets, parsley, and cilantro. Which is going to seed right now because it doesn’t like hot weather.
We planted white potatoes, sweet potatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, bell pepper, jalapeno peppers, tomatoes, squash, carrots, cucumbers, cantaloupe, watermelon and green onion.
In addition to the plants above we have also, planted two apple trees and two pear trees.
These are just some of the possibilities for growing your own food. We have shared with you just how our family is meeting this challenge head-on with hard work and determination.
Growing your own food teaches life skills
Gardening has given me a way to teach my children about many aspects of life. It has open their imaginations to a height of entertaining bliss.
Planting and growing our own food has provided an instant laboratory for many scientific concepts that we have learned about in the science books we use. Working with our hands in the dirt has also provided us with some profound foundational truths and necessary life skills.
Each child in my homeschool is challenged beyond what I even hoped. My 10th grader is learning many life long lessons and skills that will carry him into his adulthood.
He is understanding spiritual concepts about reaping and sowing. Grasping the fact that God provides the original seed and all that we have to do is place it in the dirt.
He sees how watering and tending to a tender shoot aids in its growth. Comprehending how very important it is to pluck up the nutrient sucking weeds from his young tender seedlings.
My 9th-grade daughter has found peace and ownership in her part of the garden. She is learning that patience really is a virtue, even if it does sound like a tired cliche.
She has discovered the sun-ripened sweetness of a sugar snap and the importance of staying on top of your responsibilities or risk losing the crop
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My two younger kids are fascinated with the vastness of nature in our own backyard. They have seen hard-working ants in their colonies. Witnessing strong worker ants harvesting food to the ant family, serving the queen and caring for the eggs.
We understand that growing our own food is sustainable.
Something we having learned just by doing. We do a little bit every day, and accomplish a lot. Gardening doesn’t have to be so daunting, if we do a little at a time.
Let us encourage you to not throw away your lettuce scraps, put them in water. Get some seeds, dirt and containers, and start your indoor garden.
Better yet, if you have outdoor space, just put your hands in the dirt!
