How Does an Organic Garden Help You Maintain Eating Healthy Diet, Key to a Healthy Lifestyle?
How Does an Organic Garden Help You Maintain a Healthy Diet, Key to a Healthy Lifestyle?
Food is vital to a positive lifestyle.
This post is my post no.1 on Blogchatter FoodFest, running in June.
Our food choices are currently guided by our preferences, experiences, culture, taste, biological, psychological, and lifestyle factors. It wasn't the case when food was associated with hunger and satiation. You all know this, so mine is just a reminder. With the food choices come the awareness of health, its deterioration, chronic ailments, its causes and remedies, and the socio-economic and human losses resulting from not following a healthy lifestyle.
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| Zucchini in our garden |
We are also living at a time when knowledge dissemination is improving beyond our imagination. Every day, we read new health and lifestyle information featured in general publications, healthcare magazines, and blog posts. They prioritise the ways and means to improve healthy lifestyles and fullness of life.
Yet, we cannot underplay the many challenges in maintaining good health following a positive lifestyle. We should know that any knowledge is only useful as long as we can put it into practice. That is, practice is equally important to theory.
- How can we put the theory into practice?
The theory is that eating a well-balanced meal is critical to maintaining a positive lifestyle, and the practice implied is finding balanced meals. Balanced meals are not ordinary meals. They are meals with recommended calories and portions.
All knowledge about eating a well-balanced and healthy diet becomes futile when we cannot find healthy food.
Fruits and Vegetables.
Eating fruits and vegetables is a recommendation for maintaining a healthy diet. We merrily find them in supermarkets or other grocery outlets. They are packed and advertised in Instagram style, which may lure some.
But how much information do you really have when it comes to the level of chemical residues they contain from pesticides and insecticides.
Many countries have rules to ensure the fruits and vegetables the shops sell meet the recommended food standard in terms of chemical level. However, where these laws are violated, customers are duped into believing them blindly.
Also, only some of the literature and research I mentioned above are believable. It is a practice that big businesses try to manipulate them in their favour.
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| Capsicum Green in our garden. |
The idea of a backyard garden.
So, what solution is left for ordinary people like you and me? Are organic products recommended as an alternative, with their steep prices affordable to us?
It is certainly not. A possible alternative is an organic garden. Start one in your backyard, rooftop, or wherever you can think of placing a pot, a bag, or whatever. We need the readiness to pull your Socks up and get a bit dirty.
It is becoming popular among many households, which is good news.
From my personal experience.
We live in Cape Town. Before we shifted to Cape Town, we lived in a large compound in Grahamstown, where we grew various vegetables and fruit trees for the above reasons.
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| Red California Pepper in our garden |
In Capetown, at the beginning, we were restricted by space in keeping one in our apartment. The problem we resolved when we shifted to our present home with a backyard garden space. Also, we did our best to maintain one on our apartment balcony.
The free-standing home we moved into last December has a reasonable garden space to fulfil our backyard garden ambition.
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| Tomatoes in our garden. |
My husband, who started the garden, is mainly responsible for maintaining it. My garden is only getting ready to harvest as I planted the seeds and seedlings late, and the healthy plants they grew into will only reach puberty in due course.
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| Brinjal Plant in our garden |
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| Ready for consumption vegetable from our garden. |
The reward of keeping a garden is multifarious, from harvesting the tastiest and healthiest vegetables with the fewest chemical residue to the feel-good and mental appeasement of watching them grow. It also gives us an immense sense of peace, satisfaction, and self-assurance.
Another benefit of keeping a home garden is that we need not worry about dumping kitchen waste in the open for it to turn into a health hazard. The kitchen waste can be put to good use in compost, which can be used as an effective alternative to chemical fertilizers.
Conclusion
There needs to be more than an encyclopedic knowledge of a positive lifestyle and a healthy diet to maintain a healthy lifestyle. The vegetables and fruits we buy from supermarkets can harm our health depending on the amount of chemical residue they contain, which we cannot detect using our eyes. Organic food is the best solution, but since it is expensive, the best alternative is to try a home garden. The good news is you can produce them in your backyard with a bit of dedication and some time to spare.
Do you keep a backyard garden at your home and take care of your health? Thank you for reading my post.
This is my first post for BlogchatterBlogchatter #BlogchatterFoodFest.
This is also part of the blog challenge 'Blogaberry Dazzle'
hosted by Cindy D'Silva and Noor Anand Chawla in collaboration with Dr. Preeti Chauhan.
I had a backyward garden ages back. But now that I live in a skyscraper, the balcony is a tad bit small. I do grow microgreens from time to time and plan to add some smaller veggies.
ReplyDeleteMy father used to do this when we had our own piece of land. It's difficult to do this in apartments but you've motivated me to try it out nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteWow, an inspiring tale of gardens and harvesting healthy produce. Its heartening to know there are people like you who enjoy this rather difficult but highly productive activity of gardening. I've got a brown thumb, and am a horrible gardener. Reading your article, especially the benefits of a home garden, has given me the spark needed to at least do some research for my own home. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteHappy for you Prasanna. It must be an amazing feeling to grow your own food cuz I am fond of gardening and the happiness you get by seeing your plants grow is something else altogether.
ReplyDeleteI see many of my friends grow spinach, chillies etc in their balconies and I grow some herbs too but I always have a question. Is the harvest enough for everyday consumption or is it a one time thingy? For you maybe yes as u have a backyard space and you grow many types. But I live in a flat and even if I grow veggies, they won't be enough for every meal but just enough for a feel good factor and to show around 😄
Having a backyard garden sounds like a great idea but equally difficult in Mumbai. I do grow chillies, curry leaves, etc and am planning on adding a tomato plant too.
ReplyDeleteI had backyard in my childhood where we used to grow green chilli, curry leaves, drumstick, tomato and with lots of fruit and flowers tree. Now I lived in Mumbai where there is no place for it. My wish to have my own garden.
ReplyDeleteI have a hell lot of ornamental plants but none belong to the kitchen. This post is a good motivation to start one .
ReplyDeleteI have always wanted to have a garden where I would grow all sorts of vegetables and fruit. I always like plants of use rather than just the show one. Though the idea still seems distant. Great post. Loved the pics of all your organic vegetables.
ReplyDeleteDue to lack of enough space I cant do organic gardening but at my parents place there is hefty space an there is regular organic gardening. Over there we have pumpkin, terrace goard, chilli, palak, papaya, mango, dhaniya, carrot, aloo and various other veggies and I just love it. I can sit for hours in the garden watching the growing veggies and off course flowers.
ReplyDeleteI feel so jealous and I am missing my kitchen garden after reading your post. I removed the lawn and had fruit and veg beds instead. I grew everything from kale to corn.I am trying to grow them in my balcony but no success yet.
ReplyDeleteWe have a roof garden. Started on 2020 and you are right. The yield is far more nutritious.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of growing our own food, however, i find it takes more knowledge and constant working on the garden to get a good harvest. I have tried growing tomatoes, but the monkeys run off with them :( the herb garden is doing well.
ReplyDeleteThe times we live now certainly call desperately for a kitchen garden. At least we know we are eating foods sans pesticides. Beautiful pictures of your garden and the harvest. Good luck.
ReplyDeleteThat is very commendable!
ReplyDeleteNoor