7 Reasons to Start a Garden This Year

There are many reasons to start a garden this year. It has many benefits for you such as being a great way to get in touch with nature and a fulfilling activity for all ages. If you look at any gardening communities or groups, you will find every age from kids all the way to our older generation enjoying gardening! Gardening can be therapeutic for your mental health, educational for your family, and is healthy for several different reasons. 

What type of garden you might grow depends on your situation and your needs. You can grow fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers. You can grow each type separately or grow a food forest where everything grows together. You can start your garden in containers, or in raised beds. If you are like me, you’ll grow a little bit of everything in several different ways! Whatever method or type of gardening works best for your situation is what will keep you and your garden happy! 

If a lack of space has kept you from starting a garden in the past, you should definitely check into container or even square-foot gardening. Both types of gardening are perfect for those with small spaces and will help you utilize the space you do have. You can grow almost any type of vegetable in containers, and flowers thrive in containers as well. Bonus points, these two types of gardening make it easy for the whole family to help!

The reasons to start a garden are plentiful, and the benefits are clear. What are you waiting for? 🙂

When you are the one doing the gardening, you know exactly what you’re putting into your garden. There can be some health concerns with buying vegetables at the store, one of which is chemical usage. Aside from that, fresh vegetables from your garden can be 50% higher in nutrients than when they are shipped long distance.

When you grow your own vegetables, you know how they are grown and cleaned. You know if or when you needed to use any garden treatments, and when it’s appropriate to harvest those vegetables.

Not only is the produce healthier, but it tastes better, too! Nothing beats going out into the garden and biting into a fresh tomato ripened by the sun. The taste is incredible!

You have more control over your food source. When eating vegetables from a grocery store, it’s hard to tell how long that vegetable has been sitting there. Was it picked green or before it was fully ready? Are you buying a tomato that will taste good or bland and mealy? Sometimes we don’t have a choice but to buy from the grocery store, and I’m thankful we have that option available. However, I’m much more thankful that I can grow some of my own vegetables and get to enjoy the taste of fresh garden-ripened produce.

I absolutely love being able to go out to my garden and pick a salad for lunch. Lettuce is a fairly easy-to-grow vegetable, as are radishes, cucumbers, carrots, peppers, and cherry tomatoes. Any vegetable you need for a salad, your garden’s got you covered! 

The only thing that is missing is the salad dressing, but you can grow herbs and keep a dairy goat to make your own dressing as well. Having a garden is like having a personal grocery store! I mean, the garden doesn’t pick and prepare it for you, but it sure beats having to get in your car and go to the store!

Whether we’re in a period of historic inflation or not, the cost of fresh produce will creep up little by little each year. Thankfully, gardening can help ease that burden and can actually ease anxiety instead of inducing it like going to the store can.

There are upfront costs with gardening, but look at them as an investment in your health! If you plan to start your own seeds indoors, then you will need some extra equipment, but there are also ways to start seeds on a budget.

Purchasing your own seeds cost anywhere from $0.99 to around $5.00 a packet. I can grow enough tomato plants from one packet of seeds to produce all the tomato sauce I need for an entire year. The story is the same with green beans. I need about $8 worth of green bean seeds to plant and grow enough green beans to last my family an entire year. That is a significant saving over buying from the grocery store!

Those are just a couple of examples of vegetables that you can grow in your garden. There are literally hundreds of others you can grow, and gardening gives you a healthier alternative to store-bought or processed foods.

3. Gardening Can Be Therapeutic

I’m so glad that science has been exploring and continues to learn just how therapeutic gardening and time outdoors are to the human body. Starting a garden is a perfect way to get a little time to yourself while enjoying sunshine and nature.

Not only does gardening include physical therapy, but it is also great for your mental health. A garden offers peace, beauty, and tranquility. Gardening can decrease stress, anxiety, and depression. It can also increase happiness, productivity, memory retention, and self-esteem. You will be proud of what you grew from seed! If you don’t believe me, there are many other studies that a quick online search will lead you to besides what I’ve included above.

4. Gardening is a Fulfilling Hobby

Gardening provides a sense of personal satisfaction and fulfillment as it allows you to connect with nature, express your creativity, and feel a sense of accomplishment in watching your plants grow and produce fruit. It also provides an opportunity to slow down and focus on the present moment, which can be beneficial for mental health and stress relief.

Whether you have a large garden, a small patio, or just a windowsill, gardening provides a space for quiet reflection and a sense of accomplishment as you care for your plants and watch them grow. The act of planting, nurturing, and harvesting can bring a sense of purpose and connection to nature, which can enhance overall happiness and well-being. Gardening can also be a meditative experience, allowing individuals to find inner peace and solace in the tranquility of their garden.

Gardening makes it easy to set small goals that are simple to achieve. Setting goals helps trigger new behaviors and helps guide your focus. Setting goals is a great form of motivation that is also beneficial to mental health.

By working toward a specific goal, it creates a focus that can greatly improve your productivity and mental clarity. This may be especially useful for those with ADHD or ADD who lack focus in their lives.

Growing a garden can lead to personal satisfaction and fulfillment. Try it and see what else in your life grows as well.

5. Secure Your Food Supply

I think that history has shown us that there are times of plenty and times of want. Whether it be a Great Depression, a Dust Bowl, a recession, or a pandemic, there are many events that can threaten our food supply. The weather is unpredictable, your job is never guaranteed. I’m not trying to be a downer, but I don’t think it hurts to stop and look to see if we are prepared should something like the above happen.

Gardening can come in handy in these situations. If you lose your job, you know how to grow your own food. If the weather changes dramatically and not enough vegetables are being produced, you can still grow your own food.

If there’s an economic crash that ruins our entire financial structure, you know how to grow your own food. If the infrastructure is completely challenged and supplies aren’t being delivered, you can grow your own food to feed your family.

I don’t believe we should sit around and fret about the future. That is a fruitless activity. I do believe though, that it helps my mental health to have these skills and to know that I can still take care of my family should disaster strike. Being able to produce our own food and bring some sense of normalcy to the situation would be huge for us, and probably for you also.

6. Environmental Impacts

Gardening can have a positive impact on the environment by reducing the carbon footprint associated with food transportation, promoting biodiversity through the planting of native species, and creating happy homes for pollinators.

Transportation of food and other commodities plays a significant role in the carbon footprint we leave on the earth. One way that we can decrease that is by growing our own food. The trip from the garden to our table is much shorter when that garden is in our backyard.

Biodiversity is such a wonderful thing. A diverse range of plants in a garden can improve soil health, prevent erosion and support a healthy ecosystem. Having a variety of species in a garden can help to mitigate the effects of pests and diseases, as different plants are affected differently by these challenges. Biodiversity in a garden can also help to attract beneficial insects such as pollinators.

Bees are one of the most important animal pollinators in nature. As bees visit your garden they collect pollen and nectar as food for themselves. However, as they move along gathering, they also spread the pollen to other flowers.

Pollen is necessary for the growth of fruits, vegetables, and seeds because it contains the plant’s reproductive cells that allow fertilization to occur. Without this process, we would have to pollinate everything by hand. Personally, I don’t think we’d do a very good job compared to the bees, so we want to ensure that we create happy homes with food sources for them. Without the bees, we would be in a sorry situation.

7. Sharing With Others

One of my favorite reasons to garden is getting to share with others. Sharing my produce, something that I grew from seed, is just so rewarding. It also benefits others. You might know someone who needs a little boost to their grocery budget one week. Taking them a basket of fresh produce can really help!  

Whether I am sharing it fresh, after it has been canned and preserved, or after using it to make a meal, it is such a joy to be a blessing to someone else. I suppose it’s another way that gardening can improve your mental health!

Are You Going to Start a Garden This Year?

You don’t have to start on a big scale. Get a couple of large flowerpots or other containers, find some potting soil, grab a packet of lettuce seeds, and start growing!

There are so many reasons to start a garden this year. Gardening can be therapeutic and improve health (both mental and physical), it can provide for you and others in times of need, and it helps the environment!