Shutdown affects food safety? Time to grow your own food.

Time To Grow Your Own Food, It Is Fun!

Now that the entire economy is in a slump, people are responding by tightening up and reducing consumption in general. The cost of everything seems to be higher these days, especially at the grocery store, a trip you can't skip. Maybe you can, or at least slash your bill, by growing your own food.

Growing fruits and vegetables seems overwhelming to most people, but it’s actually much simpler than it sounds. All you need is a few square feet of the great outdoors, or indoors, and a little time. Your grandparents did it, and so can you.

Benefits:
1. Improve your family's health. Eating more fresh fruits and vegetables is one of the most important things you and your family can do to stay healthy. When they’re growing in your backyard or your kitchen, you won’t be able to resist them, and their vitamin content will be at their highest levels as you bite into them straight from the garden.

2.  Save money on groceries. Your grocery bill will shrink as you begin to stock your pantry with fresh produce from your backyard. A packet of seeds can cost less than a dollar, and if you buy heirloom, non-hybrid species, you can save the seeds from the best producers, dry them, and use them next year.

3. Reduce your environmental impact. Home gardening helps the planet in many ways. If you grow your food organically, without pesticides and herbicides, you’ll spare the earth the burden of unnecessary air and water pollution.

4. Get exercise. Planting, weeding, watering, and harvesting add purposeful physical activity to your day. If you have kids, they can join in, too. If you grow food indoor by hydroponics, you will enjoy fresh O2 every day releasing out by your plants. Gardening is also a way to relax, de-stress, center your mind, and get fresh air and sunshine.

5. Enjoy better-tasting food. Fresh food is the best food! How long has the food on your supermarket shelf been there? How long did it travel from the farm to your table? Comparing the flavor of a homegrown tomato with the taste of a store-bought one is like comparing apples to wallpaper paste. If it tastes better, you’ll be more likely to eat the healthy, fresh produce that you know your body needs. In fact, hydroponics food is more juicy and crispy then soil cultivation. Try it, and you will know what I am talking about.

6. Stop worrying about food safety. With recalls on peanut butter, spinach, tomatoes and more, many people are concerned about food safety in our global food marketplace. When you responsibly grow your own food, you don't have to worry about contamination that may occur at the farm, manufacturing plant, or transportation process. This means that when the whole world is avoiding tomatoes, for example, you don't have to go without—you can trust that your food is safe and healthy to eat.

7. Reduce food waste. Americans throw away about $600 worth of food each year! It's a lot easier to toss a moldy orange that you paid $0.50 for than a perfect red pepper that you patiently watched ripen over the course of several weeks. When it's "yours," you will be less likely to take it for granted and more likely to eat it (or preserve it) before it goes to waste.

                         

8. Reduce food carbon footprint. Eating your own grown food helps in the fight against global warming. Rich Pirog of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture reports that the average fresh food item on our dinner table travels 1,500 miles to get there. Growing your own produced

So, everyone, let’s start to grow some vegetables at home to eliminates the transport required to get food to your table. It also gets you no chemical food since yu won't poison yourself from a kitchen or backyard. And all that fuel-guzzling transportation, your food has zero carbon footprint.

Hydroponics Systems from Taiwan Chicfarm LED grower, http://www.chicfarm.net