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Top Ten Reasons to Grow Your Own Food

  1. You know exactly what the inputs are for the food you are growing and you get the added benefits of exercise and fresh air.
  2. You are getting the most nutritious form of the food possible by eating it as close to harvesting as possible.
  3. You are reducing carbon emissions and environmental degradation by growing local instead of buying from a grocery store where it had to be shipped in from another part of the country/world and likely came from a giant industrialized farm that does not support a healthy sustainable ecosystem.
  4. You can grow and eat a wider variety of food and ingredients than what is available in a grocery store. Some of them can even be perennials that come back year after year requiring less work and less disturbances on your backyard ecosystem.
  5. Container gardening and hydroponics are making it easier to grow food anywhere with very little space. And self wicking tubs, automated sprinklers, and other technologies are reducing the amount of time and labor needed to grow your own food.
  6. Adding chickens or small livestock to the backyard (where permitted) can help build your soil, reduce kitchen waste, reduce weeding and mowing, and given you an excellent source of protein through eggs, milk, and meat.
  7. You can save a lot of money by growing your own food. A packet of seeds costs about the same as the full grown version of the item but can grow 50-100 times the amount of food. Even better, save some seeds each harvest and have a continuously free source of food with seeds specifically adapted to your yard.
  8. You can earn money or earn goodwill with your neighbors by selling or giving away extra food grown in your yard.
  9. You are improving your food and financial security by reducing your dependence on store-bought items. It might be impractical to grow 730,000 calories in your backyard to meat your entire annual caloric need (2,000 calories per day x 365 days), but just covering 10% of that is impactful.
  10. You can improve your backyard ecosystem by being one of the few in the neighborhood that sticks to natural gardening techniques without pesticides. You will be amazed at the amount of insects and wildlife that will be attracted to your yard because of it being a chemical free and vegetation rich safe haven for them.

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