gardening for food
Gardening is such a great option. It allows you to grow things that you enjoy eating and harvest them at the peak of their ripe / ready state. And it gives you a past time that is rejuvenating. Often, after a hard day working with my mind, I’ll tell Mike that “I’m going outside to get my hands dirty.” There’s something about touching the earth, pulling weeds, caring for a garden, that grounds you in a way that’s hard to replicate watching TV or reading a book. It’s such a welcome mental break after a day of thinking and problem solving.
There’s not much like a fresh tomato from the garden. It can’t compare to anything you’d find even in a high-end grocery store. It’s picked at the peak of ripeness and is sweetened by the sun. Tomatoes are a great gardening choice. They’re easy to grow, yield plenty of fruit, taste better than what you can buy, and are expensive to buy at the store. You can grow everything, but you can’t grow a lot of everything if you’re limited in time and space. I try to focus on what we like to eat, what has the largest quality gap between grown and bought, and what is expensive to buy. Tomatoes hit the top of my list. Imagine if you could grow all the tomatoes that you’d use in a year, pick them at the peak of their sweetened, ripe state, and process them to use throughout the year. This is my goal. My only qualm with tomatoes, is that they’re usually ready to be harvested in big numbers in early to mid September. September is one of the best months of the year, and I want to be gone in September. Gone on fishing/floating trips, gone hunting, gone exploring the fall colors in the mountains of the West.
If you’re interested in starting small, I’d recommend hearty perennial herbs be the first thing you grow. Herbs like thyme, oregano, rosemary, sage, chives, etc. These herbs will survive the winter year after year and only require some pruning so that this year’s growth is new, tender, and fresh growth. Other herbs like basil and cilantro are annual herbs and won’t survive the winter and need to be planted new each year. Herbs such as basil only like warm weather too – so they need a little coddling. Start with the perennial varieties – they’re forgiving, and they’ll provide fresh aromatics for your kitchen. When you buy 3-4 stems of thyme, rosemary, sage, or oregano from the grocery store, they’ll cost you $2-4 each. Perennial herbs, without much effort, will give you savings in your grocery budget, increase the availability of fresh herbs you always have on hand, and you can dry them so that you don’ have to spend $3-7/bottle on dried herbs that are old and sometimes lacking flavor when you buy them.
