When people consider starting a gardening they usually consider it for the health benefits of eating homegrown organic food, but did you know that there are many other secondary health benefits? That’s because gardening does more than contribute to your pantry. It can also change your physical and mental health.
If you are starting gardening for the first time, checkout Gardening for Beginners.
Gardening Provides You and Your Family with Healthy Food
The obvious and bountiful benefits of a backyard garden are the wide variety of fruits and vegetables grown and eaten by your family and friends. In some climates, gardens can produce year-round making it possible to feed your family healthy, organic foods all the time.
Food can also be stored, canned, or preserved to use long after harvest is over. If you are interested in learning more about canning here is a good resource from Home & Garden Information Center. Sharing the abundance is also a great way to help other families eat healthier and save money.
Gardening Stimulates your Immunities
Gardening is good for your health. Being in the sun exposes your skin to Vitamin D which is essential for strengthening your bones and building your immunities. Just don’t get too much. Being in the sun for as little as thirty minutes has a direct link to improving your immune system.
Working in the yard also builds immunities by exposure. It’s good for humans to touch the soil, get dirty and be exposed to some germs. Regular exposure can reduce the amount and intensity of common colds and other low-grade illness.
Gardening is a Wonderful Form of Exercise
Gardening is listed as a form of exercise by the Centers for Disease Control. That’s great news for people who want low impact forms of exercise. Gardening includes digging, bending, and plenty of stretching. Gardening can promote a healthy body weight in children and adults because all ages can participate in planting and caring for a garden.
Most gardens require routine maintenance which can help develop a regular exercise routine. In most cases, gardening is so rewarding you don’t realize how much exercise you are getting which is perfect for people who don’t enjoy rigorous exercise.
Gardening Reduces Stress and Anxiety
Being in nature and soaking up the sunshine reduces stress. Moving your body, breaking a sweat, and other activities during gardening releases serotonin in the brain and helps regulate your mood. Gardening can also boost self-esteem by successfully growing fruits and vegetables and seeing the ‘fruits’ of your hard work.
Gardening is healthy for your mind, body, and soul. Tending to a garden can make your life healthier and happier from the inside out. “Playing” in the dirt and cultivating fruits, vegetables, and flowers can do wonders for your mood, stamina, and dinner plate.
Gardening Builds Esteem and Character
Being committed to gardening takes effort. Sticking it out and managing a garden requires the family to tend to the needs of the garden. In the same way the family pet must be fed and watered, so does the garden. Gardening builds character by staying on top of weeding, watering, and harvesting. It builds esteem by showing your family the payoff of their hard work.
Gardening Teaches Secondary Skills
Preparing, planting, and growing a garden are great activities that produce specific skills but there are secondary skills that come from gardening too. Once the food is harvested, cooking and preserving food is just as important as growing it. Families can learn together how to cook, can, freeze, and dehydrate food for use all year.
Family Time
Going in as a family to choose the style of garden, what to plant, and how to enjoy the process is a great bonding experience and can lead to a lifetime of self-sustaining skills. Kids who enjoy growing and preparing their own foods grow into adults who have an advantage over people who didn’t have the same experience. Involving the whole family in gardening and enjoy the experience together can develop team working skills and deepen family bonds. Each time you sit at the table and enjoy foods you grew you can all be proud of the investment of time and energy you put into the process.
Turn your Backyard Garden into a Side Hustle
Finely, with a little effort, you can turn your backyard garden into a side hustle. Everyone knows having multiple streams of income is a smart move. Bringing extra cash into your budget can help you
Invest in your future
Go on vacation
Increase savings
Pay off debt
Having a second or third source of income is a great way to offset your regular budget and can create a cushion without having to commit too much time and effort. The produce from your garden can help.
Now, more than ever, people are aware of the health benefits of fresh, organic produce. They are looking for local ways to bring the farm to their tables and that’s great for you. Simply increasing the volume of your plants can generate enough fresh fruits and vegetables to sell. Once you’ve harvested all you need for personal use, you can easily sell the excess.
There are Plenty of Ways to Generate Income From your Garden
Make your garden famous- Thanks to social media it’s very simple to highlight your gardening journey. Use platforms like Instagram to showcase your garden and generate interest. The more engaging you are, the bigger and more excited your audience will be. People will be ready, willing and able to buy produce from you when you take the time to include them in the process. You can also use platforms like YouTube to share longer videos, teach gardening tips, or creatively showcase the process.
Join a co-op- Some areas have cooperatives where people can share their abundance of food. This is an excellent way to make your excess bounty available and barter for items and goods you family can use.
Participate in a farmer’s market- Local farmer’s markets are making their presence everywhere. Weekly markets are sprouting up in communities where you can easily pop up a table and offer your fresh produce.
Build a roadside stand- If you’ve got the space, consider building a small roadside stand to offer your fresh food. Think of it as a modern-day lemonade stand that has the potential to make some great income. My mom and step dad did this for years and had a very profitable stand. People came from all over the area to get their veggies.
Offer shoppers a DIY experience- If you’ve got the space and the interest, you can use your garden to give people a do-it-yourself experience. From planting pumpkins for people to pick in the fall to offering a wide variety of heirloom tomatoes, people love the opportunity to get in there and source their food from the vine. Growing up my grandfather had multiple fields of strawberries and many raspberry bushes. He had You-Pick gardens and it was always busy at picking season.
As you can see there are many benefits to starting a garden. It’s rewarding to have fresh, organic foods making people’s lives and your wallet healthier.
Have you found benefits of gardening that surprised you? What has your gardening experience been like? Any gardening tips you want to share? I would love to know. Tell me below in the comments.
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