Home gardening ideas
If you are into building healthy habits, then you’ll realize that there is no shortage of viable home gardening ideas to try. By this, I’m referring to container vegetable garden ideas that are easy to execute and wholly affordable. These are some good starting places: Zimbabwe common vegetables, and Food ingredients and products of Tanzania. There is also a great deal you can learn from key ingredients of Benin food recipes. If the idea of garden to table DIY interests you, then you’ll find this article on easy food to grow at home highly insightful. On the African continent, folks often eat straight from the farm. Thus, it is worthwhile to explore the merits of how to grow food. Tag along and discover easy to grow foods at home abound in Africa.
For starters, check out this garden to table DIY of Top 4 vegetables in Benin Vegetarian Recipes. Indeed, it is a dream come true to grow things from seeds. Now Humble Vege is confident to do this on a larger scale. Why the baskets? It sorta stood out. Anyway, don’t matter where you are, you can help seeds grow. Inspired to grow in your own backyard garden? Then utilize these great container vegetable garden ideas and easy to grow foods at home, then share your experience.
Container vegetable garden ideas
The need for each of us to grow our own fresh foods in our backyard garden has never been greater than today. In view of the spiraling problem of food shortage around the globe, it is crucial to equip yourself with viable home gardening ideas. Perhaps most essentially is to know various inexpensive container vegetable garden ideas.
The global human population shall shoot to 9.8 billion by 2050. This translates that there will be even greater demand for food (about 60%) greater than today. The greater stress on the global food production resources would lead to increased food shortage. Also, the quality of food on offer may be poor and hurting to our building healthy habits. In this regard, it is all the more important to adopt easy food to grow at home for some food security. It is therefore wise to continually seek functional home gardening ideas and give them a try.
Try your hand at gardening today
As the current Corona pandemic has clearly laid it out to us, relying on food imports leaves us all vulnerable to supply chain issues that come with it. Why not then go at it smartly by converting that little kitchen backyard into a booming source of fresh fruit and vegetable supply? In doing so, you can reap the advantages of traditional gardening without much of a hustle. To start on your container vegetable garden ideas, simply do these:
- Grow vegetable seeds in a thrifted wicker basket, or you can use plastic baskets as shown in the video tour below.
- Pick a deep enough basket and fill the bottom soil using clay dirt from your environment. The topsoil should be a gardening soil
- Choose easy seeds like carrot, tomatoes, scallions, okra, potato stems, radish and cucumber (goes well with Ivorian attieke) and lettuce seeds.
- Gather your courage and determination and plant, making sure to routinely water them. Gardening is by far the most gentle, forgivable and rewarding experience anyone can do. Nature gives A for effort, so don’t be shy nor hesitate.
Home gardening & building healthy habits
Interestingly, there is power that comes with the prerogative of making your own selection of easy food to grow at home. As the primary food producer yourself, you are able to make an environment-conscious decision to cut out those harmful pesticides and chemicals. Sure, the worms and bugs came out to pester the cucumbers, tomatoes and radish leaves that were eaten by worms mostly. I picked them off and threw them far away, and continued to monitor the vegetables’ growth. These home gardening ideas are just invaluable. They are a true testament that knowing how to grow food is a fine way to improve building healthy habits.
On the upside, after the vegetables grew, I ate a tomato grown in my garden. Honestly, I was pleasantly surprised by the taste: It tasted almost sweet and enjoyable. I got very greedy and kept eating it. Also, I found every excuse to garnish my food with fresh parsley, and the lettuce leaves were so crisp and tender. Don’t’ get me started on the potato leaves, they flourished within two weeks. In short, I have never regretted the home gardening ideas and container vegetable garden ideas I am sharing with you. They are firmly engrained in my daily effort to building healthy habits.
Benefits of backyard gardening
Evidently, growing your backyard fruits and vegetables greatly contributes to addressing the over-reliance on animal products that really doesn’t help the planet. Comparatively, producing a kilo of plant protein is 30-times less demanding on the environment than a kilogram of beef. Herein lies the rationale for choosing a plant-based eating lifestyle if you are at a crossroads when it comes to the different types of food tribes. Or you can opt to diversify your food choices and incorporate hearty stews your family will love.
Related: Best Egyptian-Lebanese Red Lentil Soup
Regarding cost, how to grow food is affordable & wise if you are looking to save on what you spend on food year in, year out. I love the fact that I didn’t have to buy scallions or parsley or fresh cilantro or tomatoes from the store. I can’t emphasize the health aspect enough: growing your own food makes your diet more diverse, rich in vitamins, plant proteins, minerals, and antioxidants. Knowing how to grow food fundamentally, you can count on a reliable supply of fresh vegetables, fruits, leafy greens, and herbs for your cooking.
Related: How to peel pumpkin safely
Certainly, you can benefit from your healthy habits with a small kitchen backyard space. All you need is to start small and expand the number of veggies and fruits with time. You will love these and more home gardening ideas even more when you obtain fresh ingredients conveniently and cheaply from your own garden. Here are some inspirations to assist you in how to make sautéed collard greens, savory African pumpkin stew, or pinto beans stew.
A’las
The world was given a harsh wake-up call, and one many of us answered. With effective DIY home gardening ideas, your delicious snacking food or cooking ingredients are just weeks away. Luckily, there are many beginner-friendly products you can start with, including tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, spinach, kale, peppers, lettuce, and herbs.
Use this platform to ask as many questions as possible. I not only created a garden, but I composted my food and turned it into black gold for the garden, so I can share some tips you’d find helpful. Delicious snacking food or cooking ingredients is just weeks away, and the rewarding feeling (psychological and physiological benefits) is worthwhile. Furnishing your kitchen and backyard with any of these vegetables is the first step to achieving food security and better nutrition. Share with us your experience or offer some tips. Curious about a no-animal-meat food lifestyle? Peep instagram to see what I eat live😊.
Backyard garden tour
Home Gardening Ideas: Easy foods to grow
Store bought foods are great. But the wholesomeness, taste, and contentment your freshly homegrown foods give are unmatched.
No matter how generous the food stockpile you keep. They are bound to run out. However, the ability to grow your own food in your homestead garden never fails.
Gardening yourself is neither tough nor expansive. In fact, you would do yourself a world of good if fresh nutrients are coming directly to your table right from your backyard garden.
We have rounded up easy steps to guide you how to start a vegetable garden at your home:
Instructions
- Collect large containers, pots, or wicker baskets (thrifted). To facilitate drainage, make a few medium size holes in the bottom of plastic containers using large drill bits or use large nails to make holes. Note, the wicker basket does not need holes drilled in, only make holes for plastic containers or basket. Terra cotta pots have holes in them.
- Find a spot. You don’t need a large area to garden. Any small space available would do. You can use hanging baskets on your balcony to grow foods as they would consume less space. However, if you have a relatively large space in you home or apartment , you can raise a garden bed anywhere around 8x4′ to 4x4′. This area is enough to produce lots of food. The trick is to utilize every space of your yard. Even your cinder blocks are a perfect place to grow flowers and herbs.
- Gather compostable materials. It could be food scrapes from leftovers (yes even the chicken or meat or fish bones), lawn clippings, fallen leaves, wood, or even kitchen scraps from vegetables. They all are useful and can be repurposed to create compost for your garden beds or pots.
- Clean the space where sowing will occur. Your garden beds shouldn’t be placed on barren sod/grass. Cut them out using a spade or shovel. This will prevent weeds poking through the garden bed. Once removed, place the basket or pot or any garden bed on top.
- Fill the containers or raised beds with compost and garden soil. You can also fill them with perlite, vermiculite, or sand. Although, they are excellent material for water retention and drainage, and you can easily get them from your nearby local garden store. However, garden soil/topsoil and compost are sufficient in the start. Above all, you can just put organic potting soil as a topsoil straight in the beds and wicker baskets and start growing foods. For the bottom soil you can use clay soil from your environment.
- To build and maintain quality soil in your garden, you either need to amend the current soil or bring in the new soil. Adding more well-rotted compost to the topsoil enhances nutrients-density and soil texture. You can also add sand or other organic matter like chopped leaves, coco fiber etc. Amending your soil regularly is the only way to maximize your soil health. Remember, it’s not only about growing plants; it’s also about maintaining soil that matters. Or to put it another way, healthy plants come from healthy soil.
- Now it’s time to plant vegetable crops. You can also buy open-pollinated seeds from your local garden or start from seeds if you're confident. For beginners, choose easy vegetables that are productive too. Choose what you and your family love to eat. As for my garden, I have selected these foods: radish and carrots, parsley, lettuce, yellow sweet potato greens, white sweet potato leaves, spinach, pumpkin, habanero peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, green onions, wild pumpkin, cucumbers. They are not only incredibly easy to grow and quick to produce. They are also nutritious and widely eaten by families. For example, radish takes as little as 25 days to produce. While leaf lettuce grows in 30 days.
- Once you plant your seeds, protect them from birds or pests by keeping it indoors until sprouts start to show. Or if you bought pollinated seeds from your gardener, take your potted vegetable outside. Set a reminder on your phone or calendar to water once a week so as not over water. With time, patience and care, watch your food grow. Questions? Reach out to us in the comments or using the contact information.
Notes
Take stock before you plant. Choose a selection of vegetables gingerly. Don’t overplant or overproduce one type since it would become very difficult to take care of lots of plants.
Use only top-quality seeds. Water your plants every day and look after the crops throughout the growing season. Keep your garden beds and compost baskets weed-free. You can mulch. Compost is the best fertilizer. Sprinkle some around the base of the plant if you find it sick. Pick out the homegrown fruits and veggies as soon as they are ripe. This will allow plants to produce more.
Follow these guidelines and start growing DIY foods.
They are both fun and fruitful!