10 Amazing Health Benefits of Planting Your Own Garden

It’s that time of year when the trees are budding and the birds are chirping…yes, it’s spring! Along with spring comes the best time to start planting a garden. Planting and tending to fruits and vegetables can be done in a wide variety of settings and climates. You can scale the garden to any size that fits your ability and needs. It can be a container garden in pots or buckets on a porch or apartment balcony. It can be a raised garden bed next to your house or it can be an expansive garden that will grow food for your family for months to come. Not only does a garden provide healthy, fresh food but it also has many added health benefits.

Reduce Stress

Gardening is a great way to reduce cortisol and lower stress levels. The daily grind of work and life are a rush, rush, rush kind of mentality. When you can get out into the garden and slow down and relax, your body and mind will lower its stress hormones. It can be relaxing sitting among your plants while pruning, weeding and picking your bounty. Listening to the sounds of the birds and bees and watching the rabbits and chipmunks scamper around is good for the soul. It gives you quiet time to meditate and talk to God while enjoying His creation.

Improve Heart Health

Working in the garden increases the amount of activity in your day. Between the digging, raking, planting, weed pulling and harvesting there is an amount of work that occurs over and above the normal day. The increase in activity gets our blood pumping and can help to improve our overall heart health. It has also been shown to help to decrease blood pressure due to the increase exercise.

Increase Vitamin D

Any time spent out of doors in the sunshine helps to elevate our vitamin D levels. Vitamin D is very important to our overall health. Vitamin D is needed to help calcium be absorbed into bones aiding in their strength to prevent osteoporosis and brittle bones. It is also plays a vital role in a healthy immune system so that we can ward off infections and illnesses.

Increase Balance and Flexibility

Weeding and planting the garden require time spent kneeling and stretching across the area in which you have planted. Standing and bending over to care for plants requires a certain amount of balance as well. The more that you work in your garden doing these tasks helps to increase our flexibility and a obtain a stronger sense of balance by strengthening our core muscles.

Increase Blood Oxygen

When we spend a large amount of time indoors we are missing out on the fresh air of the great outdoors. Indoor air can be stale and recirculated through ventilation systems. Being in the outdoors helps to clear our lungs and take deep breaths of fresh clean air. This can help to increase the amount of oxygen in our blood as well. All of these benefits help us to feel better overall. Sit outside in your garden and take 3 long deep breaths, focusing on our breath. How do you feel? Refreshed? Revived?

Dirt Exposure

This may seem like a strange benefit but it is a very important one. Studies have shown that exposure to dirt, especially in children can help to increase our immunity due to the beneficial bacteria that are encountered. This allows our bodies to have small exposure and build up immunity to various bacteria which can lead to having fewer allergies as we age.

Improved Diet

Growing more fruits and vegetables leads us to consume more fruits and vegetables. Vegetables are an excellent source of vitamins and minerals. One of the healthiest lifestyles in the world is the Mediterranean lifestyle. It is rich in the consumption of fruits and vegetables. Growing your own allows for you to plant the vegetables that you enjoy.

High Nutritional Content

Due to the proximity of your garden to your home, you are able to harvest your crops at the time that you are ready to eat them. This practice improves the amount of nutrition that is in the food that we eat. Vegetables in the grocery stores have to be harvested early so that they are in the stores at the time they are nearing or at ripeness. Having your own garden allows the vegetables to ripen on the plant which gives them the ability to obtain the highest amount of nutritional value.

Better Flavor

Just as ripening on the plant increases the amount of nutritional content, better flavor goes hand in hand with this as well. Harvesting your crops at the time that you are ready to consume them yields the best possible flavor. Have you ever picked a tomato from the vine, washed it and eaten it right away? There is nothing better than this taste. You will not find this same taste from any store bought tomato.

Pesticide-free

Planting in our own backyard gardens yields crops that are free from commercially produced pesticides that can cause harm to our health. Many pesticides can cause issues that can lead to adverse reactions in the body such as food intolerances and more severe interactions.

As you can see there are a vast array of health benefits to planting your own garden not to mention it is just fun and exciting to plant a seed or small seedling in the ground, water it and watch it grow. You gain a sense of accomplishment and pride that you have grown and taken care of a plant that is rewarding you with its precious bounty. Gardens do not have to be huge to be beneficial. Start today even if it is just a few plants in pots on your porch and gain the love for gardening. Your health will thank you.