Should you grow edible plants in your home? Here’s what to consider.

When we think of growing our own food, we usually associate it with unmanageable expectations. Most of us work 9-5 jobs, and maybe don’t feel like we have the time to commit to growing food. We live for the convenience of a corner store, where we can just go and pick up a few items for tonight’s meal.

But in today’s climate, food can become an expense on its own, especially if you want to make sure you’re getting your food from the right sources. Growing your own food not only helps you guarantee you’re eating great quality. If you want to know what foods are perfect to grow at home, check out this detailed article we’ve written on just that.

The cons to consider:

It would be disingenuous of us to say that growing your own food is all sun and flowers. Here are some points to think about before diving into this:

• It is going to take some time before you see results
• If you don’t have a lot of space, you’ll need to get creative
• You’ll have to invest in some small apparatus over time

If you’re running a busy household, growing food at home can get challenging, but consider asking your fellow friends or house members to help you out – gardening can be a lot of fun with an extra pair of green thumbs.

Most of us need the balcony for practical things and chores. Even though growing our own food seems attractive, we may simply not have space for it. We’ll be writing an article on creative ways to

If you’re interested in growing your own food, but aren’t sure how to combat these very real problems, check out this article where we explain how to do just that.

Advantages

However, this is one of the cases where we think the good outweighs the bad. Look at some of these great advantages of growing your own food.

• It’s healthier
• Saves you money in the long-run
• Enjoy more quality time with your family
• Reduce air and noise pollution around your home
• Prevents waste
• Promotes self-sufficiency
• Enjoy better-tasting food
• Reduces worry about food safety
• Gardening is a well-known stress reliever
• Decreases your carbon footprint

A lot of today’s mass grown food are sprayed with chemicals to make them grow faster and larger. Not to mention the sprays to keep away bugs and pests. All these chemicals remain on the surface of your food even when they get to the market. Growing your own good is a great way to ensure that what you put in your body is as healthy and clean as can be. There are so many options you can choose from, but some thrive better in warmer months. Here’s an article on those veggies that would do well in Malta’s hot and humid Summer.

You could also use seeds and skins from the fruits and vegetables you already grew to grow more! Cost-friendly and you’re preventing waste!

Growing Fruits and Vegetables in the house

No garden? No problem. You don’t need 6 ft of soil or a spacious backyard to grow most of your foods.

It may seem strange at first, but once you get going they’re no different from the potted fern tree by your couch.

Storing food

An incredibly simple thing you can do to combat food waste is to properly store your food. Fruits and vegetables perish very quickly. According to Christine Liu they are the ‘highest offenders when it comes to wastage’, largely because it’s very tricky to keep them fresh.

She recommends that if you see foods that are beginning to spoil, bake or cook them right away and then refrigerate or freeze accordingly. This will help preserve them, even if you’re not ready to eat them just yet. Meal prepping is a great way of saving time in the mornings before work, and it helps you utilize everything that is just about to go off.

Here’s a more comprehensive guide to storing different kinds of foods in your home.

If you’re unable to eat all the food once it’s cooked, freeze it. Christine Liu recommends that you avoid plastic containers and go for glass jars or metal containers. Microplastics can over time ‘leak’ into your food, making it unsuitable for eating.

You can get your own Mason Jar for quite a good deal from your local store. Jars at Ferraracasa go for €6.99 a pop. If you prefer online shopping, here’s a link to a pack of Mason jars costing £14.39. If you don’t want your pantry to be littered with glass jars, you could simply use bowls and place reusable silicone lids like the ones by EcoInnova. They provide a pack of lids coming in a variety of sizes for just € 19.95.

There’s a whole lot more to be said on how to perfectly store your home-grown food and reduce waste. So we devoted an entire article to just that! Read it here.

A lot of the information for this article was collected from Christine Liu’s book, Sustainable Home. She gives loads of helpful tips and advice on how to make the switch to an eco-friendly, waste-free lifestyle. Get your copy here.