Gardening Can Be Berry Good For You...

by ecohookups.com contributor: Kate Boyd

Gardening can be really rewarding and easy, depending on what you grow. It’s great for the environment because buying food from the store wastes oil for the produce to be transported, especially if it’s not locally grown. It also wastes materials because the produce is packaged before it’s shipped to the store and then all that packaging is just thrown away. Pesticides are almost always used and they aren’t eco friendly either. In fact, depending on what they’re sprayed with, they’re likely to kill off other animals, besides insects. And pesticides aren’t good for people either. Producing your own food also saves a lot of money, which is always a plus.

You can easily grow most berries, but you may want to keep vine berry plants, like blackberries, in a pot so you can trim them easier, otherwise they will root everywhere and start taking over your garden. You may want to get thorn less blackberries, as thorns are painful and you can be easily pricked while picking berries if you don’t wear gloves!

Raspberries and red currants produce masses of fruit! Red currants require some maintenance for trimming branches so that you receive the best results but even they don’t require very much. They don’t have to be watered often, unless you live in an area that doesn’t get very much rainfall. Raspberries require practically no maintenance if you don’t mind them growing wild. They come in more colors than the standard red; there are many types that are black, golden, and yellow.

Gardening isn’t that hard, even for people who claim they don’t have a “green thumb”. It just takes a bit of research for the plant’s care and finding hardy beginner plants. You can’t know how good of a gardener you’ll be until you try. With any luck you will be producing your own food in no time!