Lewis | March 18, 2015 | 0 Comments
Leading on from yesterday’s blog about growing chillies in hanging baskets, we’ve got another gardening blog for you today! It’s getting to that time of year where avid gardeners and growers will start to get very busy, as the season changes to benefit us with warmer climes. As such, we will be mirroring the trend of garden busyness with more blogs relevant to it. So buckle up!
We’ve all heard it before: homegrown is better. It has almost become a cliché, such is the number of times the saying has been thrown around. For some it couldn’t be more true; these people swear by growing their own fruit and vegetables in their garden, patio plant pots, allotments, and what have you. They do this for a number of different reasons: self-sufficiency, money-saving and quality assurance are just three (there’s plenty more, let us know of the reasons why you grow your own in the comment section below). However, there are those that argue that there isn’t any solid proof that homegrown is ‘better’, whether that may mean better for you in terms of health, wealth, or any other factor. Perhaps this ambiguity that has developed within the cliché may put doubts in the minds of some people. Others may think the craze is just a marketing ploy to get customers to purchase expensive seeds and other gardening equipment.
There are two sides to every coin, of course. However, after some research into home-growing, I again found myself on The Telegraph website; it tends to be a favourite port of call for me when researching! An article written only a few days ago, which you can read here, actually outlines that homegrown fruit and veg are actually healthier for you, with the added bonus of even tasting better than their pre-packaged counterparts, too.
Scientists at Kew Gardens found, when researching tomato varieties, that the tomatoes grown at Kew found a higher level of flavour-enhancing chemicals that the ones found in supermarkets. The Deputy Director of Science at Kew, Professor Monique Simmonds, had this to say: “Tomatoes grown at Kew had a much higher level of complexity of chemicals than supermarket tomatoes, which are picked early and not matured on a vine.” The extra flavour is something we can all enjoy the sound of, and hopefully the case of! But that wasn’t the groundbreaking discovery; the scientists actually found evidence that homegrown is better for you. With this complexity of chemicals is the presence of lycopene, which is known to help unblock arteries, and is a large reason why the Mediterranean diet is so healthy.
So how’s that for you? If you needed a reason to start growing your own, then there it is! Let’s hope the scientists at Kew Gardens keep up their good work, despite the funding cuts occurring at Kew Gardens. We shouldn’t be letting such a think-tank of gardening struggle.
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