5 Great Reasons to Grow Your Own Herbs and Veggies

Growing your own fresh herbs and veggies is a lot easier and much more rewarding than many people think. There are hundreds of reasons to start growing your own produce and here are just 5 to help get you motivated !

You know what you are eating

By growing your own herbs and vegetables at home you have complete control over what you are eating and how you choose to grow your food. You control the inputs, soil, compost, how you control weeds, pests and diseases and can make your food infinitely safer to eat by doing simple things right. Good gardening principles are easy to follow and allow you to provide for yourself and family the cleanest, freshest and most nutritious produce that you can.

Nutrition – Fresh and tasty

Lots of produce that you will buy at the local supermarket gets promoted as “fresh”. In actual fact, in most instances its anything but. Veggies are grown on a massive scale to accommodate supermarkets needs, often vegetables are picked well in advance of when you purchase them and are stored and preserved, treated with a range of chemicals, to accommodate longer shelf life. Growing your own produce at home not only eliminates chemicals but drastically improves the nutritional aspect of the food you eat.

The rewards

Growing your own produce could possibly be the most rewarding aspect of gardening and home kitchen gardening has been identified as the strongest garden trend across the world over the last few years. The concept of reconnecting with nature, getting your hands dirty, nurturing your produce and the sense of pride when you harvest are all strong feel good factors that help increase personal wellbeing and you learn every step of the way with everything you grow.

Connect

Home veggie gardening gives you the chance to connect with family and community in many ways. It’s a fantastic way to get kids involved and learning about food, nature and life cycles. You can swap food with neighbours and friends, share tips and advice or join up at a local community garden, specifically set up to help people connect through gardening.

$$$

If all of these reasons arent enough to get you growing then saving money should tick the box ! Being able to harvest your own produce helps you save money at the supermarket and reduces food waste. Simply, you can plan and eat according to what you have on hand at home, saving money and reducing waste. Growing your own fresh herbs at home alone, will save you lots of $$$. 

Sex, Sleep and Euphoria - More to lettuce than meets the eye!

Lettuce (Lactuta sativa) is amongst the most popular of vegetables, used widely around the world. A vegetable that we often take for granted, here is a few snippets of the history of Lettuce that prove there is more than meets the eye with the humble lettuce. 

All lettuce varieties originate from one wild species Lactuca serriola which is a wild winter annual found across Asia, North Africa and Northern Europe. Lettuce are thought to have been first cultivated by the ancient Egyptians around 4500BC with wall paintings representing an early form of Cos lettuce found in Egyptian tombs around 4500BC. The Egyptians were the first to cultivate wild lettuce and breed it from a bitter ‘weed’ to a useful food plant, including oil from the seeds. Lettuce was a sacred plant of the reproduction god Min, and regularly used in religious ceremonies.

Follow this link for more information on the ‘aphrodisiac’ qualities of lettuce ! http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-lettuce-was-a-sacred-sex-symbol-12271795/

The Romans and Greeks also grew and cultivated Lettuce in its earliest forms and it is believed the Romans introduced cultivated Lettuce varieties to Britain and other lands across Europe where continued improvements were made to early lettuce varieties. It is also mentioned in various writings throughout medieval times for its medicinal or herbal value. Throughout history, lettuce milk, the white sap on cut stems, has been believed to have ‘soporific’, sleep inducing or mildly euphoric effects and many cultures have used it this way, including the ancient Greeks who served soup at the end of meals to help one prepare for ‘dreamland’.

Christopher Columbus is believed to have taken lettuce seeds with him on his voyage to New World and the Americas 1492 further spreading it across the Globe and in 1597 Gerard’s Herbal, the most widely distributed botanical reference of 17th century, mentions eight varieties of cultivated lettuce that had spread across the Mediterranean and throughout Europe, in the first modern written record of lettuce.

Quick Snippets

• Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus built a statue praising lettuce as he believed eating it had cured him of an illness.
• It was traditional for Romans to begin their banquets with lettuce to enhance the appetite and relax the alimentary canal.
• Iceberg derived its name from the time Californian growers in the 1920s started covering it with crushed ice before shipping it.
• The Cos variety derives its name from the Greek island of Kos (Cos) in the Aegean Sea where it was brought from North Africa.
• Apart from being a popular salad ingredient, lettuce is also used to make soap, toilet water and skin lotions.

Source: http://www.lovelettuce.co.uk

Weed Blitz... The revolution has begun!

Ever been wondering when you will be able to kill weeds safely, quickly and organically. Well, the answer is right now. Amgrow’s Weed Blitz is a BFA certified (Biological Farmers Association) wholly plant based organic weed spray that seriously works !

Based on pine oil, Weed Blitz is different to any other herbicide you’ve ever used, i.e. Roundup. Weed Blitz works by stripping a plants leaves of its outer protection, dries out the living cells, causing desiccation and collapse of the plant rapidly. Most herbicides work systemically, moving through the plants living tissues to be effective and that effectiveness can be over 7 days or more before a weed will die. With Weed Blitz, a contact herbicide, weeds can be killed within a couple of hours.

Even if you slightly overspray a neighbouring plant, Weed Blitz will only affect contacted cells, not the entire plant and its health remains intact. As an added bonus Weed Blitz also has a pre emergent capacity, able to strip the coating off, and kill weed seeds in and around the sprayed area.

With a rapid success rate, an organic base and leaving no residue (dissolving into a naturally occurring oxide within 72 hrs), Weed Blitz leaves no harmful environmental footprint. It is safe for birds, bees, earthworms, soil microbes and will not damage waterways. Around the home weed blitz is the perfect solution for regular, clean mean and green weed control and is also the perfect herbicide solution for public spaces !

Weed Blitz is available in a ready to use trigger pack and also a 15 litre concentrate form and is the next generation of weed control !