Growing Your Own Fruit & Veg – a Fun & Rewarding Family Activity

There are few better and more rewarding projects to take on at home than growing your own fruit and veg. This brings dozens of benefits and can be a fantastic activity to take on with the kids.

Benefits

Growing your own fruit and veg can help to lower your grocery bill, encourage healthy eating and help the family to get fresh air and sunshine. For the little ones, it can also teach them important life skills like patience, hard work and how to be self-sufficient. It also tastes much better when it comes from your own hard work!

Healthy Eating

In modern times, it is rare that adults and kids eat a sufficient amount of fruit and veg. By growing it yourself, you will be encouraged to use fruit and veg in more dishes and this could have a huge impact on the health and happiness of both you and your kids. When you show your children how to use homegrown produce in recipes it will put them in good stead for the future when they move out.

What to Grow

The benefits of growing your own fruit and veg are clear, but what should you grow? It is wise to start off with produce which is easy to grow and you can then develop to tricker items. A few easy to grow vegetables include potatoes, radishes, peas, runner beans, onions, tomatoes and beetroot. These are all also items which can easily be used in many different dishes!

Getting Started

There is a lot of helpful advice for growing fruit and veg online, but it will also depend on what you are growing. The soil is crucial and you will need lots of fertility, which means growing your own compost is a great idea. In terms of plots, you will need good soil depth, space for the roots to stretch and plenty of sunlight (for most items). Slugs, insects and other animals will be your main foe, but a great way to protect your fruit and veg from these is with a polytunnel from Premier Polytunnels – these also help to protect against the elements.

Growing your own fruit and veg will require a lot of hard work and patience, but these are important life skills that children need to learn. It is also an incredibly rewarding activity and one which will both lower your grocery bill and encourage healthy eating. It is for these reasons why it is such a valuable family activity and one which promotes good habits.