The essential pros and cons of vegetable gardening are diverse and many. The pros include:
- Enjoying delicious homegrown food
- Appreciating your food more
- Having a reason to go out and exercise
- You’re giving back to the earth
- You have greater control over your food and health
- It’s inspiring and relaxing
- It’s empowering and satisfying
The cons include:
- The learning curve can be steep
- It’s time-consuming
- It can be expensive
- Vegetable gardening is slow
- It’s hard work
It is entirely your choice whether or not to garden vegetables; however, if you find the essential pros and cons of vegetable gardening appealing, we recommend that you try it. You can always try something else if it doesn’t work out.
A vegetable garden is worth it in many aspects, and it is certainly worth it for the harvest you get to enjoy.
That being said, the first season or two of vegetable gardening can be a bit of a challenge.
New gardeners can be shocked at the amount of work involved in vegetable gardening.
So, we’ve given you all the essential pros and cons of vegetable gardening below, and we hope this information helps you with your decision.
Let’s start with the pros.
Pros
When it comes to the essential pros and cons of vegetable gardening, count the following among the pros:
- You’ll enjoy delicious homegrown food
- You’ll appreciate your food more
- It gives you a reason to go out and exercise
- You’re giving back to the earth
- Greater control over your food and health
- It’s inspiring and relaxing
- It’s empowering and satisfying
These are just some of the benefits vegetable gardening can offer.
Let’s start with enjoying delicious homegrown food.
You’ll Enjoy Delicious Homegrown Food
There’s something revitalizing about being able to pick fresh delicious and healthy veggies from your own backyard.
Let’s say you want to make a meal. Perhaps you’re going to make a salad of some sort.
Certainly, you can make many things with vegetables, but for our examples a salad is simple (and tasty).
Now picture just being able to simply walk into your backyard and pick whatever you want, versus going to the grocery store to buy your vegetables, wondering how many people handled your food, how old the food is, and how the food was grown.
But it’s not just about knowing where your food comes from, or even you grew it, or even how fresh a piece of produce is.
There is something almost magical about picking the perfect ripe tomato off the vine and feeling it warm from the sun, or passing a bowl of butter and dill drench new potatoes with other family members while also sharing in their joy of just “harvesting” food fresh from the garden.
But those only two instances that provide such joys! Similarly, as you establish your garden and learn what works and what will not give you similar experiences, you will create your own excitement and memories as well.
The beauty of establishing a growing environment like a vegetable garden is the memories year after year that will replace and even build off old memories.
I know this seems a bit sentimental, but start to grow vegetables, give them the love and care needed, and you may find yourself starting to feel some of the thrills and excitements – if just a bit!
You’ll Appreciate Your Food More
You are, literally, living with your food as you grow it in your own backyard. Once it is ready for harvest, you will have developed a relationship with it that you otherwise may not have had.
You have more than likely grown it from seed, and you’ve spent time nurturing the plant and planning and solving problems it may have encountered, and you have probably learned from the failures encountered prior to getting the plant to that point in the first place.
All of this changes how you view food, for the better. In other words, you will value it and take it for granted less than you used to.
It Gives You A Reason To Go Out And Exercise
Nurturing and caring for your vegetable patch (or any garden for that matter!) gets you moving on a regular basis. It is hard work at first but the more you get the hang of it, the more it becomes enjoyable and relaxing – something you look forward to!
Besides, you are outside, which is also another health benefit of vegetable (or other) gardening.
And while your garden does take a fair amount of work each week, you have some flexibility in deciding when to do the garden work!
You’re Giving Back To The Earth
With any luck, you are cutting down on your carbon footprint when you grow some of your food, including veggies.
In other words, you are lessening of your impact on the planet.
It is correct that grocery stores are continually selling more and more healthy foods (vegetables included). Yet, when commercial farmers grow grocery store foods, they grow the foods in unsustainable ways, shipping the food significant distances, adding an environmental toll.
Although, getting your food from your backyard, neighborhood, or local farmers’ as you are not wasting a great deal more than necessary.
Greater Control Over Your Food And Health
When you grow your own food at home, you choose what to grow and how to grow it. And you can enjoy those benefits too.
You can grow things you can’t find at the grocery store.
You can choose not to use chemicals, like herbicides and pesticides, and therefore you are OK because you won’t be consuming them either.
The vegetables you grow yourself taste better and are healthier than what you purchase at the store. You are growing them in your garden, and you’ll harvest them when ripe and use them when fresh.
It’s Inspiring And Relaxing
We discuss how we care for our gardens. But there is much to say about how our gardens are caring for us.
Our gardens feed us, inspire us with the beauty of the plants and flowers, and observe nature doing its job.
After all, connecting to nature in this way and others (hiking for example) touches something deep in us. It is calming, even meditative.
Gardening also connects us to our planet. We are interdependent and gardening lends credence to the notion of interdependence.
Gardening makes you slow down. This slower pace, even for an hour or two, gives you time to reflect and think.
Gardening also puts certain issues front and center, like how our way of life is adversely and severely affecting our planet.
It’s great because, by simply gardening, even a small garden, you’re making your own stand against it.
It’s Empowering And Satisfying
There is something very self-sufficient-like about growing a vegetable garden.
When you learn to mastery, at least bit of, the tools to grown even a little of your food, you remind yourself of your capacity and ability to learn and take care of yourself.
You feel strong and capable.
However, that isn’t the only reason why growing your food is gratifying even if it’s done in a workout way! Also, as a side note, it won’t resonate with everybody.
And we want you to know, that’s o.k. But for those who it does resonate with, please keep reading!
As one of my favorite gardening teachers taught me. He said, “We have bodies, to use them.”
It literally means what you think it does, but there’s also an underpinning as it relates to the embodiment gardening brings us into.
But what is that?
Well, when you think of embodiment, you could think of it as a sense of “belonging in the body,” or just belonging as just belonging. Like you’re doing what you’re meant to be doing in that moment, and it feels good.
Some people feel that gardening brings a feeling of embodiment, because you are using your body to growing food for self-sustaining and nourishment, and you realize that as part of caring for the planet.
It’s appropriate to note too, this sense of embodiment was way more common because growing your own food wasn’t as nebulous, it was more common to grow your own food.
Since that time, we lost just imbodied feeling of once-leggedness, and once-legged-ness of going out to be with our land as its central and undeniable providing substance transported into mass or commercial agricultural operations.
You are taking that back for your self. When you grow your food, you invest some intentional time and, effort, and attention into the act of slowing down, and being present- with you and your land. Plus, it give you model of even greater sharing sense and appreciation.
Cons
As someone who has been gardening for a long time, I really don’t have a lot of bad things to say about the positives and negatives of vegetable gardening.
But when I think back on my first gardens, I remember how much work went into growing your own food.
The unfortunate reality of vegetable gardening is that it is almost always more work than you anticipate.
The good news is that there will also be circumstances beyond your control that will be significant obstacles in your effort to be successful.
And as you will experience, the first year or two is almost always the most difficult.
I would recommend it if you are considering growing your own food, but you may want to consider a smaller start than what you planned on.
So here is why.
The Learning Curve Can Be Steep
Starting out with a vegetable garden can feel overwhelming with little or no experience.
The good news is that does not have to be the case.
Gardening is not all or nothing experience! It is amazing what you can accomplish with a little.
You would be better off doing a project that you can succeed in and enjoy, rather than take on more than you can handle. In short, think small but finish strong!
And you can always scale the garden next year!
Most people who begin too large do not end up having a second season.
It’s Time-Consuming
Maintaining your vegetable garden is a continual process.
You need to pay close attention and to observe what your garden needs on a regular basis.
Some of the work is downright fun and simple to do. Other tasks can sometimes be boring or a lot of work in some other fashion.
To be a success with your garden you need to stay with it over time and keep at it.
It Can Be Expensive
Gardening can always be affordable if you have patience.
As long as you have access to a growing area and fresh water, there is always some form of success.
But gardening can definitely get expensive if you have lofty aspirations for that single season and do not have the experience.
But you don’t need every tool right now.
Use what you have until you know what you will use.
Of course, there may be other costs worth it. For example, if your soil is poor, you may want to pay someone to deliver a truck load of it.
If you are new to vegetable gardening, my suggestion would be to pick your project then scale it back to as simple as you can.
You may be surprised by how much comes from so little.
Vegetable Gardening Is Slow
There’s no fast way to grow vegetables. It is the quintessential slow-living act.
This can be difficult to come to terms with, especially in the current landscape of fast-paced modern life.
But you are not alone. This is difficult for people, even for those that were specifically drawn to gardening for this reason.
Everything will take time when it comes to your vegetable garden.
You will learn to appreciate it or struggle.
It’s Hard Work
It’s true that growing a vegetable garden is a lot more work than not growing a vegetable garden. You might say that this is obvious.
But we are often amazed at how many folks try their hand at growing food only to discover that growing food is a lot more work than they were prepared for.
That said, don’t let this deter you.
Vegetable gardening is typically not complicated.
But there are a lot of components, and the first year or two are often the hardest (fantastic experience!).
Sometimes it can be quite literally the hardest you will work on a garden basically based on factors that are beyond your control; e.g., the weather, wind or storm damage, pests, etc.
Either way, even if there are challenges, there is usually a solution of some kind, and if you reach out to someone (we can help!) there will be someone willing to help you out!
Gardener’s of all types generally give freely of their knowledge and experience.
Should You Grow A Vegetable Garden?
As you can see in the advantages and disadvantages of vegetable gardening, raising your own is some work and very rewarding. This form of cost-benefit analysis only works if we value what we get from labor.
If you like being outdoors in nature, eating healthy food, learning things, getting exercise, giving back to the world, the cycle of a growing season, and getting dirty, what is holding you back from trying it out?
If you choose to, please share with us the experience. We would love to hear about any success, highs or lows, and how we can help.