Growing your own food has been a pleasure of the past for way too long. Here in America, we have gotten away from the practice of sustaining ourselves as well as our land.

While it may be true that a hundred years ago, it was essential to grow your own food, it’s equally as true that there are some valid reasons for doing so in a day and age where it isn’t truly "necessary". The reasons below just might change your mind about the definition of necessity.

1. Growing your own food guarantees its organic origins. You know it’s perfectly fresh and healthy for your family - free of pesticides or other additives. When you grow your own food you get to discover what produce is suppose to taste like.
2. The nutritional value of fruits and vegetables begins to decline once it is picked or harvested. The produce you grow in your own yard will contain the more vitamins and minerals than the produce available in grocery stores.
3. When you grow your own fruit and vegetables, you save on groceries. Sometimes a little, sometime a lot. For instance, heirloom tomatoes go for about $4.00 per tomato. A whole tomato plant casts you half of that – not to mention if you start from seed. You’ll still see a savings even when you grow an inexpensive food because of the quantity of that produce necessary to provide a family meal.
4. Supplementing your groceries by growing your own food saves on gas, oil and air pollution from the trucks that haul the produce from everywhere else. This is just about as eco-friendly as it gets!
5. Growing your own food bring the family together as a functioning unit. Kids especially love being a part of gardening.
6. Gardening at home allows you to grow varieties of vegetables and fruits unheard of at the grocery store. There are delightful flavors, textures, and colors that can be experienced by growing food at home. There are numerous seed catalogs that will introduce you to hundreds of varieties.
7. Finally, growing your own produce allows you to share the bounty with others. You can share fresh food with extended family, friends, co-workers and neighbors. Another wonderful experience for the whole family is to share with a local food bank. Some families even plant an extra row of everything in their garden especially for this purpose.

10 Easy Veggies to Grow are:

• Tomatoes – Once again, organic tomatoes and heirloom are especially expensive in the store and especially delicious! The typical heirloom is $ 4.00 per tomato in the grocery store. Tomatoes are incredibly easy to grow and you don’t need many plants for a high yield. They are particularly easy to grow in containers if you’d like to keep one close to the kitchen door.

• Asparagus – Asparagus is absolutely delicious when freshly picked. They are perennials so they’ll come back for you year after year.

• Lettuce – Organic lettuce isn’t cheap, especially if you’re feeding a family. Perfect crop for fall and winter, but there are lettuces for the warmer weather, too. There is also a vast difference in flavors with lettuces. Lettuce tolerates nearly any soil, and it’s a great produce to experiment with.

• Potatoes – These are not only easy to grow, but fun to harvest, as well. Root crops can be harvested year round, as well. Try them in pots.

• Cucumbers – You wouldn’t think these would be expensive, but they can be! I saw one in the store yesterday for 2.50 – for one! Cucumbers are ridiculously easy to grow. They’ll be coming out your ears. There are some excellent high-yielding compact varieties, as well.

• Onions – They like free-draining soils, other than that, these guys practically grow themselves. I like to plant them in big planters with light soil. The bulbs get nice and full.

• Carrots – carrots are so much fun to grow. They are lots of varieties to try and if you don’t have deep, fluffy soil, you can always grow the stumpy kinds that aren’t meant to grow long roots. Carrots are a favorite harvest for the kids.

• Green beans – Green beans do best in full sun and light soil. They come as bushes or the climbing type. For kids, you can grow the climbers up poles that are tied together at the top and form a tee-pee.

• Peppers – From bell to chili, hot to mild, peppers are an exceptionally easy crop to grow. Use them as a recipe ingredient, for roasting, as a condiment, and as a side dish. Peppers come in a wonderful assortment of colors – even lavender and purple.

• Squash – This is one of the most useful and healthy vegetable families. Squashes are used for baking, stuffing and soups. Of course, pumpkins work over time playing double-duty both as a delicious food and as a holiday ornamental.