Easy Ways to Become Healthy This Year: Growing Your Own Produce

Are you fed up of feeling less than your best? If so, you probably want to become healthier. Why don’t you shake up your diet by growing your own produce? It’s a fail-safe way to guarantee that a good portion of your food is high-quality, nutritious and delicious. You’ll need some outdoor space (as much as you feel you can handle), fruit trees or herbs from places like Ashridge nurseries and a can-do attitude! Here are some of the best things you can grow in order to become healthy this year¦

Garlic

Believe it or not, whole books have been dedicated to garlic due to its seemingly endless list of benefits. Garlic is known as ‘the stinking rose’ (and you’ll understand why if you’ve ever chopped the fresh variety!) and packs a punch for such a small vegetable¦ recent evidence suggests that garlic can reduce high blood pressure, lower cholesterol level and is even thought to protect against bowel and stomach cancers.

How to grow it: garlic will grow well in most soils. It needs some sunshine but not a huge amount, and should be planted during late autumn or early winter. For novice gardeners, it’s a great plant to start with.

Kale

Kale is being hailed as a new superfood. It’s low in calories and is super high in iron, making it something women in particular should be adding to their daily diets. Per calorie, kale contains more iron than beef, is high in fibre and packs lots of vitamins.

How to grow it: plant your kale in spring time, ensure it gets enough water (along with the rest of your vegetable patch), but don’t worry about it much¦ it’s a forgiving plant and will thrive even if it’s frosty!

Beetroot

Traditionally, beetroot has been used as medicine as it helps to stimulate the liver’s detoxification process. The pigment that gives beetroot its rich, purple colour is called ‘betacyanin’, an agent believed to supress cancers. It’s also great for aiding the effects of constipation, and is a good source of ‘glutamine’ (an acid that helps your intestinal tract to work as it ought to).

How to grow it: plant beetroot in mid-spring, keep the seedlings watered and remove weeds as they appear. It will be ready to dig up around 90 days after planting when it’s between the size of a golf ball and a tennis ball, but is sweetest between June and October.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes contain a substance called ‘beta-carotene‘ (also found in sweet potatoes and carrots) which helps to protect your skin against damage. They also contain high amounts of vitamin C and are thought to reduce the risk of heart disease and strengthen bones which makes tomatoes a great food for post-menopausal woman to add to their diet. They’re great for men too: eating 10 or more servings of tomatoes a week could reduce the risk of prostate cancer by 18%.

How to grow them: tomatoes need to be grown upwards supported by a vertical bamboo canes. Side shoots should be removed when they become an inch long, and the soil must be kept evenly moist with careful, regular watering. Tomato plants like heat, so keep them in a greenhouse if you can. They’re a little harder to grow than the other suggestions above, but are worth a try!