Feeding Your Family

What is the quality of your topsoil like?

Topsoil makes up the first few inches of the earth’s soil and it is this that is abundant in the nutrients our plants need to grow. If you’ve never embarked on any sort of gardening project before, it’s possible that your topsoil will be poor quality. It could be overridden with weeds that are sapping the soil of its goodness, or it may have a PH misbalance or incorrect proportion of soil types.

A thorough ‘weeding’ session can most certainly help to improve the quality of your topsoil. However it is often advisable to purchase some organic topsoil from a trusted supplier, simply to ensure that your seeds are placed in topsoil that contains the right PH levels and a sufficient amount of nutrients.

Many homeowners feel that these costs deter them from getting to grips with gardening and growing their own foods. However, once your own personal farm is up and running, the initial start-up costs will be off-set many times over by what you save in the supermarket.

This leads onto another very good reason for growing your own fruits and vegetables – it makes you much more self-sufficient. If the shop shelves are empty, you can still fall back on the foods that are growing right in your back yard.

Yet how do you decide what to grow?

First of all, you should only grow the foods you like to eat! There is no point squandering your time and money on harvesting foods that are simply going to sit in your cupboards and rot. Yet it’s very important to research exactly what will thrive in your gardens conditions.

Peas, strawberries, cherries, broad beans, cucumbers, raspberries and many more will thrive through the summer months. The autumn is best suited to sweetcorn, apples, red cabbage and potatoes. Winter is the time that the Christmas ‘favourite’ Brussels sprouts comes into season; along with kale, carrots and leeks. Look to harvest spring cabbage, spring onions, cauliflower, rhubarb and asparagus as springtime beckons.

Don’t forget however that regardless of the time of year, without the care and the right balance of topsoil, your plants will not thrive as they should. They may be small, deficient in nutrients or they might not grow at all. Regardless – it simply isn’t worth the risk of time wasted through the attempted growth of foods that just aren’t what they should be. You should be seeking to grow your own foods so that you can improve the health of your family, and foods grown in nutrient poor topsoil simply won’t provide the same health benefits as those grown naturally in a nutrient rich environment.