Eight Reasons You Shouldn’t Grow Your Own Food

Contrary to “popular opinion,” gardening is NOT for everyone

So you’re thinking of growing your own food? AWESOME! That is an EXCELLENT idea. Growing your own food is one of the best ways to participate in your local meta-entity. It’s a great way to supplement your family’s diet with nutrient-dense and delicious fruits and vegetables, and to save money and reduce your “carbon footprint” by making less trips to the grocery store. CONGRATULATIONS!

HOWEVER!

Here is a thing:

Growing your own food might not be a good decision for you.

I know, I know: if you listen to the Internet Oracles, they’ll all tell you that everyone should be gardening, and that gardening is “so easy” and cheap and we should have food growing everywhere. I mean, look at how easy this guy makes it sound!

Really neat, huh? And I mostly agree, too! Except there’s one thing all of these people miss, and that is gardening can be hard and is subject to many variables. In the article above, for instance, the author recommends getting some worms involved — excellent advice, except…:

You can find these red digger worms at most local nurseries. Worm castings are invaluable for your garden due to it being a highly nutritious fertilizer. The worms themselves also help to keep the soil loose and aerated.

…the worms you buy at the nursery will likely dig into your soil and start dying. Worms need to be invited into a system to succeed. They can’t just be dumped in by the handful; non-native worms can’t deal with introduction into an unfamiliar soil system. I mean, sure, a bunch of dead worms will increase the organic matter in your soil, but you could have spent that money elsewhere and prepped your soil so the local worms could just move in.

There are times when introducing worms into a system makes sense. If there are literally no worms there already, go ahead and give it a whirl. Even then, though, if your soil isn’t properly prepared for them, it might not work. And this is maybe the number one rule of gardening that I’d impart upon anyone interested in trying it: It Might Not Work.

It’s fantastic to get excited about growing food, and if you’re inclined, you should definitely try! But, keeping the principle of It Might Not Work in mind, you need to be okay with a super-insane number of things that Could Go Wrong and Probably Will. No matter how closely you follow the instructions, nature might decide not to play along.

So, before you run out and buy some expensive two-by-fours for your raised bed frame and spend lots of money on seeds or transplants, take a look at the following list. Does any of it apply to you? If so, maybe consider buying your food instead of growing it.*

*(Which is fine! There’s nothing wrong with buying food from somebody who grows it! There’s a reason that throughout history, lots of people chose not to grow their own food.)

1. You’re not willing to learn about gardening. This is an easy one! If you’re not willing to take a class or read a book about how to garden in your area, you’re going to have serious issues. Sure, you can also be willing to learn from experience, but you need a foundation, first.
2. You’re not willing to learn about soil. This isn’t some kind of abstract issue based on principles. The way you treat your soil, whether you’re buying it somewhere or using the soil that’s already there, will have a significant impact on the health of your garden.
3. You’re not willing to learn about your local meta-entity. By this, I mean your local environment. Is it okay for you to have a garden in your planting strip? Will it piss off your neighbors? What was planted there before? In the article above, the author states that “It’s important not to use grass treated with lawn chemicals,” which is true! But how do you know if it has or not? You need to look into this stuff. (Bonus Questions: Where is the light coming from? How does the water flow across your land? Will your neighbor’s cat poop in your garden beds?)
4. You think you can garden using “apps.” If you need an app to tell you how moist your soil is, you’re going to be in for some nasty surprises when your app malfunctions or nature does something unexpected. Remember, It Might Not Work!
5. You can’t deal with failure. I have a bunch of seedlings this year and a number of them didn’t get enough close light. Oops! That means they’re what we call “leggy,” and it’s likely I’ll have to toss more than a few into the compost pile. Oh, well! If you can’t shrug when something like this happens, but instead get bogged down in trying to fix it, or super-frustrated and sad, maybe buy your food.
6. You don’t have the time. It’s super-okay to not have the time to grow food! There is some flexibility here, though; maybe instead of building a way-more-labor-intensive raised bed, you can grow some lettuce in some pots? But, if you’re working two jobs all week and weekends and can barely find the time to shove down a quick meal you had to microwave, you probably won’t have enough time to grow your own food.
7. You’re not okay with digging or moving things around. If you’re serious about growing things, eventually you’re going to have to deal with piles: mulch, compost, topsoil, plants. If this makes you uncomfortable, that’s okay! But maybe stay super-small-scale (containers, maybe?) instead of
8. You don’t want to. This seems like a no-brainer, but a lot of people don’t want to garden. However, there’s a real implication in a lot of circles that everyone should, for whatever reason. Are you one of those people who isn’t actually interested in doing it? If so, don’t do it! You’ll just get frustrated and discourage other people who are interested in gardening.

Obviously these are really broad, and there are a lot of ways to address each of these that could change you from someone who fits one of the categories to someone who isn’t. Heck, I could do another series of posts (maybe I will) about how to work around some of these categories and turn from a “non-gardener” into a “gardener.” The danger is that if you start gardening without keeping these things in mind, you might not like it. And, then you’ll give up on it forever instead of giving it a try again sometime in the future!

I’m also certainly not trying to discourage anybody who’s interested in growing food from doing so. If you’ve got the “itch,” but don’t have the resources or the know-how or the wherewithal, there are lots of ways to get involved in growing food — community gardens, maybe! Or volunteer at a local CSA! Or learn to forage and eliminate the ‘growing’ question entirely!— that don’t take as much time or offer so much potential variability.

So yes, if you’re okay with any of the above warnings, go out there and grow food. It will be delicious, worth the trouble, and richly satisfying. You’ve made a great decision! DO IT!