Environment

 Tall fruit trees provide shade.

 You can use less pesticides or use natural pesticides and this will be less contamination to
the environment.
 Produce peels and waste can create a lot of green waste and takes up a lot of space in the
garbage can. Recycle them to make your own compost. It is less expensive than buying
fertilizers.
 Turn unsightly lands into attractive landscapes.
 Get creative. There is a potential to grow an innovative gardens like futuristic horticulture
gardens that are very cost-effective and require substantially less space.

Growing Your Own is Going Green

When you grow your own produce, you are nourishing the soil of your garden by planting
species that enrich soil and by using fertilizers and other garden products that are of natural
origin.

Unlike commercial farming which releases harmful chemicals into the air and water as well as
the soil, organic gardening is sustainable and provides only environmental benefits.

You are also cutting down on use of imported and polluting oil, as rather than taking a long ride
in your car to purchase organic produce from a remotely located farmer’s market, you are
spending time and energy growing your own healthy food at home, and you are also getting the
exercise, fresh air and other benefits for which organic gardening is famous.

If you’re concerned about global warming’s effects then you’re probably already aware of the
concept of food miles too. By growing your own food, you can avoid rely on produce that may
otherwise be imported from many miles away.

That means that you can help to reduce the carbon emissions that are associated with air freight
and other methods of transportation. Growing your own produce is the green way to save time,
money and energy. You and your family can share in the healthy tasks of maintaining an
organic garden as you enjoy your home grown produce together, safe in the knowledge that you
are eating the best and healthiest produce available while you do your part to keep the
environment safe and clean.
What's the environmental impact of growing
your own food?
Submitted by Johanna on Wed, 17/06/2015 - 19:09 | Updated Sat, 17/09/2016 - 23:49

Buying locally grown food is a great way to minimize your environmental impact, and growing
your own food takes that idea one step further. You might be surprised by the effect even a small
vegetable garden can have on your carbon footprint. Here’s a simple calculation to show just
how much energy you might be able save with your garden.

The first step is to calculate the typical energy cost associated with transporting food. It has been
estimated that produce travels an average distance of 1500 miles before it is consumed [1].
Agricultural products are one of the top two commodities transported by semi-truck in the US,
and a typical semi-truck gets about 5.6 miles per gallon of diesel while carrying 34,000 pounds
of cargo [2,3]. Each gallon of diesel it burns releases 22.38 pounds of carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere [4]. Based on these numbers, each pound of food releases 0.18 pounds of CO2 into
the atmosphere from transportation alone! Stated another way, the energy associated with
transporting a 5.2 ounce serving of broccoli is equivalent to 90.3 nutritional calories, even
though it only provides 50 nutritional calories of energy when it is consumed [5].

Of course, many of the readers of this blog are probably more eco-conscious than the average
person and may already be buying local produce. If your produce travels an average distance of
150 miles, transporting one pound of food results in the emission of 0.018 pounds of CO2. You
should use this number instead when calculating your own energy savings.

To figure out how many pounds of CO2 a garden can save, we need to estimate the amount of
food a typical garden will produce. Based on data from Louisiana State University Ag Center,
one could grow 1.5 pounds of cherry tomatoes, 0.6 pounds of potatoes, or 0.5 pounds of carrots
per square foot of garden space [6]. The exact yield will depend on climate and soil conditions,
but these numbers provide a good starting point for our estimation, and data for many other crops
can be found in the reference. In this example we calculate that with only 10 by 10 foot garden,
one could grow 150 pounds of cherry tomatoes, which is the equivalent of keeping 27 pounds of
CO2 out of the atmosphere. With the data from the reference, this calculation could be repeated
for a garden size of your choice with a diversity of crops (just divide the numbers in the
reference by 300 to get the approximate yield per square foot). Since your energy savings is
directly proportional to the yield of your garden in pounds of produce, you maximize your
energy savings by focusing on crops with the highest yield per pound in this simple estimation.

If you are planting your garden in a place that wasn’t already covered by plants such as a balcony
or patio, you may wonder how much the extra CO2 absorption from these plants will offset your
carbon footprint. It is difficult to estimate how much CO2 any given plant will absorb because
this depends strongly on the environmental conditions, but a healthy tree will store about 13
pounds of CO2 in one year [7].