Did you know you can grow healthier through becoming an organic gardener? My last article focused on the benefits of soul and spirit by organic gardening. This article focuses on the health benefits of gardening. I am an AiSociety certified appraiser as my business. My vocation, however, is organic gardening and landscaping. My story will tell you some of the reasons this pursuit has become a lifelong quest for health and pleasure.
When my oldest daughter was small she had a form of epilepsy called lapse seizures. Medicines dulled her responses and normal child exuberance. We started researching alternatives and found a renowned child doctor in Oregon, Dr. Lendon Smith. He was way ahead of his time. We consulted with him about our daughter’s condition.
From Wikipedia: “Lendon Howard Smith (June 3, 1921 – November 17, 2001) was an American OB/GYN, pediatrician, author, and television personality. He was notable for his advice on parenting and advocating children’s health and eating issues. He was known to fans as “The Children’s Doctor” for his expertise on the issues and an outspoken proponent of the use of vitamins for children.”
Dr. Smith believed in all natural foods as a means to facilitate healing. He advised us to take our daughter off all processed food and chemical additives; to add a basic overall vitamin regimen, and most importantly to feed her organic foods and no processed sugar.
Thus began our odyssey into becoming organic gardeners. We turned half our backyard into a garden and grew our own vegetables. We lived in Wyoming, so we added apple trees into our 
landscape. I was even successful in growing grapes on one protected side of our house. We grew everything without using chemicals. Our excess was canned for the cold months. Everything she and our other children ate was monitored to make sure they were eating chemical-free foods. All those sugar-infested cereals? They had to go away. By the time my daughter entered middle school, she had no more seizures.
Our youngest daughter had psoriasis, especially after she became a “tween” and started eating bad “stuff.” We took her to doctor after doctor who prescribed various topical medicines with little effect. After a visit to our chiropractor years ago, she was told she has a milk allergy which proved to be correct. She was also told to eat non-chemical foods, basically organic-grown and processed without all the additives. Her condition, as with many who have psoriasis, has a rheumatic basis. With her doctor’s supervision and by eating organically, she’s controlled it without taking medications that have serious side effects.
>READ: SURVIVING THE FEMALE LIFECYLE: HOLISTICALLY & NATURALLY
One of my grandsons has high-development autism. He eats organically, and with a vitamin and herb therapy regimen does extremely well without medication. I maybe see a doctor, myself, every couple of years, and for 5-year checkups. I stay healthy and I attribute it to organic gardening. So, I can personally attest to the benefits of providing your family and your home grown organic food.
Why start an organic garden?
- You can grow in containers in small places
- You can take part of your yard to make a haven for growing vegetables and herbs
- You can live healthier without all the poisons that are sprayed on what you eat
- You can forgo the poisons in packaged foods that interfere at the best with what your body can absorb.
- You can avoid all the health issues caused by those poisons.
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Preparing a garden or even containers takes some work. Learn as much as you can about growing organically. That includes not using GMO produced seeds. Non-hybrid or the old tried and true Heritage seeds are the best. Save the seeds from mature vegetables and fruits to replant the next year.
Benefits of Gardening Organically
- Working in a garden provides exercise for the body.
- It provides the rewards of labor.
- Gardening is calming.
- It takes you away from modern everyday stresses giving you a chance to commune with nature.
- You benefit the environment by planting organic gardens, organic landscapes, bushes and trees.
- The leavings can be composted back into the earth to enrich the soil.
- Healthy, chemical-free produce
Chemicals, besides being dangerous to handle or breath, also deplete the soil, leaving it sterile so it needs more chemicals to make it usable. The results are fruit and vegetables that are unhealthy.
Besides being beneficial to yourself, you have the opportunity to give your children and or grandchildren the experience of working in the earth, taking a small seed and by earnest care and labor bringing it to beauty or harvest. It is an important lesson so many are missing in this current fast-pacedn, electronically addicted world. Children are missing so much by not being outside and learning about the beauty and bounty of nature.
Living with nature teaches us to respect and honor the gift we are to nurture. Years ago I wrote about the devastation of chemicals on the bee population. It was shared around the world as it was such a concern. The situation is so much worse now. Bees and butterflies are our main pollinators. Each of us can help not only the bees, but the butterflies by planting organically. If you provide the safe place, they will come.
There are so many sources out there to investigate the health benefits of gardening organically for yourself. It becomes a lifelong interest and hobby that gives you a time out to enjoy nature and the benefits of working with the soil. It somehow completes a circle in our humanity.
Besides purchasing what is called organic in the stores (often found not to be so organic), you have the ability, no matter what limited space you have, to bring truly healthy vegetables and fruits to your table.
Also, explore the benefits of growing herbs and landscaping with fruits and vegetables. I can’t cover it all, but there are so many great online sources to start looking at organic gardening as a possibility in your life. I hope you pursue it for your own health and well being. Happy gardening! Remember only organic and non-GMO!
>READ: ORGANIC GARDENING: FOOD FOR THE SOUL
>READ: TOP 10 BENEFITS OF GARDENING IN YOUR 50S
