This is the year we should all throw in the trowel and quit gardening. Yup, it’s time. The whole grow-your-own-food movement of the past 12,000 years or so was cute, but it’s gotten out of control.
I’m sure you think I’m crazy and your blood is beginning to boil, but here are six good reasons why you should stop growing your own fruits and veggies.
No, I’m serious. Put the trowel down. You’ll thank me later.
1. Growing Food Is Inconvenient
We’re all pretty busy these days, so anything that makes life easier is worth a look, right? Let’s face it: it’s much more convenient to go to the grocery store than to grow your own vegetables.
At the end of a long day at work, you can’t beat driving halfway across town, being buffeted about among the pre-dinner shopping crowd at the supermarket so you can grab one of those handy bagged salads with the week-old lettuce and stale croutons.
Sure, you have to pick out all the slimy pieces of spring mix, but compared to all the work of a garden, it’s a small price to pay. And really, you only have to pick out the gross bits of lettuce when you have company over.
To achieve the same results with a garden, you would have to drive directly home and carry a bowl out to the garden. You might even need to put on those cute garden clogs you bought if you want to avoid the pleasure of walking barefoot in the garden.
Remember, this is about convenience, not enjoying yourself, there, buddy.
Then there are all the decisions facing you – highly inconvenient! Do you want cherry tomatoes tonight, or should you slice up one of those juicy heirloom tomatoes? Should you do a head of buttercrunch lettuce or cut some leaf lettuce? How do you decide? Do you pull up a couple of radishes or opt for a cucumber? By the time you’ve finished, you’re mentally exhausted and haven’t even walked back inside yet.
Salad is hard.
No, I’ll stick with my slimy salad-in-a-bag, thank you.
And let’s not even talk about what you’re supposed to do in the winter without a garden. Where’s your convenience then, hmm? It’s not like you can preserve everything you grow and make the short walk to your pantry or freezer.
Oh. Oh, yes, wait, I forgot about that. But it’s highly inconvenient.
Take jam, for example.
Why would you bother spending an afternoon making enough homemade jam for a year when you can drive to the grocery store every time you run out and buy flavorless jam with ingredients you can’t pronounce? Now that’s convenient!
2. Avoid Decision Paralysis – Quit Gardening Today
Do you freeze up when a restaurant menu is more than two pages long? Does ordering an espresso-based drink at a café give you hives? Did it take you seven months to pick which color you painted your bathroom?
I’m with you, friend. It took me four months to pick out a couch.
Look, I know these seed companies think they’re doing home gardeners a favor by offering 159 different varieties of tomatoes and 42 kinds of beans, but no one needs the freedom of that kind of choice in their life.
I’ve had the same browser tab open for two weeks now, trying to whittle down my choice of tomato seeds to a single-digit number. The gardening season will be over before I decide.
Those of us who struggle with decision paralysis are better off at the grocery store. Broccoli? Do you want it fresh or frozen? Peppers? Well, you can have green, red or orange. Kohlrabi? What the heck is that?
3. Veggies Taste Better With Pesticides
They do, admit it. You know you’re with me on this one. I don’t know why we home gardeners even bother.
Going back to the salad example, whenever I toss together a salad using veggies from my garden, the end result lacks a certain caustic tang that can only be found with commercially grown produce.
Home-grown produce lacks that little extra something — the liberal application of glyphosate.
Really, all vegetables show a noticeable improvement in flavor when sprayed with chemical pesticides, don’t you think? Mmm, tastes like dead pollinators and male infertility!
4. We Should All Be Slightly Terrified of Our Food – It’s Safer That Way
And since we’re talking about glyphosate, let’s be honest: how are you going to remember to wash your produce before you eat it if you aren’t slightly terrified by the idea of ingesting pesticides with every meal?
Pesticide-free produce is a slippery slope, my friend.
It all starts with pitching that bottle of fancy produce wash. Then, you find yourself not bothering to rinse your organically-grown tomato before you slice it for lunch. Next, you start eating beans straight off the plant, and before you know it, you’re one of those weirdos that yanks a carrot out of the ground, wipes the dirt off on their jeans and eats it without a veggie scrubber in sight!
I’m sorry, I feel faint. I need to sit down.
Seriously, this whole gardening business is just selfish. If we all started growing our own produce at home, how would the companies that make all those fancy produce washes stay afloat? Won’t someone think of their bottom line? Stop gardening today and save a corporate entity!
5. Nature is Dangerous, and We Should All Spend More Time Inside – Seriously, Quit Gardening!
Remember when your parents would kick you out of the house for the day because they insisted the outdoors was “good for you?”
Yeah, well, they were wrong. There is no way all this fresh air and fresh food is good for anybody.
Nature is dangerous, and you don’t know the risk you’re taking by being out in your garden. There are murder hornets and man-eating great white sharks out here, people. You’re better off indoors.
Above you and below you, danger is everywhere in the garden. First, there’s the powerful sunlight with its ability to lower blood pressure levels and raise vitamin D levels in gardeners. Then there’s the dirt, which is, well, dirty. It’s filled with all kinds of microbes and bacteria known to improve gardeners’ immune systems. Do you see what I mean? Why put yourself at risk? Stop gardening.
You know those weird creatures that have spent centuries living in caves? The ones with the translucent skin, who can no longer see? Yeah, that’s what we’re aiming for here, folks. Trust me, it’s safer this way.
6. We’re Stressed and We Like It, Thank You Very Much
If you enjoy sleepless nights filled with racing thoughts, cortisol flooding your veins and a healthy dose of existential dread, then you should definitely put that tomato seedling down right now. You don’t even want to know what putting those things in the soil will do.
Lowered cortisol levels, reduced anxiety and improved mental health – yeah, gardening is guilty of all that and more. Not to mention ‘squeeing’ over your first zucchini of the season or the boundless joy of coming into the house with a basket full of produce you grew yourself.
No, if you enjoy the constant pressure of modern living, then by all means, stay out of your garden.
Look, I tried to warn you. Clearly, growing your own food is a bad idea, and life would be much easier if we all just went to the supermarket. Don’t come crying to me when you’re all living longer, healthier, more fulfilling lives because you chose to keep on gardening.
And if you want more of my sage advice, you’ll want to read my article below:
8 Reasons Starting Your Own Seedlings is a Complete Waste of Time & Money
And if you enjoyed this tongue in cheek look at the merits of growing your own food and you’d like to read more of my garden ramblings, then join the Rural Sprout newsletter below.
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