Parents often use their kids as an excuse as to why they can’t grow their own food.

To that I’ll ask, “Why not include the kids and make it a family experience?”

I mean it is what families have done for thousands of years. It’s not until recent that this trend has changed. The school year is based on the agricultural calendar. Kids were off for the summer to help tend the fields.

It’s not until the past 100 or so years that families and society have placed the responsibility of providing food for their family to others. We don’t have a sense of where it came from or what’s happened to it. We just know that it’s there.

Food is something that should be communal from the planting, growing, harvesting, preparing, sharing and eating. These all help to bring a real appreciation for everything that’s involved in getting it to our dinner tables. In modern times, we have skipped straight to the eating part and most people even do that on the run as if it’s another item on the to-do list.

There are a bunch of fun projects that you can do as a family to keep everyone involved, costs low all while spending some quality family time together.

Now let’s get into where to begin.

Deciding what to grow. Have a family meeting to make this decision. Let everyone voice their opinions and come to a conclusion as a family.

Potting soil. Go to your local nursery or health food store and buy some organic potting soil to get started.

Starting seeds. This can be a whole fun project unto itself. There are a bunch of ways (and expensive supplies to buy) that you can be used to start your seeds, but they are not required. You just need toilet paper rolls, potting soil and your seeds. Here’s a video of how to use toilet paper rolls as a seed starter pot.

Once your seeds are planted, you’ll want to keep them in a nice sunny area and keep them moist. After a week or so, you’ll start to see sprouts develop and peek their way through the soil. This should keep you and the kids entertained.

Containers. If you don’t have a front or backyard to plant in, which is common, but do have a porch, patio, fire escape or balcony, you can still grow your own food. You’ll just have to use containers.

I’ve found that self-watering containers work great and use them in my gardens.

Kids can be get involved in the process by having them decorate the containers.

Caring for. As a family, you can divide up the chores of caring for your garden. These will include watering, checking for bugs and taking care of the plant. You can keep a diary and pictures of your weekly progress to chart growth to show how garden is doing.

Harvesting and preparing. Once the plants are mature, you’ll have to harvest it to get it ready for your meal. Then, you’ll have to decide how you want to prepare it. Come to this decision as a family.

Sharing. This is where it all comes together and becomes totally worth it. You know very well that if you made a salad for dinner and the parsley was the only ingredient that you grew, you are going to brag about it. There is nothing wrong with that.

Your sense of accomplishment and pride will shine through and it will show in the food. You’ll tell everyone that you grew this parsley from seed. I’m certain that you kids will be bragging as well.

There isn’t the expectation to have a huge garden. All it takes is growing that one plant to make a difference. It will bring your family closer together and make you appreciate your food that much more.

What are you going to start growing?

The excuse that I hear all the time from people when it comes to growing their own food is that they don’t have the space. They will follow that up with because they have so little space that it’s not worth growing anything at all.

Those are just (poor) excuses as to not growing their own. A large plot of land and a ton of space are not required. Creativity and the desire are what’s required. It’s totally worth the time and effort if you grow just one herb or veggie.

On average food travels 1,500 miles before it makes it to our plates.

When you grow your own, it cuts down on the resources and energy that are consumed to get the food to your plate.

I began apartment gardening in the spring of 2009 on my fire escape in New York City. Even though all I had was a  2×3 space, I was able to grow lots. I switched coasts in 2010 and now live in Los Angeles where I have a balcony garden.

So growing without any land is certainly possible. Here’s how you can start.

Pick Your Location

You need to decide the best location to get your garden growing.

I’d suggest that you take into consideration is how far from the water source your garden will be. You don’t want to be carrying water across your home to water your garden.

Think Off the Floor

You’ve picked your location. Now you need to look at the space you are dealing with. Besides the floor, look at other spaces as well – windowsills, ledges, railings and the space above you. Get creative.

What are the Conditions?

Pay attention to how much sunlight your space gets. If it gets at least 2-3 hours of direct sunlight you are golden. My balcony garden gets about 4-6 hours of early morning sunlight. That limits my selection, but I can still grow something.

What to Grow In

If you are the handy DIY type, you can make self-watering planters or you can buy some containers.

Self-watering planters don’t need much maintenance after they are made. They are constructed from two 5-gallon containers. You can get from your local flower shop, deli, restaurant or farmers market for little to no money.

If you have rails or ceiling space, you can use soda bottles to make hanging planters or buy new ones. I’ve grown herbs such as basil, oregano and mint successfully in these.

What to Grow

This is the million dollar question.

You might not have much of a decision to make based on the sun and space conditions.

Once you know your options, I’d recommend growing something that you know you will eat and like.

My number one suggestion is always greens and lettuces because they don’t get to be too big, grow pretty easily and you know that you’ll use them.

I’ll also recommend herbs. They are likely the best economic value. At the store, you hav to buy a big bushel of them which you use only a few sprigs. The rest usually goes to waste. When you grow your own, you can take what you need and let it continue to grow. It’ll always be on hand.

This lays out your beginnings for getting your organic vegetable garden started. There is no need to plant a huge garden (unless you want to). I firmly believe that growing just one plant will make a difference.

I’ve proved that land, space, money and lack of experience shouldn’t be excuses. If I can do this, why can’t you?

In the Spring of 2009, I was living in New York City. That was when I first started growing my own food. I didn’t have much space, but still managed to grow something.

Outside the window of my roommate’s room, was a fire escape that was 2×3. So I turned it into an organic vegetable garden. On it I was able to grow cherry tomatoes, lettuces, peppers and a variety of herbs.

In April of 2010, I moved to Los Angeles. The 13×4 space that I had on my new balcony was enormous compared to the fire escape.

How have I been able to grow my own food despite having little space?

This has taken some creativity, but it’s worked. By compiling 5-gallon containers from various sources, I’ve been able to make my own container garden. I’ve also used soda bottles as to make hanging planters.

Self-Watering Planters

Once you have all of the tools, it’s cheap and easy to build a self watering planter. You can easily do so for less than $5 each.

A self-watering planter consists of two containers. The reservoir and the planting containers.

Inside of the reservoir container a wicking basket is placed. The wicking basket is usually a 16oz deli container. This is what allows the planting container to suck up the water from the reservoir container.

Here is a video of how to make your own self watering container:

For complete instructions, you can check out the four different ways to build a self-watering planter.

Soda Bottle Hanging Planters

On my fire escape in NYC, I had about 10 of these hanging from the hand rails. They were all teeming with herbs.

You cut off the bottom portion of the bottle was cut-off and holes were punched to hang the planters from the railings. A small hole was drilled into the cap to allow for drainage.

Here’s a more in depth instructions on how to make your own soda bottle hanging planter.

These are two simple to make and viable solutions for getting your container garden started today. Regardless of how little space you have, you can grow some of your own food. Growing one herb or vegetable will make a difference for you and for the environment.

When are you going to get started?

You’ve been given some simple reasons to grow your own, now I’ll share some social reasons why growing your own food is important.

We are fortunate enough to live in times that food is abundant and we can get pretty much anything that we want at anytime.

When making these purchases we often just look at the sticker price and don’t think of or know what else goes into the production of the food and pricing.

Take these into consideration:

Women Are Being Exploited

There are many factors that go into the price and production of our food. Unfortunately in the industrial agriculture world, women farm workers pay the price.

About 25% of the farm workers in this country are women. Farm workers in general are treated poorly, but women get poor treatment and more.

They face daily threats of harassment, rape and wage theft.

These are all practices that I cannot support in the name of cheap food. By growing my own, I’m standing against this practice.

Rising Food Costs

Did you know that according to the USDA close to 85% of every dollar you spend on food doesn’t even go to the food. That’s right only about 15% goes to the actual food.

The large majority of that 85% goes to food processors and food services.

The processors are the ones that process the food into food products that you see on the shelves. Services are the ones that handle distribution and labeling.

So pretty much most of the money that you are paying for food is going to the middleman and not the food. By growing your own you can cut out the middleman and the price of your food.

Federal Food Safety Programs are Facing Budget Cuts

With the current national economic situation, Congress recently proposed cutting the budget for programs that will protect our food safety.

There are already enough outbreaks and recalls. We don’t need to have programs cut that will increase this number.

If you were to grow your own, this wouldn’t be as much of an issue.

You don’t have to have a huge garden or grow tons of food. If you were to just grow one herb or veggie it will make a difference for yourself and for the environment.

What are you waiting for?

People often ask me why they should grow their own food when they can just go to the grocery store and get whatever they want. Their days are already busy enough and they don’t want to waste their time growing food.

This is certainly true. It doesn’t really matter where you live or what the season may be, you can go to the store and get pineapple, spinach or whatever else you can think of.

So convenience definitely is not the answer. I do have a few answers though that I give to people. They are not rooted in scientific studies or reports that were compiled over years.

These answers are simple and here they are:

We are humans. We grow food.

For hundreds and thousands of years growing food is what people did. Societies and civilizations were built around fertile land and access to water.

Sitting around and staring at a computer monitor or television, like a lot of us do, is not normal. It’s something that we just started doing in the past 100 or so years.

We have lost the sense of community that goes into growing food as well. There is the planting, tending to, harvesting, preparing, sharing and eating food. These days we just skip straight to the eating part and do that on the go as well.

Nearly all of those other responsibilities, especially the growing part, is now in the hands of someone else. Someone that we don’t even know or can speak to. That’s a lot of trust to put into a complete stranger.

Where is our food coming from?

On average our food travels 1,500 miles from the farm to our plates. That’s a pretty long distance.

So the food is harvested, often times unripe and sprayed with chemicals (more on those later) to ripen them during transit and put on the store shelf.

Usually by the time produce makes it to the store, it’s already 3-4 weeks old and lost a lot of its nutrients.

Also think about the cost of transporting the food that distance. Gas and other resources are utilized as well. Overall, it’s not a very sustainable practice.

What’s being used to treat the food?

As mentioned above, some of the produce is sprayed in transit to either ripen the food or to preserve it.

Chemicals, toxins, synthetics and sprays are often used to treat the produce while it’s growing too. It’s used to feed the plant, keep off pests and to hurry along the growing process.

I don’t need a study to tell me that I don’t want my food to be sprayed with chemicals that I’m going to then put into my body.

These are just a few of the reasons why you should start to grow your own food. There are many others, but these are simple and to the point.

I’m not saying that you should be completely self-sufficient and grow all of your own food. That wouldn’t be realistic (yet). I do believe that if you grow just one herb or veggie that it will certainly make a difference.

What are some other reasons that you should start to grow your own food?