When I was younger I probably would have started this section with the title, “Why you should grow a big vegie garden.” But at the stage of life I’m at now, with a few stale crumbs of wisdom under my belt, I rarely presume to tell anyone why they should do anything in particular. But I am fully qualified to tell you why I do something. Then it’s up to you to please yourself.

I have three reasons for growing a vegie garden that is several times larger than almost any other I have seen on Tasmania: (1) saving money; (2) I love to do it for its own sake; and (3) my own health and longevity. In this brief article I will say nothing further about (2); hopefully what I have to say about points (1) and (3) will inspire you to develop a greater affinity for the act of gardening in and of and for itself.

Saving money: In 1980 I did a thorough study of the monetary value of my garden. I measured (roughly) the amounts harvested during an entire year and then valued my vegetables at the prices of those same industrially-grown items in the supermarket at the time I harvested them. Supermarket prices generally were at their lowest point for the year at the same time I was harvesting because my garden was more or less in synchronization with the local market-gardeners. So what follows is a lowest-possible estimate of my garden’s apparent monetary worth.

The average supermarket value of my garden’s output in 1980 US dollars was $1.00/square foot of growing bed. Now, translate that sum to current adjusted-for-inflation dollars and I reckon it comes to a minimum of $3/square foot for a full year’s intensive production on raised beds—if you don’t include low-economic-value space-wasters like sweet corn or winter squash. Thus the average family’s average size 1,000-square-foot backyard vegie garden may have a gross production of as much as $3,000. Deduct from that figure something for the cost of irrigation water and also deduct a generous $300 for supplies like seed and fertilizer and the occasional replacement of a tool or accessory.

Reckoned purely on obvious economic terms, your home-garden vegies are actually worth a great deal more than that sum. The gardener doesn’t first have to earn a salary or create business or investment profits, and then pay income and social insurance taxes, and then, finally, spend after-tax dollars to buy food. For many, not deducting tax off the top makes your own garden vegies worth at least 1/3 more. Then, if you wish to be really precise, include the many costs of driving to the supermarket and back—twenty five to thirty cents a mile is a typical business deduction for car expenses.

Health from the garden: You’ve probably seen so much pro-organic-food propaganda that you’re stifling a big yawn right now and preparing to skip this section. Please don’t! What I have to say is quite a bit different from what you may have learned about organic food from those who cling to the idea of organic like a religion.

Vegetables (and all foods for that matter, including meats) will have a lot more nutrition in them if raised on soil that is in
(1) good heart, meaning it has a reasonable amount of humus in it; and
(2) if that soil also offers the plants close to an ideal balance of mineral nutrients (which does not necessarily happen simply because some “right-thinking” organic grower has put a lot of compost and/or manure in their soil). How much more nutrition? Perhaps three or four times more; certainly double what is commonly found in supermaket offerings. If you’ll grant that this figure is more or less correct, then home-garden vegetables grown with nutrition in mind can be worth far more than the denatured foods found at the supermarket.

If you can accept my contention, then I reckon comparing garden vegetables equally, pound-for-pound, with supermarket vegetables is not quite fair. The garden’s output might really be worth quite a bit more than double $3/sq. ft. Or maybe treble.

The most basic difference between your garden food and supermarket food is very elementary—freshness. Even if hydrochilled within minutes after cutting, the majority of vegetables still lose around half their vitamin content (and other highly important food values connected with living enzymes) within 48 hours of harvest. And these losses can happen even more rapidly if chilling is not started immediately upon harvest. How many days after harvest does the food arrive on your supermarket’s produce counter? Don’t you know? I don’t know either, but I assume that on the average three or four days if not a week must pass between harvest and sale at the supermarket. But I can know with absolute certainty that the home-garden salad I am eating for lunch today was cut during the early morning’s coolness and still contains virtually everything nutritious it started out with when that salad was living, growing plants just a few hours before.

Then comes another difference that is equally if not more important than simple freshness, especially when you consider the value of foods we don’t eat fresh—like cereal products. Not all food of the same type starts out with the same nutritional content. Can you recall those statistics in the backs of some books on health and nutrition, huge tables confidently stating that 100 gm of broccoli contain exactly so many milligrams of vitamin B6 and so forth? These statistics are not truth. They are, in fact, a form of sophisticated lying—the worst kind of lying there is—lying accomplished by statistics. What is not said about those impressive tables is that the numbers they offer are averages of a great many samples taken at different times of year, analyses of produce from different soils, and using different varieties. Had you been shown the range of possibilities for how much vitamin B6 a broccoli head might or might not contain you would see that one broccoli sample might contain ten or twenty times more B6 than another.

Well, would this difference really matter? Doesn’t it all average out in your stomach over a year’s time? No! Sorry. The creation of health or disease doesn’t work quite like that. Intaking “average” levels won’t cut it. To be superbly healthy you need to eat the highly nutritious sorts of samples and shun the poorer ones.

All bodies—human, bovine, rabbit, bird—all, have the same nutritional problem. The nutrients a living organism has to acquire and assimilate are packaged with calories that they need to burn off. It is very easy for nature to create calories, even on depleted soil, perhaps especially easy on depleted soil. Foods low in vital nutrients are usually calorie-rich foods. That’s because calories are carbohydrates, mainly comprised of carbon (from carbon dioxide gas, which is available in unlimited quantities in the air) and hydrogen (which is available in unlimited quantities from water.) As far as a growing plant is concerned, there are never any shortages of carbon or hydrogen. But there are often major shortages of some of the soil nutrients needed to build plant proteins and vitamins and enzymes—the very same nutritional factors we need to intake in huge quantities if we are to be healthy.

When plants suffer shortages of vital soil nutrients, then instead of making proteins, vitamins and enzymes, they will switch over to making calories. The two areas tend to work in opposition. When nutrition goes up, then calories tend to go down accordingly.

Take for example two potatoes of exactly the same size, very similar in weight and appearance, but one grown so as to contain maximum nutrition, the other grown for profit. The high-nutrient spuds may contain around 11% protein; the other sort, the supermarket sort, the mass market frozen chip by the 50 pound bag processor sort, offers the consumer around 8% protein. The 11% protein spud is also going to contain far more of all the important minerals, vitamins and so forth we need to build health compared to the 8% potato. The 8% protein spud is also going to contain about 25% more calories by weight than the 11% protein one will provide.

And the overall yield of low-nutrient high-calorie spuds will be about 25% more bushels to sell at market, making the grower even more than 25% more profit, because the fertilizers needed to produce those high-carbohydrate low-protein spuds are the cheaper ones.

Suppose you are a potato farmer; which choice are you going to make? Even if you are an organic potato farmer would you choose much better? Are you going to intentionally grow 25% less bushels of more nourishing potatoes or are you going to use your organic fertilizing materials in such a way as to produce the largest possible yield at the lowest possible cost of production, probably not even realizing that by operating with "sensible" economic rationalism you are simultaneously lessening the nutritional value of your supposedly-superior organically-grown food.

Now suppose we were a poor people, eeking out survival much like Irish cottagers around 1830, and we lived on spuds—plain spuds, roasted, baked and boiled spuds—spuds all day, every day. And suppose that without becoming enormously obese we could digest and burn no more than 2,000 calories per day. We could eat 11% protein spuds or we could eat 8% protein spuds, either way, ending up with our 2,000 daily calories. Now imagine how much less real nutrition we’d get from 8% spuds. I can assure you that if we lived on nutritionally-poorer potatoes, we’d be shorter—shorter in height, and shorter in lifespan—and overall, less healthy while we did live.

I’ve invented a little mathematical equation to express this, which goes:

Average mass health of a whole people equals the total of all the nutrition they can obtain from the entire dietary intake divided by the total number of calories that have to be eaten to obtain it.

If we can get 2,000 units of nutrition contained within our daily 2,000 calories, then our health comes out to be “1” but if we get only 1,000 units of nutrition in our 2,000 calories/day, then our health comes out as “one-half.”

Perhaps this seems too simplified to be true, but it is true. And it is that simple. This simple viewpoint may not serve as the explanation of your particular health problem; it is however the explanation for overall social health versus overall degeneration. If a group of people ate such that their nutritional intake was high compared to the calories they were consuming, then that group would be incredibly healthier if compared to what people consider “normal” health these days.

In the 1930s an American research dentist named Weston Price did some amazing studies in nutritional anthropology. He found groups of extraordinarily healthy people [still] in fairly large numbers on Earth. All of them lived in such isolation that they had to eat only the natural foods they produced, hunted or gathered themselves and had no access at all to common foods of our then-developing industrial food system. In their homes one could not find marmalade, sugar, white flour or any tinned food, etc.

These groups of people were described by Price (with lots of photos) in a classic book called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, 1939, which is still kept in print and offered for sale by the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation (www.price-pottenger.org). Price has been dead for over 50 years so his book is now public domain material in Australia and can be read in its entirety at a free public online library that I create called The Soil and Health Library (www.soilandhealth.org). Find Price’s book in the Longevity section. I hope you will read it.

This whole idea might seem clearer if you will consider how a few particular foods fit the formula for health. Take white sugar. It is comprised of nothing but calories and offers no nutrition at all. None! Every single calorie we eat as refined sugar reduces our total nutritional intake because it prevents us from eating foods that do contain the nutrition we need.

Eat very much sugar and you start losing teeth and having other health problems. The teeth aren’t lost because sugar rots the teeth; the teeth are lost because the sugar doesn’t allow the body to obtain enough nutrients to maintain proper body chemistry, so the whole chemistry of the mouth and jaw goes array and then decay organisms begin to flourish there. Caries is the first result, and then loss of teeth through bone recession follows.

Aren’t natural forms of sugar healthy? No way. Honey and less-refined forms of cane sugar do contain small amounts of nutrients, but their ratio of nutrition to calories is nearly as poor as white sugar.

Next up on the list of “baddies” come most sorts of fats. Fats are very high in calories but only a few of the better sorts contain a bit of essential nutrition. Every calorie of refined fat we intake reduces our ability to consume foods that do contain the nutrients we need. And I am not at all certain about how much unrefined high-quality fats should be included in a health-producing diet—but I suspect not very much.

Ask yourself, please, what proportion of the total caloric intake of most people these days comes in the forms of processed fat and/or sugar. Half? More than half? For most people a generation ago it would have been less than 25%. I am sad to report here that American agrifood-business led the way down this path. This industrial food system virtually took over the USA a few decades ago and is now conquering the rest of the planet.

And what is the worldwide reputation of American health? Everyone immediately associates the word “fat” with the word “American.” When I first came to Australia in the mid-90’s, I almost never saw a very obese Australian. A bit of beer belly yes, here and there, but nothing nearly as obese as is commonly seen on the streets of America. But these days I see many “big” Australians, and its getting to be more so every year as international fast-food operations open in our larger towns and cities. That’s what today’s kids mostly eat.

So if sugar and fat are the “baddies,” then what’s at the healthy end of the food spectrum? The best single food I know of, the one that offers the most nutrients for the number of calories it provides is a raw, green leaf grown on highly fertile soil. Why, it would seem that you would have to spend half your entire day chewing in order to achieve your caloric limit from a diet of only raw dark green leaves (lettuce, kale, spinach, escarole, chard, etc). You would have to chew until your jaw got sore and still you might lose weight. But you would certainly become a well-nourished long-lived scarecrow.

Yes, it is true that occasional people are gifted with such a strong constitution that they can live long and be healthy on a diet of whisky, over-cooked red-meat and white bread. But for most of us to have a long, enjoyable life we must eat a broad mixture of whole, fresh foods that have not been devitalized (some nutritional elements removed). Our foods must not be adulterated (mixed with other things that are not desirable). And most importantly, our foods must be grown on soil we have intentionally made properly fertile so that the produce from those soils comes out to be maximally nutritious.

I view my own garden as a resource from which I can provision my own table with at least half the food my family eats. My own garden is where I can do it as right as I wish to. Where I can make sure that at least half my food is about as nutritious as it can be. And then I can take a bit of care about purchasing the rest of our diet so as to maximize the nutritional content of that, too. With the money I save by vegie gardening I can afford to buy the highest-possible quality in what I don’t produce myself.

In my articles to come in futures issues of the INHS online magazine, I am going to show you how I accomplish this. I do not grow my vegies along the traditional lines of organic gardening, fertilizing only with manures and composts in large quantities. To get the highest nutritional outcomes I must also use other organic or natural substances because Tasmania’s manures and composts come from Tasmania’s depleted soils. I believe Tasmania's soils are not all that different from soils found in any region supplied with abundant rainfall such as those districts where the largest populations live in the USA and in Canada and in Europe. (The soils of semi-arid areas may be quite a bit more fertile and the manures and composts made from vegetation produced on semi-arid soils may be far superior). Because I live on leached-out soil in a state where most of whatever fertility may have initially existed has been farmed out, I have to be bit smarter than simple compost-gardening to get a result one might have gotten far more easily a century ago. Still, highly nutritious vegetables can be grown without chemical fertilizers and certainly can be grown without chemical pesticides. In coming articles I will show you exactly how to.

Unfortunately, having a social life involves social eating. Which means one is almost forced to compromise one’s dietary aspirations. But the Universe is kind in this respect and does not require absolute obedience to its health laws. In other words, we are allowed to sin a little bit without paying the piper. But only a little bit.

I believe that I (and most others too) can enjoy quite good health if the combined nutrition in all the foods I eat amounts to at least 75% of ideal. But this small amount of slack can only be taken by people whose good diet began early enough in a lifetime to fully shape the overall body into its proper structure. Correct eating best begins with our mother’s nutrition long before our conception. Then, barring traumatic injuries or gross spiritual disorders that snap back on the body’s health, or just plain bad luck, a reasonably well-nourished person can have a lifetime of perfect teeth, will likely experience little or no degenerative disease, and can look forward to a long and physically pleasant lifespan exceeding four score years. In old age we can still possess intelligence. We can die of plain old age, all accomplished without great pain or suffering.

That’s why I am virtually forced to grow a big food garden. There have been times when I’ve wished to give up my garden, to travel, to adventure, to be irresponsible about my nutrition in the way I see most of my fellow humans behave, to eat and drink what I want when I want it and as much of it as I fancy because its flavor or appearance or drug-effect appeals to me, but every time I’ve tried it my health has soon suffered.