Healthy Eating

Taste
The taste of freshly picked fruit and vegetables straight from your garden offers an entirely different culinary experience to that associated with the products found in most large shops. Home grown produce not only delivers much more flavour and greater vitality but also reconnects us with seasonal eating. We are continually testing many varieties for their distinctive flavours in our own in house trials, to enable us to incorporate the best in our home grown fruit and vegetable plans.

Nutritional Value
Certain vegetables are known for their rich mineral content, others for their antioxidants which have proven medical benefits in the avoidance of heart disease, arthritis and many other disorders. These values tend to diminish after picking if the produce is not consumed immediately. In contrast, the criteria for presentation of produce in the supermarket is often heavily influenced the way it looks, about uniformity of size and skin colour and availability throughout the year. None of these things have anything directly to do with either flavour or nutritional value. In fact such criteria often require the use of artificial fertilizers, growth promoters, chemical pest control techniques and after picking treatment to package and increase shelf life. These can inevitably leave harmful chemical residues in the produce. The often huge distances the produce is transported inevitably mean it is not longer fresh when it eventually arrives in your shopping basket reducing its healthy eating property value.

Growing nutritious food requires a better understanding of soil ecology and whilst we recommend that organic methods should be adopted at all times when growing food for the table (i.e. those not involving the addition of harmful chemicals), one of the aims for our own trials is to compare how subtle differences in organic growing methods may lead to nutritional variations within crops.

Quick Returns
Our home grown Living Leaves vegetable plans include a selection of salad varieties to enable you to pick throughout the year if managed properly. These pickings can be ready for the plate in as little as 5 weeks depending on when you buy your Living Leaves Home Grown Vegetable gardens, with lots of pickings thereafter from one plant. Salad crops are easy to grow and provide enormous savings with greater variety than the limited salad bags available in most shops.

Aesthetics
Home grown vegetables are not about taste, variety & healthy eating. They can also deliver a beautifully vibrant ornamental appeal. They can look wonderful in a border amongst shrubs and flowers and provide a magnet for the beneficial wildlife. Some of the vegetable and herb varieties we recommend are chosen for their particular blooms. What is on offer in our supermarkets is often limited. We choose some of our varieties for their more unusual and fun appearance that will not only enhance the look of the garden but also appeal to the kids, such as yellow courgettes and climbing mini pumpkins.

Return to Living Leaves OnLine Shop

Click to go to Living Leaves® Online Shop