For me it is to get myself into a relaxed frame of mind. I am able to shut the world out in that 60 x 45 plot, lose track of time, and even forget to stop and eat. And then there is the cost of veggies at the store and the fact that they only last 2-3 days in the fridge. Something comes up (with 4 kids something always does) and you aren't able to stick to your menu plan and there goes $2-$3 dollars right in the trash. I HATE WASTING MONEY more than anything! The excercise factor comes to the forefront as well, I feel so much better in the summer. I jump out of bed instead of being dragged kicking and screaming. So with that said COME ON SPRING!!!!!

In my case recreation and nostalgia. As a child of the great depression, I enjoy reliving some of the experiences of my youth. Coming up with 4 rooms and a path, I obviously never learned to play golf. Besides growing things, my way at least, is a whole lot less expensive. I am down to a couple of acres tho. Getting lazy and decrepit. I have seen too many fads in my lifetime, so I just eat when I am hungy and drink when I am dry, and worry about nothing.

Allows me to unwined and focus on growing something for my family. I enjoy being outside with the fresh air and the fragrant smell of the earth make me feel good all over. Then there is the minor thinking part which sends me to the internet to find solutions to potential problems before they get out of hand. Plas the wonderful and helpful people here at GW and TV with their vast insight on various growing methods. Trying out Self watering containers this spring after reading many of the postings here. Looking forward to the end of Winter and the beginings of Spring. Just so many great things about growing and wondering how that new vegetable will taste. yummmm

George

It's in my blood for sure...My folks were gardeners and I grew up with it...I never really did that much in the garden but what I did made me a life long gardener...I cannot imagine not growing a few things....

I originally started because we have a serious lack of food in my house. It's not because we can't afford it or anything, we live in a really nice area but for whatever weird reason, my mom hardly buys any groceries. She basically has the opposite belief that almost everyone else has and thinks food should not be a major expense. I probably sound like a whiny brat but I swear it's true!

Anyway, I love food as much as the next person. And since I don't have all the money in the world to spend on it I started planting some veggies in the backyard. Lucky for me though I actually ended up enjoying it. So now I garden to relax, because the food is so much better, for a little bit of exercise, it's convenient walking outside and picking your food instead of driving to the store, and because it's more environmentally friendly and healthier.

I'm 21 and studying bio science so I guess it's also nice to be able to apply what I'm learning about plant biology to something I enjoy. Sometimes I'll already know a thing or two and it makes me feel smart! :)

I've always gardened. As a child it was an activity that was punctuated with many sighs, rolling eyeballs and general whiny complaints because my cruel and inhumane mother was forcing me to weed the garden. Again.

But when I moved into my own home - I mean the one we bought, not the rentals of my early 20's - the first thing I did was scope out the yard for the veggie garden. Then I added the perennial beds.

Gardening is therapy.

And as I got older, I started to really enjoy cooking. I really enjoy experimenting with tastes and textures and the fresh veggies, spices and herbs really plays into this.

Kay.

lemonwater, I HOPE you're not still at home! That sounded kinda weird.

Kay, do you still view your mother as inhumane? :-)

I garden for the pure joy of it! I love dirt, sweet smelling, composty, loamy DIRT; starting seeds inside and then nurturing them until they can go into the garden; giving the extra produce to neighbors; cooking with vegetables and herbs that I have grown; searching the seed catalogs and the web sites for heritage/new/never heard of before vegetables; and the achy, sunburned, dirty-fingernail end of a day with the garden.
There MUST be gardens in heaven!

I really enjoy planning, planting, watching things grow, and then enjoy the fruits of the harvest. By growing my own I can have the varieties that I want!! This is especially true for watermelons, cantaloupe, sweet corn, green beans, and sweetpotatoes.

What I hear for the most part is that your souls are gardeners and your bodies just follow along. That's where I want to be!

... although the body does need some proper care, too.

For fun!

I dabbled in a veggie garden for the last few years...I'd start out and keep it up, if the plants did okay, cool...sometimes they'd die during the heat of the summer since I'd be running around with the kids or traveling for work.

This past year was different....

2008 I had DH build 3 raised beds. We hauled compost from Fairmount Park. I created lasagna beds in the raised beds. I started tons of seedlings in the house in Feb/March. I watered and weeded religiously. I went out every morning and talked to the plants. I pollinated my squash. And I found peace in my garden this year. It was very soothing to go out every morning before logging onto the PC for work every day (I work remotely) and checking out the garden.

I guess I initially put the effort in last year because food was so expensive. By the end of the season, I was doing it because it was relaxing and the food was so much more healthier and tasted better. I just finished my carrots and potatoes from the fall. They would have NEVER kept if they were store-bought.

This year...the entire family is involved (including the 14 & 16 year olds). We are voting as a family on what we are growing this year. We are ALL collecting veggie and coffee grounds to add to the soil (last year they moaned and groaned). Everyone waters the plants around here (my herbs were brought inside for the winter to keep them going). Everyone in my house is excited about the Spring Garden this year!

Pam

"What I hear for the most part is that your souls are gardeners and your bodies just follow along." Bradmn, that's a perfect description. My parents gardened. My grandfather gardened. I knew that I wanted to garden.

I'm looking out the back window and seeing about a 1 1/2 feet of snow and it's single digit temps outside. It amazes me to think that next month I'll be starting some seedlings. In May those seedlings will be ready to plant out and a couple months after that, I'll have food! It's a rejuvenation. Gardening helps connect me to nature. I also love food! Nothing like fresh veggies out of the garden.

My grandfather is from India and every holiday we used to visit India. He owned a farm and I used to love picking vegetables and drawing water from the well to water plants. Of course now they have a pump which draws water for the plants. And they have hired people to do the planting and picking..but still it used to be fun for us kids. I think I still remember the joy I had of just being in a vegetable garden and picking fruits/veg and eating them right there. I live in an apartment here and just plant in containers. And also I live in Buffalo, so the growing season is short...I cant wait to own a house with a big garden and move to a warmer climate...just to do gardening ahhh....

I caught the "Bug" from my folks. I can remember when I was four, having a watermelon volunteer in my sand box. My dad helped me to nurture it and by frost I got to eat the fruit of my "labor!" Dad also set us kids up with little plots and helped us to plant Scarlet Runner Beans (after reading Jack and the Bean Stalk to us) and huge zinnias. It was only natural, as I grew older, that I would ask for more gardening space!

When I moved out, got married and went to grad school, gardening not only was a pleasant form of recreation, but a vital part of how we made ends meet. That's when I learned to garden organically (for economic reasons).

I got into seed saving just after marriage. My dad had a tomato which he had received from an Italian friend, who got it from an Italian friend, who brought it back from Italy. I wanted to grow it because it was so good. But when I got into saving my seed I realized that there was something more... something to do with roots. Through my wife's family we acquired a couple of family heirloom beans. I became kind of a collector/plant explorer, finding stuff wherever we lived. Now, after a couple of decades, we plant our own heirlooms, plants with a history attached to our own. I guess gardening helps give a sense of continuity.

Like many already mentioned. I also love the exercise. I get bored with sports. But I can get into garden work!

Shoot! You folks are right about the eating angle too! Home grown always tastes better.

George
Tahlequah, OK

I'm a crusty irascible cantankerous old person. And - gardening was perhaps the first thing any adult taught me to do.

I was born in September so it was probably, although I don't recall, the summer of my third year that my grandmother began to teach me to drop seeds in little places she had dug out with the hoe, and later, to pick big green worms off tomatoes. A year or two later I do remember - roots and insects fascinated me. Then a aunt introduced me to flowers.

I garden for the health benefit and this year I am even more into it because my son is almost 10 months and is eating a lot of fruit and veggies. I want him to have the best and I believe that organic home grown veggies are the best. I love home grown tomatoes, green beans, eggplant, squash, cucs, and hopefully this year I will finally learn what a melon grown at home will taste like (they kept cracking the last few times I tried). I also like going to my garden and picking just what I need for a salad.
I started growing transplants in the kitchen of my old apartment as soon as we signed for out house. I have grown veggies every year since and we are on our 4th growing season.
I´m from Iceland and there we just grew potatoes, cabbage, carrots, rutabagas and rhubarb in my parents garden and I loved eating it all in the fall. When I started growing things here I was amazed with all the different kinds of veggies I have been able to grow. I love starting everything from seed and watching it grow and know that I am doing something to help put food on the table and it is healthier than what you can get at the super center(I´m a grad student that stays at home with her child during the day so my husband makes all the money at the moment).
I love it and I do it for the health benefit.

Not really sure where my green thumb or gardening interest came from. My parents never had a garden or even house plants. After college I bought a few plants / cacti to liven up the apartment a little, and they kind of turned into my "pets". It was all down hill from there... I was so excited to buy my first home and create my first garden just a few years ago.

For me it feels great to connect to nature and the earth. To watch the cycle of life and to "use" the wonderful things nature provides for us. The food is really secondary for me, I am more of a scientist than a cook. My DW does not understand at all... she just enjoys the food. That's ok, my 4 year old daughter is by my side every chance she gets. Hopefully I can pass it on to her. I am proud to show her where food comes from... how a seed turns into a plant, which produces food, then dies and returns to the earth, to feed what grows next year.

Ah, so many reasons, so little time ....

1) Because it's "in my blood" -- I came from a long line of farmers.

2) It saves some SERIOUS bucks -- I put up hundreds, no, probably thousands, of dollars worth of produce every year, give away a lot more, and use a lot fresh. Especially if one takes into consideration the outrageous prices of "gourmet" and specialty items at the grocery stores -- $7.99 a lb last year in late AUGUST for "Heirloom" tomatoes at Krogers, and I picked about 100 pounds one day in one picking.

3) Recreation for the body and mind.

4) Access to things I can't get other places -- last year, good crops of paw paws, American persimmons, hardy kiwis, yacon roots, etc. Can't find any of that stuff in the stores, and even if you could, it would be outrageously overpriced and probably half rotten.

5) It's good for society and the planet, especially given the state of affairs the world is in right now.

6) A sense of security. I started growing even my own grains last year, I've got about 50 or 60 lbs of corn waiting for me to get it all shelled and ground into meal, plus popcorn, dried beans, sorghum, wheat, oats all waiting to be processed as time allows. I can EASILY feed myself, my household (and probably much of my extended family if push came to shove) from my two acres.

7) "Good Eating" -- it is so much fresher and nicer, and I can harvest it at EXACTLY the stage I like. For example, I enjoy tart cherries most, for some reason, when somewhat underripe,still a bit orangeish, so I can pick them that way if I choose. I wouldn't find them frozen in bags or even fresh at the farmer's market that way, however.

As Linus said to Lucy in the Peanut's Christmas special so many years ago, "Those are some good reasons!"

Dennis
SE Michigan

Dennis's list is very good. I enjoy growing foods that are better in quality and safer than what I can buy.

I grew up with my grandfather, who had a garden every year. I was raised on homegrown food and when I got my own house, it just seemed the natural thing to do. Soon I relized I had found the hobby(although it's much more) that I had always wanted.
I love being outdoors with the dirt and the plants and the sun and the critters. I benefit from the food and the exercise. Really though, gardening is a practice that rejuvinates me, slows my life down and gives me perspective.

I have always had some type of garden since I got married 26 years ago. I first started gardening as a way to provide food for my family. I then got deeply into flowers for many years. I couldn't find the heart to get rid of plants when I split them and just kept adding more and more gardens. This past year we came full circle with the poor economy. I love working outside in the soil and decided the best way to go was with vegetables. (I started over in a new house). I love knowing that grew about 90% of all the vegetables and at least 50% of the fruit we ate this summer. The vegetable gardens will be larger so I can suppliment our diets with more variety and hopefully put up lots of fruit and vegetables to help get us through the winter. I also know that I cannot find the quality of produce that I can grow. How much fresher can you get then pick and eat? Many times it barely makes it into the house.

+I have gardened my whole life but took many years off in the middle. I was an equine reproductive vet and we had a huge and successful business. I was diagnosed with Lupus and the doctors wanted me to lay on the couch and die. They told me I would be in a wheelchair in five years and dead in 10. That was thirty years ago. Gardening saved my sanity. It's just hard to be depressed when you are out there with your hands in the dirt (and yes...even weeding.)
There is so much built-in satisfaction in gardening but it comes complete with little ups and downs ala Mother Nature and that is life in general. I don't know why, but my kids never liked to garden. Have a good friend who has gardened all her life and none of her five kids garden.

I can imagine many things in my life but without gardening, I would have no life. It is my passion.

Its 14 degrees outside and I can close my eyes and remember what its like to be kneeling in my garden - in my old faded blue jeans - dirt caked on the knees , ratty ole tank top, crocs , hands in the dirt and under my fingernails , sitting back to survey everything, sun warm on my face , a light breeze , smelling the tomatoes and the rosemary if the breeze is just right , , the bluebirds chirping so sweetly in the mulberry tree , flying back n forth to their nestbox in the middle of my garden ... thats why I garden ...

I garden because I'd rather be farming and this is as close as I'm going to get to it for a while.

It's just really cool. The idea that you can start something from seed and watch it grow and bloom and fruit and finally eat it is amazing. My husband's father was a big time home gardener and he passed on the gardening genes. Every year we plant more and more different things and they all taste so much better than store bought.

It is good exercise, hard work yet relaxing, and can be very challenging - weather, insects, mystery diseases. I enjoy every thing about it - except tomato hornworms!

Wow, lots of great responses but I'm surprised more people aren't interested in doing this for health reasons. The food tastes better and they feel like the exercise is healthful but not that much concern about avoiding the quality of the food available at the grocery store. I guess, if you're already gardening, it's a non-issue.

because i can't not garden, LOL, it's inherent. Health, economics, food security are all great and happy rationalizations but not reasons.

You beat me to it, maui! Just what I was going to say: I can't not do it. It's an utter compulsion.

You know how you'll read about how some artist says in response to the "why do you paint?" question, or "what keeps you composing?", and so on, and they often answer, "because I don't have a choice". Which makes no sense to someone who isn't compelled to paint, or compose - or in our cases - to garden.

I think there is something deeper inside that spurs the desire to garden for food. Sort of like fishermen -they MUST fish. There is something very primal about providing for yourself / family.

I like to veggie garden because the taste of fresh vegetables is hard to beat and flower gardening to me creates a very relaxed atmosphere. I like to come home after work grab a beer and wander around my yard tending to the flowers I grew from seed,grab another beer and kickback to watch the
hummingbirds enjoy my flowers

Here is a link that might be useful: gardening by the seat of my pants

Watching things grow has always fascinated me. When I was a kid I used to plant watermelon seeds, and when those
seeds sprouted and started to run, I thought they were the most beautiful plants in all the world. I've always wanted to grow watermelons, and this past year, I finally got my
wish. I started growing roses about 15 years ago, and I've been hooked ever since. To sum up things, I garden because its therapy for me and I thoroughly enjoy it, and also because it pissses off my soon to be exwife.

I feel my love of gardening started when I was 12 years old. I went to stay with my grandparents on their farm(which was in another state) for three weeks, and enjoyed every minute of it! I was so taken with their beautiful flower gardens, and I found it totally fascinating that you could grow all of your vegetables in your backyard. (We lived in the city, and our backyard was mainly concrete.) One of my fondest memories was helping my grandmother pick the vegetables for dinner. However, it was very hard to keep from eating all of the strawberries, before they made it to the house!(I think my grandmother loved telling the snake story to keep me out of them!)
After marrying and buying our new home, the first thing I did was put in a vegetable garden and flowers.
My grandparents are gone now, but I feel a deep connection to them and the enviroment everytime I tend my gardens!

Because a garden tastes good, it smells good, it's nutrition for body and soul. It's healthy; I get vitamin D from the sun, (in my case) organic pesticide free food that tastes *amazing* compared to the junk in the store, a good work out from hoeing, weeding, watering and flipping compost piles. There's (almost) no better sweat then that made in the garden! ;^) Satisfaction in a hard days work that's so much more enjoyable then sitting in front of a computer all day under florescent lights. I can grow what I like and harvest it just as needed... there's so much less waste. And the growing itself is somehow cathartic. Watching the miracle of life, nurturing a small seed into a little tiny sprout-let that will one day, a few months later, become a large pumpkin! or tomato! or (insert fav veg/fruit here). Tiny miracles at your fingertips. Who wouldn't keep coming back for more of *that*?!

I've been told I got my start gardening by handing my dad tomato plants as a toddler saying "here one,daddy". I was getting the plants from the ones he had just planted..big help I was. I am just like all the rest who can't not garden...gardeners and farmers have so much faith..put a seed in the ground and depend on it to provide you food...now that's faith! Gardening may be healthy and all that but it's the pure satisfaction of playing in the dirt and watching the plants grow that gives you enjoyment. The rest is just gravy.

Why do I garden?

1) To produce yummy food that you can not buy at any store.

2) To exercise and keep active.

3) Teach my kids where food comes from. I grew up on a farm, but there is not enough ground to support another family. I moved away and started my own "vegetable farm".

4) To keep learning and experimenting.

5) To make money to pay for the extras in our life. I sell at farmers markets. I don't get rich, but it is a nice supplement to my teaching income.

6) So I can stay home with my kids in the Summer and not pay for daycare.

7) Teach others about new crops.

8) To meet new people.

Good Question

1)It gives me an excuse to be outside in my yard 3 seasons of the year.
2)I don't cook in the house during most of the summer and a fresh salad seasoned with fresh herbs goes great with grilled meat/fish.
3)Mom/Grandma/Great-grandma always had a garden so of course I was going to plant one when I bought a house - even my brother has a garden.
4)To teach my grandchildren where food comes from.
5)To help my local environment, I'm organic so the results aren't always picture perfect but they usually taste really good....the deer think so too.
6)It's how I got my husband to start eating veggies...his mother is amazed.
7)Most of all it's fun and satisfying on many levels.

This year I plan on starting a lot more from seeds, I'll see how it all works out.

Though my mom was a green thumb, I'm really not a good gardener since I get neglectful but I have noticed how healing it is when I do it. Digging in dirt is the best thing for depression. I've had a really rough time these past two years emotionally.

The reason I want to try growing edible stuff this year is for the kids & me -- healthier plus hopefully thrifty-er. In the sense that eating healthy fresh organic produce is a health investment. Staying healthy is one way I hope to save money -- medical bills get scarier every year!

I think all these posts should go into a BOOK! Very inspirational! My raised garden bed will be constructed this weekend. The soil has been delivered and I have the drip tubing etc to tie into the existing irrigation system which I otherwise don't even use. That's to help me keep up with watering when our hot Texas summer comes around.

Thanks to everyone!

Brad

I love watching things grow! It's really neat how it starts as a little seed and turns into a big forest of green! I love growing watermelons, grew them since I was six(now 13), and can't imagine how it would be without them! Gardening is the most fun/relaxing thing out there.