Have you started a garden? Even if you haven’t these recipes are sure to increase your vegetable consumption this year!
Garden Veggie Facts
During the pandemic home gardening became more popular than ever before. Sales in garden plants and indoor house plants dramatically increased in 2020, and resulted in social media trends completely surrounding home gardening topics (Dai, 2021).
This increase in popularity helped home gardening information become more available, which is great for first time and seasoned gardeners alike!
Starting a home garden all starts with choosing which kinds of vegetables you would like to grow. There are several different ways to identify vegetables. Two categories of vegetables are leafy vegetables and root vegetables.
Root vegetables come from the roots of plants. They include:
- Carrots
- Potatoes
- Raddishes
- Turnips
- Onions
Leafy vegetables come from the leaves of plants. They include:
- Spinach
- Kale
- Lettuces
- Arugula
- Swiss chard
The Fruit vs Vegetable Debate
Although we recognize some plants as vegetables, they also can be classified as fruits…
There are botanical vegetables, and culinary vegetables, and sometimes they are not always the same.
A great example of this is the tomato. Have you ever heard that a tomato is a fruit? Well, it’s true. The tomato is considered a botanical fruit because it contains seeds, but it is also considered a vegetable in the culinary world.
Confusing? It confused me for a long time, but I started to see some patterns that helped. Most culinary vegetables (that are also secretly botanical fruits) do not taste very sweet. For example, cucumbers, avocados and tomatoes all follow this pattern.
Benefits of Vegetables
Vegetables have many nutrients that help our bodies function properly and stay healthy! Some of these nutrients include:
- Vitamin C
- Potassium
- Vitamin A
- Dietary fiber
Vitamin A helps our eyesight, potassium helps manage blood pressure, vitamin C protects us from sickness and dietary fiber helps with cardiovascular health.
MyPlate categorizes culinary vegetables into the vegetable group. To learn more about vegetables and their many health benefits, visit MyPlate’s website!
Recipes For Your Garden
If you need some inspiration on what to grow this year, try growing some ingredients in these featured recipes! Even if you don’t want to try gardening, these recipes will work great with produce bought from a grocery store or farmers market.
Gardening can increase the amount of healthy food options in the home, increase opportunities for family time, and can help us get outside and be active. If any of these things interest you, come back this Friday for an update on how to make home gardening work for you!
-Captain Create