1) Improve your health!
Did you know, that ‘Gardeners’, as a demographic, are less likely to experience illness across the board, including cancer, heart disease and musculoskeletal conditions? Click below to learn more.
Why you should start your own vegetable garden - today..!
There’re literally hundreds of reasons to start growing-your-own food, and with vegetable gardening now being easier and more convenient than ever, there’s never been a better time to start! In this page, we’ve tried to filter down a few core reasons why we believe everyone - regardless of where they live, their experience level, their access to space, and their age – should give it a go! We hope you’ll find it helpful, and more than a little surprising – the benefits may run a lot deeper than you think…
Did you know, that ‘Gardeners’, as a demographic, are less likely to experience illness across the board, including cancer, heart disease and musculoskeletal conditions? Click below to learn more.
In fact, the research is so compelling that experts have calculated real-life NHS savings, demonstrating improvements in health, mobility and independence through gardening.
Even more incredibly, a study in the Netherlands found that every 10% increase in green-space exposure translated (through health improvement) to seeming 5 years younger, and a US study found gardeners to be 30% less likely to report falls, and showed genuine advantages in terms of gait and balance!
That being said, it’s not all good news: studies have shown that 60% of gardeners reported some level of back-pain as a result of their hobby. That’s where we come in. With an Ergrownomic planter you’re always in your comfort zone, letting you choose between three leg heights at no extra cost, to suit whatever feels best. We can even provide bespoke mobility accessories, such as railings, if you’d feel more confident having those to hand.
In theory, a five-a-day is a simple concept: eat five items of fresh fruit, vegetables or equivalent within 24 hours, yet despite this, less than a third of people typically achieve it! Click below to see how we can help.
This struck us as odd. Fruit packs, yoghurt and smoothies are much more popular today than ever before, so why then – with these readily available, can people still not manage it? Well, many argue it’s simply because they have to think about it, to actively make themselves put ‘fresh-food’ into the trolley, to take it home, and then inevitably, to forget to use half of it!
What’s more, even those of us who manage to make the numbers up may not be getting all of what we bargained for, with nutrient values seemingly at an all-time low. In fact, since 1950, studies have shown “reliable declines” in the amount of protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin (vitamin B2) and vitamin C found in our produce! Alarmingly, some crops seem to have lost as much as a third of their values, with varieties changing to suit demand and adapt to soil depletion.
To start with then, shop-bought crops are at a disadvantage, but to make matters even worse, mechanical pickers, bulk handling and transportation all cause stress and bruising – speeding up the natural gradients of nutrient loss. For example, (shockingly!) a bag of spinach is typically eaten haven lost 80% of its vitamin C content, as listed on the packet! To get around this, many crops are picked before fully ripening and maintained in chemically altered conditions; this delays the inevitable for a time, but doesn’t exactly warrant a ‘fresh’ label on arrival!
With Ergrownomics, you can be sure that five-a-day means five-a-day, with heritage varieties not commonly available in stores guaranteeing nutrient values as they should be, maximising taste and minimising losses. Throw yourself back to an era before chemical stasis, prolonged freezing and freight voyages across the oceans. Try the garden to table lifestyle.
Pick what you need, eat what you want, enjoy what you grow.
Over the last couple of years, it’s fair to say that the meatless lifestyle has come out of the shadows. Animal welfare, antibiotic use and general health are much more on people’s minds, and eating in moderation seems the new craze.
Cue ‘flexitarianism’, a plant-based eating regime, with a little lenience built in. Still, however good our intentions, reducing meat in meals isn’t always easy; it takes work to bring the flavours back, and with an Ergrownomic planter, a new world of flavour can be kept at your fingertips. Click below to see how!
With our self-contained growing system, a range of herbs can be provided all year round, so meat-free doesn’t mean sacrificing taste, too. Supermarkets select herbs based on resilience and cost-margins, but growing your own gives you the freedom to try new varieties that would never survive on the shelves!
For example, Basil “Siam Queen” is an eastern variety, and goes brilliant in stir-fries, with a spicy kick following it up.
What’s more, your Ergrownomic planter can keep you supplied with high vitamin C, low-sugar and iron-fortified crops such as spinach and kale, meaning that losing meat isn’t costing you nutrients!
In essence, flexitarianism is all about a healthy lifestyle, doing what you can to help the planet and your health. Growing at home doesn’t need to be difficult; let an Ergrownomic planter do the hard work, and taste the benefits today.
Re-wilding is the process of repairing and enhancing biodiversity; it’s an international trend, but you can help make a real difference just by choosing what to grow. Even better, it’s easily done; so easy you might not know you’re doing it! See more below.
Experts suspect that as many as 56% of species in the UK are in decline, and 15% threatened with extinction; that means that every little makes a difference, and we’ve made it easy to do your bit, wherever you are!
Bees are a great place to start. In the UK alone, there are more than 250 species – and by simply sowing a range of wildflowers for pollinators, or popular herbs such as rosemary, mint, sage and thyme - you can help sustain them all year round.
Through its patented training system, you can divide your Ergrownomic planter into quadrants, allowing you to grow the herbs and flowers insects love to see, and invite them into your garden. We find that cornfield annuals - including red poppies, blue cockles and yellow marigolds – work well in occupying the space between herbs, making them look and smell fantastic!
Sharing your garden by dedicating a little space in your planter gives these ecosystems a place to build, sharing the nectar and pollen they need, with a few needs of your own.
That means a better G&T for you, and a better life them.
Cheers.
The world today never seems to sleep. There’s always something going on, some new beginning or ending that keeps our attention fascinated on the future, or the past. In this world then, it can be hard to take a moment for yourself, to try and stay grounded and present, with everything spinning so quickly. Want to learn how? Click below!
At Ergrownomics, we recognise the importance of taking a bit of ‘time out’, and when we need some space, that’s when we turn to our gardens to clock-out, improve, and recharge. Mindfulness is all about reconnecting with the body, measuring our experiences – our sensations – as they occur, and just enjoying the everyday as if it’s completely new to us.
Research shows that gardening – having, working and enjoying a little green space – can help keep negative thoughts at bay, improving mood and levels of self-esteem in gardeners, and even keeping markers of stress (the hormone, cortisol, for example) lower at a physiological level.
Gardens can also help with attention restoration, embracing a bit of non-purpose to relieve the stress of the everyday, and prevent mental ‘over-loading’.
In fact, the more research that’s undertaken, the more apparent it is: gardening leads to a better quality of life, a better quality of mental health, and however you find it – that seems pretty worthwhile to us.
The modern world just keeps on growing, and while progress in food production might be necessary, it’s not always a good thing. True, outputs are bigger and yields are better, but there’s cost involved we’re not told about at the checkout: the chemical cost. Find out more about what goes into what you eat, below – fair warning, you won’t like to hear it!
In the not-so-distant past, 40 years ago, commercial potato crops were sprayed with around 5 chemicals, and now it’s over 30. For leeks, it’s even worse, increasing by a factor of 15 in just 30 years. In fact, there’s now so many chemicals dressing our ‘fresh-produce’ that the Royal Society of Medicine have described them collectively as a ‘toxic cocktail’!
Moreover, these often aren’t being properly removed. One study by the Pesticide Action Network found 123 different chemicals on Fruit and Veg provided to schools by the Department for Health, and some studies have shown that as many as 1/10 fresh produce items have residue levels above the legal limit! Take spinach for example, ranking highly on the EWGs ‘Dirty Dozen’ list, and shown in 2016 to have higher residue levels (by weight) than any other crop – an average of 7.1 detectable traces, including neuro-toxin insecticides and well-documented carcinogens. Not very appetising.
With an Ergrownomic planter, what you see is what you eat: no nasty chemicals, no hidden toxins. Your system is fully contained, meaning you can use organic methods to keep it running smooth. ‘Nematodes’ are tiny (but very helpful) organisms, flushing through the soil and hunting out the eggs and larvae of pathogens – then disappearing when there’s none left for them! Copper bars are also available to keep slugs away.
Even if we discount (for the moment) the chemicals being used to keep things growing, preserving the produce is a whole other can of worms. Generally, crops that have a long way to travel are picked before time and ripened artificially. That means more chemicals.
Calcium Carbide is used the whole world-over for this, despite being illegal in many countries: it’s explosive, carcinogenic, easily contaminated with heavy metals and can even produce Ethelyn – but it’s often on our food, making them less tasty and go-off quicker. It’s also been linked to seizures, memory loss, low blood pressure and fatigue.
Finally, Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) needs an honourable mention, preventing chlorophyll degradation (colour fading) in green produce, even when it’s several weeks old and losing nutrients with every hour! The plastic is filled with a gas compound, in many cases including carbon monoxide, which the plant ‘respires’ until consumed. Still, it’s enough for producers that it stays green, we suppose...
In summary, the world of food production has a lot going on we don’t get to see. Frankly, we don’t want to see it either; we like our food as nature intended. Growing your own produce means the control lies with you: nothing hazardous, nothing secret.
Invest in your health with an Ergrownomics planter, and know exactly what you’re eating.
In the UK, food on shelves can often be something of a mystery. We’re never short on produce, magicked into existence whatever the weather, but many of us don’t check its origin, or understand the implications if we do. In fact, experts estimate that over 95% of all our fruit comes from abroad, and more than 50% of vegetables, too! Find out what you can do about this, below…
This convenience often causes us to forget about the stadium-sized container ships involved with the transport, or the fact that just one of these produces the same amount of pollutants as 50 million cars; in fact, freight ships in general account for more emissions than the whole of Germany put together!
With these figures in mind, the recent push for buying domestic produce is understandable, but even this is often not entirely straightforward! Carbon counting measures the amount of Co2 produced through growing, processing, manufacturing, preparing and transporting a crop – and that often means that buying UK produce (out of season), is even more harmful than importing from abroad!
It seems that we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place – but not necessarily…
With an Ergrownomic planter – we’ll not only guide you with all you need to grow successfully – but we’ll help you choose seasonal varieties, and even teach you the cropping practices you’ll need to keep things coming back. Even better, you’ll be actively reducing your carbon footprint, including on trips to the supermarket.
Research shows that 40% of people go to buy ‘fresh’ food at least 3 times a week, perhaps accounting for why over half of all car journeys are less than 5 miles long! What’s even worse, is that the first 5 minutes of running a car produces its most harmful emissions, for both you and the environment.
With Ergrownomics, you can ditch these trips, reduce your emissions, and keep fresh, seasonal produce available right on your doorstep, all year-round. No carbon cost, no worries.
Enter any given supermarket, in any given town, and you’re sure to find a ‘fresh-produce’ aisle just inside the door. Here, you’ll see countless vegetables, soft fruit and salad crops wrapped up tight within plastic sleeves and non-recyclable films. Delicious.
As things stand, only 48% of supermarket plastics can be recycled from the home, meaning 810,000 tonnes of packaging ends up in landfill each year. What’s more, that includes 1.2 billion bags that just contained ‘fresh-produce!’
With figures like that, it’s easy to start feeling a little insignificant, but it’s now easier than ever to cut down on your plastic consumption. Find out how you make a change today, below!
When developing Ergrownomics, one of things that really drove us was the ‘not currently recyclable’ message on the back of the lettuce bag. It didn’t seem to matter who we bought from, or where we were, the bags always had to be thrown away – and we got more than a little sick of it.
That’s when we set out to make a change.
Now, with an Ergrownomics planter, you can easily keep a replenishing crop of seasonal salads all year round, and without bags, or preservatives, or residual chemicals, too. It’s the little gestures that sum to something big, so even conservatively, you could reduce your waste by a hundred bags, or more!
What’s more, shockingly, 240,000 tonnes of fresh produce gets thrown away each year, but with an Ergrownomic planter you can say goodbye to rotting veg in the fridge draw, save on the plastic, and get used to picking as needed, whenever you like. In fact, we worked out that if you use a two-planter to just grow baby green leaf, you’ll get your money back inside a year. Not bad at all.
So, whether you do it for your pocket, or the planet, let’s make a difference together, and start reducing waste today. We did it, now so can you.
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