15 Best Plants For Urban Gardens

Why Buy Local?

According the the Locavore Network:

Locally grown food is picked ripe and sold locally within a day or two of harvest. Why does this matter? Vitamin C is known to decrease rapidly in produce once it is picked, and may be gone completely within 3 days. Many of the water soluble vitamins, such as the essential B vitamin group, are not stable enough to survive long distance transport and are destroyed by heat and harsh conditions during shipping. Often, food shipped from one coast of the U.S. to the other is nothing more than empty roughage with no nutritional value at all. You can only imagine how devoid of nutrients produce from other countries is.

Is Organic Food More Nutritious?

Many years back, I was watching a network morning show where there was an interview with their resident physician. He stated that the chemicals and planting methods in commercial factory farming had destroyed the nutrition in the soils so badly, that we all should be taking a multi-vitamin every day. I also saw a magazine program segment where there was a commercial farm and an organic farm side by side. The organic farmer walked to the property line, and you could literally see the difference in the color of the soils. He took a handful of the commercially farmed soil, and it was completely dead, just light-brown, dusty nothingness. A handful of the soil in his orchard was rich, black and crumbly with living organisms, such as earthworms.

Since most urban farmers grow organically, the food they produce is likely more nutritious, if not as perfect as what we find on grocers' shelves. So ask yourself, do you want "pretty" or do you want "healthy?" Commercially grown food is cheap, but eating more of nothing is not as good as eating less of something.

You don't have to have acreage to have an urban farm. You don't even have to make a living from it. You can use space-saving methods, such as square-foot or vertical gardening, to produce even a single crop that you can share with or sell to your neighbors and friends. Once they taste how much better organically grown local food tastes, you will have friends -- or customers -- for as long as you want to keep producing the crops. It's a great way to unite a community and teach others the joy of growing your own food right outside your back door.

Sources:
Prevention of post-harvest food losses: Fruits, vegetables and root crops...
The Effect of Transport on Nutrient Content - Result: Nutrient Loss
Locavore Network