Health experts encourage growing your own

Health experts have been extolling the virtues of growing your own produce, saying that it not only helps you eat ethically and healthily, but will save money in the long run.

Food prices have been creeping up, with supermarkets raising their prices by a record six per cent in July, and those with a penchant for healthy food, especially of the organic variety may use that fact as the final motivation to start growing their own.

Holland & Barratt head of nutrition Melanie Hickey explained that growing ingredients and enjoying cooking can do wonders for the health and the wallet.

"Grow your own or buying from local farms or market gardens presents an obvious way to reduce cost while still maintaining health and well-being," she told National Gardens Scheme.

Only recently, one Lancashire woman transformed her life-long hobby of growing her own fruit and vegetables into a lucrative business, opening up her own store selling organic fertilisers to local allotment holders and horticultural followers, the Farmers Guardian reported.