In our athlete-driven community of outdoor lovers, it’s important to eat right to fuel your body for success. Loading your diet with nutrient-dense greens, vegetables, and occasional fresh fruits can cut down on that lazy, tired feeling you get from eating too many carbs. Eating fresh produce is the best way to get plant-based nutrients right from the actual foods they occur in, while providing your body the energy it needs to hike, ski, and bike mountains.
In winter, there’s a great way to keep growing produce that can be done indoors, which even saves space and saves you money over time. Enter: Tower Gardens. Created by Juice Plus (a global nutrition company), these miniature aeroponic gardens use as little as 2 percent of the water a traditional garden would. Plants are grown in an upright circular tube with openings for each plant, and a central nutrient system in which all the plants are watered and fed at once. The plants are grown in a soilless medium called rockwool and fed by a nutrient-dense solution which is added to water. It might seem like only greens and herbs can survive this soilless growing method, but the powerful nutrients in the growing solution are enough to help 150 varieties of plants thrive, including strawberries, tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, kale, squash, and a ton of greens.
Additionally, in winter when ambient indoor light won’t be enough and temperatures will likely be cooler even inside your home, consider LED grow lights, some of which fit right on to your growing tower. If the real deal isn’t in your budget, you can find a variety of other similar tower growing options on Amazon, using soil or hydroponic methods to grow. But the concept is similar: Growing space-saving, fresh, indoor plants that saves money and time, and promotes health.
So instead of going out and grabbing a salad, or buying veggies for your next stir-fry, consider growing your own. You’ll likely be spending more time indoors in winter anyway, so take advantage of that homemaker’s instinct and try your hand at planting a garden right inside the kitchen!
