The Short, Barely Noticed Change in the Gardening World

Gardening has been around for centuries. Humans need to eat, as food provides us with essential energy to move about daily activities. Since the beginning of time humans have had to find resources for food, but now.... now is a lot different. 

---

Let us travel back in time to an era that was far different from the one we live in today. In the Paleolithic times humans lived very very different than what we do now. This was one of the basic concepts that was taught in the world civilizations class that I had to take in my early years of high school. At the time this specific time period meant absolutely nothing to me. Now looking back on it I have been able to determine that this means a lot. See, history always brings forth new information, new ways of doing things, and even huge revolutions. At the time of the Paleolithic era humans were hunting and gathering. Now I am not referencing those as just useless verbs, but rather the literal action of hunting and gathering for food. They did not have grocery stores at the time. This was when humans relied on both the earth and themselves in order to self sustain. 

One difference that needs to be noted between period and time change is the concept of farming. The gap that bridged the Paleolithic and the neolithic time periods together  was a revolution. People began to domesticate animals and cultivate the land. Wait, what does the word domesticate and cultivate mean? I love to learn, so I love to dig a little deeper when it comes to education. There will be many definitions provided throughout my posts. One of my main goals is to purely spread information. With that being said, cultivate mainly means to farm and use the earth to grow food. Now, look at my definition of domesticate: to train and keep. People began to keep animals themselves in order to raise for food. By the time the neolithic time came there was a huge revolution in the way humans ate. People moved from foraging to growing. This brought on a rapid change and a whole new world of agriculture. 

With the bulk of the history lesson over I can now get into what I truly wanted to discuss in this post. Gardening has long been a passion of mine and so has science and history. I deeply enjoy learning about science, especially biology and botany. With all of the new changes that the world underwent it stayed the same for a while. It wasn't until quite a few decades ago that things underwent another fast and rapid change. We have both the blessing and the curse of going to the grocery store. 

What are the Conveniences?

Now that I have been able to mention that this huge change has revolutionized the world I can now discuss what the bulk of this posts purpose is. That purpose is to inform. Really the most basic form of life is the cell. Whether we realize it or not, cells make up everything. Whether it is a tree, a dog, or even a human everything has cells. This information is the basics in the biology class I had to take a few years ago in my early high school years. This information is vital, in my opinion, to the gardening world. In order to understand more complex 'things' the simple 'things' need to be understood first. 

With that being said, the food market has rapidly changed within the past few decades. These revolutions also come with both good and bad consequences. I could go on and on about this subject, but I will only outline the basics in this specific post. Maybe this is the new life? I am not sure, but here we go..; Within the past little while we have seen new terms being coined. Some of these include the following:
- MSG (monosodium glutamate)
- GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) 
Additives: 
- Corn syrup
- Modified corn starch
- High fructose corn syrup
- Red 40
- Yellow 5
- Carageenen
- Sodium benzoate
- Blue 1
- etc...
Those are only a few that I have very quickly picked out from food in my pantry. Shocking... There are really an infinite amount of new terms used within food, but let's talk about gardening itself. Gardening is not just growing food, but simply putting forth effort to connect oneself to the earth. With these new changes in the food industry we are able to store food for much longer, have a near 24/7/365 access to food, as well as even forget that connection with mother earth. The additives are not at all good to consume, trust me. That will be discussed in a further and much future post. The nitty gritty basics of gardening are beginning to be forgotten. That Paleolithic and neolithic way of living is beginning to be shoved way past the back burner. The importance of growing food has never been more prominent. 

Gardening is expanding one's universe to connect with the earth, understand themselves, and see the potential of everything. What about this question: how has gardening impacted me? If I do say so myself gardening has helped me return back to that connection with the earth. I truly believe that everyone needs their own backyard garden -even if it is small. At this point, anything matters. 

"Why can't we all garden? Oh wait, we all really can. Gardening does not take any talent, but merely just faith, effort, and a little bit of TLC."
​-jettAV8R