I’ve spent the last few days working with my daughter to get the vegetable garden in. She talked me into planting beets and butternut squash, and of course I planted tomatoes. Tomatoes you grow yourself taste way better than tomatoes that you buy.

I grow my own garden for purely selfish reasons–I really prefer the taste of home-grown food–but my daughter cares a lot about reducing her carbon footprint. She points out that organic garden recycles nutrients back into the soil and doesn’t require fuel to make or deliver fertilizer. The food I grow doesn’t have to be trucked anywhere. I don’t think it’s possible to use less fuel than it takes to walk into the back yard to pick tomatoes. And I’m certainly not going to use fuel to refrigerate it before I eat it–although my daughter plans to can the extra tomatoes this year, which would require some fuel.

Of course, if you really want to impact the carbon dioxide level, you need to grow trees, because trees store carbon for many years (the wood of a tree represents stored carbon). According to this article: Planting Trees to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint all you have to do is plant seven trees a year to neutralize your carbon footprint. I may be a few trees behind.