Every year on 1 November, World Vegan Day invites us to think a little more carefully about the food we eat, the animals we share the planet with and the choices we make each day. And perhaps one of the nicest places to begin is with a handful of seeds.
There is something rather wonderful about growing food.
A few seeds pressed into the soil, a little water, some patience and, with luck, something delicious to put on the table. It is one of the simplest ways to understand where our food comes from, although anyone who has waited rather impatiently for a tomato to ripen will know that nature doesn’t always work to our preferred timetable.
Yet the pleasure of growing your own goes well beyond the harvest. It changes the way you think about food. You begin to appreciate the time and resources involved, the changing seasons and the extraordinary amount of life that supports even the smallest vegetable patch.
And that brings us rather neatly to World Vegan Day, celebrated every year on 1 November.
For some, it is a celebration of a way of life they have followed for years. For others, it is an opportunity to discover something new, perhaps question a few familiar habits or simply try a meal made entirely from plants.
You certainly don’t have to be vegan to find the ideas behind the day worth considering.
At its heart, World Vegan Day is about compassion, responsibility and recognising that the choices we make can affect animals, the environment and the wider world.
Those are ideas worth giving some thought to, whatever happens to be on your dinner plate.
How Did World Vegan Day Begin?
The story begins in Britain in 1944.
During the Second World War, a small group of people who were already vegetarian began discussing whether avoiding meat went far enough. They were concerned about the use of animals for milk, eggs and other products, and wanted to explore a way of living that avoided animal exploitation more broadly.
Among them was Donald Watson, who helped establish The Vegan Society in November 1944.
The group needed a name for this approach to living. They settled on vegan, formed from the beginning and end of the word vegetarian.
It was a small beginning for an idea that would eventually travel around the world.
Fifty years later, in 1994, Louise Wallis, then Chair of The Vegan Society, established World Vegan Day to mark the organisation’s anniversary.
The date chosen was 1 November, and the celebration subsequently grew into World Vegan Week and then World Vegan Month, observed throughout November.
What began as a way of recognising the history of a British organisation has become an international opportunity to discuss animal welfare, food production, sustainability and the practicalities of vegan living.
And while the world has changed considerably since 1944, many of the questions those early members were asking remain just as relevant today.
Where does our food come from? How are animals treated? What effect does producing that food have on the world around us?
They aren’t always comfortable questions.
But that doesn’t make them any less important.
What Is World Vegan Day Trying to Achieve?
World Vegan Day is not simply about encouraging people to eat more vegetables, although that can be a very welcome outcome.
Its central purpose is to raise awareness of veganism as a way of living that seeks to avoid the exploitation of animals, as far as is possible and practicable.
That includes food, but it also extends to clothing, cosmetics and other products that involve animal use.
Animal welfare is therefore at the centre of the movement.
Veganism asks us to consider animals as living beings with interests of their own, rather than simply resources available for human use.
It also encourages discussion about the way food is produced and the environmental pressures associated with agriculture.
Producing food requires land, water, energy and other resources. Livestock farming can also contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, particularly through methane from ruminant animals and the production of animal feed.
A greater reliance on plant-based foods can help reduce some of these pressures, although the environmental impact of any particular food still depends on how and where it is produced.
A tomato grown in a heated greenhouse in winter, for example, has a rather different environmental story from one ripened outdoors during summer.
The aim is not to pretend that every plant-based product is automatically sustainable.
It is to encourage more informed decisions and, where possible, reduce unnecessary harm.
World Vegan Day also seeks to make vegan living more accessible by sharing recipes, nutritional information, practical advice and support.
Because changing familiar habits is much easier when someone helps you work out what to do instead.
Do You Have to Become Vegan to Take Part?
Not at all.
World Vegan Day celebrates veganism and its principles, but anyone can use the occasion to learn more about them.
You might decide to try a completely plant-based meal, discover a new vegetable, cook with lentils or beans instead of meat, or simply think a little more carefully about the food you buy.
Of course, eating one vegan meal does not make someone vegan. Veganism is a broader ethical commitment, not simply a menu choice.
But trying plant-based food can be a useful introduction to the ideas behind it.
And it needn’t involve a complete overhaul of the kitchen.
There is a tendency, whenever we consider changing something about the way we live, to imagine that everything must happen immediately.
Out go the familiar recipes. In come seventeen new ingredients, several cookbooks and a rather expensive jar of something nobody in the household knows how to pronounce.
It doesn’t have to be like that.
A vegetable curry, a lentil shepherd’s pie, a bowl of homemade soup or a good bean chilli can all be entirely plant-based.
In fact, many familiar meals are already vegan, or need only a small adjustment.
The most useful starting point is often curiosity.
Try something. See whether you enjoy it. Learn a little more.
There is no need to turn dinner into an examination.
Growing Your Own Food Makes the Connection More Personal
One of the things I find most appealing about growing vegetables, salads and herbs is the way it brings us closer to the food we eat.
When you buy a bag of salad leaves, it’s easy to forget everything that happened before they reached the shop.
But grow those leaves yourself and the whole process becomes rather more interesting.
You choose the seeds. You prepare the compost. You watch the first tiny shoots appear, wondering whether you’ve done everything correctly.
Then, a few weeks later, you gather a handful of fresh leaves for lunch.
Suddenly, something that seemed quite ordinary has become a small achievement.
Growing your own encourages an appreciation of food that is closely connected to the ideas behind World Vegan Day.
You become more aware of the resources involved in producing it. You notice how weather affects growth, how important healthy soil is and how much the garden depends on the insects and other wildlife around it.
You also begin to think differently about waste.
A lettuce you’ve grown yourself is unlikely to be forgotten quite so casually at the back of the fridge.
And when you’ve spent weeks waiting for your first courgette, you’re rather inclined to make good use of it.
Growing vegetables is not the same as following a vegan lifestyle, of course. People of all dietary preferences grow their own food.
But it can support a more plant-centred way of eating, making fresh ingredients familiar, accessible and enjoyable.
And perhaps that is where some of the most lasting changes begin.
A Few Vegetables Can Change the Way You Cook
You don’t need an allotment or a large kitchen garden to begin growing food.
A few pots on a patio, a raised bed, a balcony or a sunny windowsill can provide a surprisingly useful harvest.
Salad leaves are a lovely place to start. Many varieties grow quickly, and cut-and-come-again crops allow you to gather a few leaves at a time while the plants continue producing.
Rocket brings a peppery flavour to sandwiches and salads, while lettuce, spinach and other leafy crops can form the basis of all sorts of meals.
Then there are herbs.
Fresh parsley can transform a bowl of lentils. Basil makes the simplest tomato dish feel special. Chives are lovely scattered over potatoes, while thyme and rosemary bring warmth to roasted vegetables.
And once you begin growing herbs, you’ll probably wonder why you ever bought such large packets from the supermarket when you only needed three sprigs.
Vegetables offer even more possibilities.
Tomatoes, beans, courgettes, beetroot, radishes and carrots can all become part of a varied plant-based kitchen, depending on the space available and the season.
The pleasure lies in discovering what you enjoy growing and then finding ways to cook with it.
A handful of homegrown tomatoes might become a pasta sauce. Fresh basil could be turned into a dairy-free pesto with nuts, garlic and olive oil. Courgettes can be roasted, grilled or added to a vegetable curry.
And a generous harvest of salad leaves is a good excuse to make something rather more interesting than a lettuce-and-cucumber side dish.
Add chickpeas, roasted vegetables, toasted seeds and a lemon dressing, and you have a proper meal.
The vegetables provide freshness and flavour, while beans, lentils, grains, nuts and seeds help make plant-based meals more substantial and nutritionally balanced.
Eating with the Seasons
Growing your own food also teaches a lesson that is easy to forget when supermarkets offer almost everything throughout the year.
Not all food grows naturally at the same time.
Spring brings tender leaves, radishes and early herbs. Summer offers tomatoes, beans and courgettes. Autumn provides squash, beetroot and other vegetables for roasting and storing.
By November, the British kitchen is moving towards leeks, kale, winter cabbage and the dependable root vegetables that make such good soups and stews.
There is a real pleasure in allowing meals to change with the seasons.
A fresh tomato salad is wonderful in August, when tomatoes are ripe and full of flavour.
In November, a bowl of roasted squash and lentil soup, finished with a little thyme, feels far more appropriate.
And the seasonal approach can encourage us to make better use of what is available locally.
That doesn’t mean every ingredient must come from our own garden. A varied vegan diet relies on plenty of foods that may not be practical to grow at home, including pulses, grains and fortified products.
Nor does growing at home automatically guarantee a lower environmental impact. Materials, water use, heating and the way a crop is grown all matter.
But growing some food outdoors in season, using resources thoughtfully and avoiding waste can be part of a more sustainable approach.
It also gives us a better understanding of the food we buy when we aren’t able to grow it ourselves.
What About the Wildlife in Our Gardens?
There is another interesting connection between World Vegan Day and growing our own food.
A productive garden is never entirely ours.
Bees visit the flowers. Earthworms work through the soil. Birds search for insects amongst the leaves. Beetles, spiders and countless other small creatures play their part in keeping the garden alive.
Not all of them are particularly welcome when we’re hoping to harvest a perfect lettuce.
Slugs, for example, have an impressive ability to discover the one seedling you were most looking forward to growing.
But even the less popular garden visitors belong to a wider living system.
Gardening with wildlife in mind means finding ways to protect crops while avoiding unnecessary harm.
That might involve encouraging natural predators, protecting young plants with suitable barriers, improving soil health and avoiding routine use of harmful pesticides.
It also means making room for flowers, shelter and habitats alongside the vegetables.
A garden can be productive without being stripped of every other living thing.
And while growing vegetables at home doesn’t make a garden automatically vegan in its methods — some fertilisers, composts and pest-control products contain animal-derived ingredients — it does give us the opportunity to think more carefully about the choices we make.
For those wishing to garden in keeping with vegan principles, plant-based fertilisers and animal-free growing materials are worth exploring.
It is another example of how the ideas behind World Vegan Day can extend beyond the kitchen.
Making Plant-Based Eating Easier, One Harvest at a Time
Of course, deciding to grow your own food is one thing.
Knowing where to begin can be quite another.
Anyone who has stood in front of a large display of seed packets will understand the problem.
There are dozens of varieties of lettuce. More types of tomato than you imagined possible. Instructions about sowing depth, spacing, temperatures, planting dates and harvesting times.
Before long, the simple idea of growing a few vegetables can begin to resemble a research project.
And that’s before you’ve worked out which compost to buy.
It’s one of the reasons we created our Sow It Grow It and Feast growing kits.
We wanted to make the first steps easier, particularly for people who would love to grow their own vegetables, salads or herbs but aren’t quite sure how to start.
Rather than leaving you to work through endless choices and conflicting advice, our kits bring together carefully selected seeds and step-by-step growing guidance.
They are designed to take some of the planning and uncertainty out of growing, so you can concentrate on the enjoyable part.
Sowing the seeds.
Watching them grow.
And eventually having something lovely to eat.
Our packs also include a year’s online support, so you don’t have to work everything out on your own.
Because even experienced gardeners occasionally find themselves staring at a plant and wondering what on earth it is doing.
A Simple Place to Begin
If World Vegan Day has encouraged you to bring more plant-based food into your meals, there are several lovely ways to begin growing some of the ingredients yourself.
Our Grow a Salad Patch pack is a natural starting point for anyone who enjoys fresh leaves and wants to make salads a more regular part of their meals.
The Grow Your Own Microgreens Kit offers another way to explore fresh flavours, particularly where space is limited. Microgreens can add colour, texture and flavour to sandwiches, salads and other dishes, with many varieties ready to harvest relatively quickly.
For those who enjoy cooking, our Grow Your Own Chef’s Garden and herb-growing kits can help bring fresh ingredients into everyday meals.
And if you’re feeling ready for a broader vegetable-growing adventure, our Grow Your Own Veg to Feed a Family pack offers a more ambitious starting point.
The aim isn’t to grow everything you eat.
Few of us have the space, time or inclination to become entirely self-sufficient.
It’s simply to discover how satisfying it can be to grow something useful and make it part of the food you enjoy.
You can explore the range in our Grow Your Own Packs shop.
And because it’s November, remember that some crops are better started in spring or summer. There’s no need to rush seeds into the ground at the wrong time simply because inspiration has struck.
Choosing what you’d like to grow, preparing a little space and looking forward to the next sowing season is a perfectly good beginning.
A Kinder Way of Eating Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated
One of the messages worth taking from World Vegan Day is that meaningful choices become easier when we have the knowledge and support to make them.
For someone who wants to adopt a fully vegan lifestyle, that means understanding more than recipes.
A well-planned vegan diet can provide the nutrients we need, but particular attention must be paid to vitamin B12, along with nutrients such as iodine, calcium, iron, vitamin D and omega-3 fats.
Reliable fortified foods and supplements are important, especially for vitamin B12, which cannot be reliably obtained from unfortified plant foods.
The Vegan Society and NHS provide useful guidance on planning a balanced vegan diet.
For others, World Vegan Day might simply be an opportunity to cook more often with vegetables, beans, lentils and other plant foods.
Either way, good information makes a difference.
And growing a few of your own ingredients can make the experience more enjoyable.
It introduces new flavours, encourages seasonal cooking and gives you a reason to experiment with meals you might never otherwise have tried.
There is also something rather satisfying about a dinner that began, at least in part, with seeds you planted yourself.
Even if the carrots turned out slightly crooked.
Especially if the carrots turned out slightly crooked.
World Vegan Day Is About More Than One Day
Perhaps the most important thing about World Vegan Day is that its message doesn’t end when 1 November is over.
The day was created to raise awareness of a particular ethical way of living, but the conversations it encourages are relevant throughout the year.
How can we reduce unnecessary harm to animals?
How can food production become more sustainable?
How can we waste less, use resources more thoughtfully and make nourishing food accessible to more people?
And how can we help those who want to change their habits feel supported rather than overwhelmed?
There are no simple answers to every question, but that doesn’t mean we should stop asking them.
Sometimes a change begins with learning something new.
Sometimes it begins with a different choice at the supermarket.
And sometimes it begins with a packet of seeds.
At Sow It Grow It and Feast, we believe growing food should be enjoyable, approachable and rewarding. Whether you’re vegan, vegetarian, simply curious about plant-based eating or just someone who loves a good homegrown tomato, there’s room to discover something new.
You don’t need a perfect garden.
You don’t need years of experience.
And you certainly don’t need to spend the entire weekend researching the correct way to grow a lettuce.
A little guidance, a few seeds and the willingness to give it a go are quite enough.
After all, some of the most worthwhile things we do begin rather modestly.
And a small patch of vegetables, salads or herbs is a lovely place to start.
Further Reading: Fresh Salads from the Garden, Grow Your Own Food: Save Money & Eat Well, Take the Guesswork Out of Growing Veg, Grow Your Own Packs
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Not sure where to start? Take a look at our Grow Your Own Packs with detailed step by step instructions, seeds and 1 years online support.