New Year’s Resolution Garden

The holiday season is about ready to wrap up with the new year just a couple of days away. Last New Year’s we posted the Resolution Garden. Did you take part? Were you able to follow through? Well if not, it’s a whole other year and time for a new resolution to start planning that spring garden.  If you followed through on this past year’s resolution, then it is time to look at your garden journal and see what tweeks you can make to bring in an even greater bounty of fresh produce.

For those of you whom follow through on last year’s resolution garden, let us know what you did to bring in a successful garden.

Nourish Middle School Curriculum – Where Our Food Comes From

A few years ago when I started vegetable gardening again, as an adult, is when it first became apparent to me just how far removed our kids are from understanding what food really is and where it comes from. My teenage daughter asked me why in the world I was replacing some of my beautiful azaleas and other ornamental plantings from our front yard with vegetable seedlings. I explained to her that I was realizing that as a society, we should be eating more organic, local, whole foods and using our own resources to produce what we could on our own. She thought I’d gone completely insane! (I might have, but not about this.) She couldn’t believe that I was seriously going to eat the food I grew in the DIRT. She felt it was truly gross to do so and SHE wasn’t going to eat it!

Is the 2010 Home Garden Vegetable Seed Shortage Real or Myth?

2009 was one of the worst growing seasons in the U.S. and Europe in nearly 50 years. Soggy and cooler weather were devasting to home gardeners. This resulted in less seed being produced for this year’s gardening season. That’s a fact. However, will we see a true shortage in home garden vegetable seeds this year?

“Food Technology” in America

I recently read an article in O, The Oprah Magazine, titled “Banned in Europe, Okay Here?” written by Sari Harrar. Sari reviews some of the food technology Americans have accepted, while Europeans have said no to it. The article was super informative and laid out the data really well, so I thought I would provide a summary of the article for you.

Find A Green Restaurant

These days with the economy taking its toll on household budgets, a lot of people are reducing how much they dine out. However, the next time you take the family out to eat, try going to “green restaurant”.

Another reminder of why you should grow and eat your own food in the U.S.

A new study just released found that Hispanics living in Florida have a 40 percent higher chance of getting cancer than their counterparts that lived in their native countries. The conclusion of this study suggests that the lifestyle and environmental changes (foods they eat being one of them) are probably the culprit. 

Of course the recommendation is to live a healthy lifestyle and avoid smoking, drinking, and bad diets. With the abundant use of processed foods in the U.S. that contain many additives cancer, once rare,  now affects up to a third of the country’s population. 

City Farming – Small Garden Spaces

Drive a few miles out of the city and you’ll see gardens all around, in almost every yard. Although the “grow your own food” movement is exploding, I can drive down just about any urban street in my city and see so much unused, wasted space in our urban areas that could be repurposed for growing food. Just because you do not live in the country doesn’t mean you can’t have a kitchen garden. You would be surprised to see how much can be grown in a very small area. Back, front and side yards could be better used. Patios, porches and balconies can be used for container gardening. Even fence and deck rail planters along with window boxes could be utilized instead of sitting empty.

Preserving Your Strawberries – Freezing

There is nothing like the flavor of a fresh picked strawberry from your garden or local farmer when it’s at peak ripeness. However, strawberry season is coming to a close for most of the U.S. Even though May is National Strawberry Month, in some areas of the country, like here in the Pacific Northwest, the height of strawberry picking season does not begin until the first or second week of June. Regardless of when your particular season is, that’s the time when prices are low, flavor is phenomenal and you’ll want to stock up and preserve them for use all year. Of course, there are several ways to preserve your strawberries such as canning/jarring, dehydrating and freezing. Today, I’d like to go over the best ways to freeze those red beauties. Strawberries only last about 4 or 5 days in the refrigerator, so if you want to keep eating your tasty garden strawberries well into the fall and winter, make sure you think ahead and freeze them.