Grow an Abundance of Food with Help From Your Garden Solution - CPA - May 2014 - Central Pennsylvania

A wonderful article about square foot gardening and the secret to its success.



Grow an Abundance of Food with Help From Your Garden Solution - CPA - May 2014 - Central Pennsylvania

A picture is worth a thousand words...

These pictures this week pretty much speak for themselves. And notice, no weeds!!!! Yay!!!

Broccoli

The whole garden.

Lettuce

Carrots

Dinner this week is going to be a lot of salads. Look for my creamy Italian dressing recipe later this week. 

Two Weeks Exactly

It has been exactly two weeks since I planted the lettuce seedlings. We have had plenty of rain, lots of sunshine and some nice warm afternoons.

It is growing faster than teenagers! :-)

Grilled Garden Veggie Pizza

Do you know all those great summer pizzas all the recipe sites are showing? The ones with the wonderful garden fresh vegetables? I make those often. They are very simple and so delicious.

I can't wait for a few more weeks until I can enjoy my harvest on some terrific summer pizza.

I was never quite happy with my pizza crusts when I had to cook them in the oven. Pizza stones and cast iron skillets made them much better, but a good restaurant quality pizza crust kept escaping me... until last summer.

Last summer, my good friend, Lynette introduced me to the Pamper Chef Pizza Grill Pan. Lynette isn't giving me anything for this little plug.

Now I make my pizza on the grill. The thing that I found out about grilling pizza is that it is fast and it results in an excellent crust. If you want it to be even faster, you can pick up a store bought crust in the freezer section at your grocery store. My Juniata County friends can find frozen pizza crust at Schlegel's... because Schlegel's has everything! lol

You can get the grill temperature up into the 500 to 600 degree range and have a crisp crusted smokey flavored gem. Use you garden veggies as topping and an you have the perfect summer dinner to pair with a salad... grown in your garden of course.

These are my actual pizzas cooked on my grill with a Pampered Chef  Pizza Grill Pan. If you are looking for your own pizza grill pan, you can check them out here: Lynette's Pampered Kitchen

Lettuce Growth Update

This was my lettuce last week when I transplanted it:

And this was my lettuce today!

It's all filled in and you can't even see the soil. I think I may get a salad out of it later this week. :-)

Success!!!!

After impatiently waiting for a little over a week... today I was greeted by little carrot sprouts. They are my very first garden plants to sprout from seeds.

Ameraucanas

This little chick is going to grow up to be a prolific egg layer. She is sometimes called the Easter egg chicken and her eggs will be shades of light blues and greens. I also got some Rhode Island Reds. 

The fresh eggs are going to make a great addition to my garden fresh produce. 

You can learn more about caring for chickens here: http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2013/06/10-tips-for-healthy-chickens.html

Wait, water, repeat...

and think about what I am going to put in my other two gardens that I will be adding. :-)

Getting Down to Business

First we added the special growing mix. Thanks kids for lugging and lifting those bags!

The next step is to add the grid to give us the one foot square planting plots.

Here are my first few transplants. :-)

And here are my finished plots, all planted and ready to grow! The plots on the right have carrots, basil and Italian parsley seeds. The carrots are a special short variety. Now I just have to add sunshine, keep it watered and wait...  

A Late Start

There were quite a bit of early spring plants that should have been started in March and April. I knew I was behind by starting in May. Did I mention that I lived in a rural area with Amish and Mennonite neighbors that had small produce farms?

As luck would have it, one of these local farm families had extra seedlings that had been started in the greenhouse and were ready to be transplanted to their outdoor garden homes. For just a few cents, I was able to pick up a few of these little gems. There were the perfect size to make up for my late start.

Thank you Weavers of Willowbrook.

It's here... It's here!!!!!

Friday was a very busy, very exciting day. First my book arrived in the morning mail. I spent a few hours after lunch with the All New Square Foot Gardening. It became apparent to me that this was just the beginning of my adventure. It didn't take me long to realize that it was going to take about three boxes to meet my wish list. Heck, I was going to need one just for herbs. I had been buying the fresh herbs in little pots at the grocery store in the produce section for the past few years now.

My favorites are basil, Italian parsley, rosemary, mint, and garlic. I also use sage and oregano fairly often too. In a perfect world, I will go through one plant a week of my favorites. So I am going to most definitely have a few different plants at different stages of growth to keep myself supplied with those herbs.

Then around mid afternoon, I was off to meet Joe Manatti of  Your Garden Solution to pick up my first garden box and the special soil mix that went with it.

Here is a simple, quick vinaigrette that will be perfect for your first harvest of greens.  It goes especially well with a spinach and arugula mix. My kids love it.

Onion Vinaigrette

2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar

1 slice of onion, minced

1 tsp. thyme leaves

1/4 tsp. of Sea or Kosher Salt

1/4 tsp. Ground Black Pepper

2 Tbsp. Extra Virgin Olive Oil or more as needed

Chop the onion slice into quarters and throw it in the food processer and pulse until finely minced. Then add the vinegar, thyme, salt and pepper.  Turn the food processor on and add the oil in a slow stream so that it emulsifies.

Serve this fresh vinaigrette over baby greens.

2014 Dirty Dozen List: The Most Pesticide-Laden Produce You're Eating

When I see this list come out every year, it gives me reason to pause and think. And to be truthful, in the past I never really thought that much about it. But for the past two years, I started taking cooking classes with a local caterer. Olga is a wonderful cook and teacher. We have learned to make all kinds of things from scratch. She also was very instrumental in moving her pupils into areas of food where we had never been before. 

She also told us... Why buy this ready made and processes when it is really so quick and easy to do? And if you have the choice between an organic product and some thing that is not organic, always choose the organic product. Why take a chance on something when you don't have to?

The food was so delicious that I wanted to make it from scratch. And guess what I discovered?

Somewhere a long the way I realized that my allergies had started to clear up. I wasn't nearly as stuff as I had been in the past. So what had always seemed to be an indoor allergy improved when I stopped eating as much processed food. I said something to my son. And he said... "You know what mom? Now that you mention it, mine are a lot better too."

So there was/is some ingredient in processes foods that causes inflammation and congestion in my body. I don't know which one it is, but I do know that I feel better without it. So when this year's Dirty Dozen List came out, I took note. Much of the produce that makes this list is something that can be grown in my garden table. So this year it is going to be! 

Here is the article from Rondale News: 

Environmental Working Group (EWG) just released its 2014 Dirty Dozen list identifying the most pesticide-laden produce on the market. This doesn't mean you should stop eating produce in exchange for processed foods, but it does suggest that eating organic as often as possible is a top-notch way to keep chemical pesticides out of your body. 

In fact, a 2012 report by the American Academy of Pediatrics said children are particularly susceptible to the impacts of pesticide exposure, including an increased risk of pediatric cancers and behavioral problems, along with trouble learning. Pesticide exposure has also been linked to all sorts of conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer, among others. 

To come up with the "Clean 15" and "Dirty Dozen Plus" lists, EWG scientists focused on 48 popular fruits and vegetables and based their rankings on an analysis of 32,000 samples tested by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 

To rank produce, EWG analysts use six metrics, including the total number of pesticides detected on a crop and the percent of samples tested with detectable pesticides. In the latest report, 65 percent of the samples analyzed tested positive for pesticide residues.

But the report goes beyond listing foods with the most pesticide residues and charges the U.S. Environmental Protect Agency (EPA) with failing to comply with the Congressionally mandated Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, legislation designed to to warn Americans of the risk of eating foods containing chemical pesticides. 

"EWG's Shopper's Guide helps people find conventional fruits and vegetables with low concentrations of pesticide residues," says Sonya Lunder, EWG's senior analyst and principle author of the report. "If a particular item is likely to be high in pesticides, people can go for organic."

2014 Dirty Dozen Plus 
Nonorganic apples once again topped The EWG's Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce report, making it the fourth year in a row the beloved fruit earned the unfavorable spot.

Kale, collard greens, and hot peppers were frequently contaminated with insecticides that are particularly toxic to human health, prompting their "Dirty Dozen Plus" status.

1. Apples
2. Strawberries
3. Grapes
4. Celery
5. Peaches
6. Spinach
7. Sweet Bell Peppers
8. Nectarines (Imported)
9. Cucumbers
10. Cherry Tomatoes
11. Snap Peas (Imported)
12. Potatoes
+ Hot Peppers
+ Kale/Collard Greens

2014 Clean 15 
It's not all bad news! These produce picks contained the lowest pesticide levels. 

1. Avocados
2. Sweet Corn
3. Pineapples
4. Cabbage
5. Sweet Peas (Frozen)
6. Onions
7. Asparagus
8. Mangoes
9. Papayas
10. Kiwi
11. Eggplant
12. Grapefruit
13. Cantaloupe
14. Cauliflower
15. Sweet Potatoes

Read More: EWG’s Complete 2014 Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides and Produce

Other Important Findings
•    Every sample of imported nectarine samples tested and 99 percent of apple samples tested positive for at least one pesticide residue.

•    The average potato had more pesticides by weight than any other food.

•    A single grape tested positive for 15 pesticides.

•    Single samples of celery, cherry tomatoes, imported snap peas, and strawberries tested positive for 13 different pesticides apiece.

•    Only 1 percent of avocado samples showed any detectable pesticides.

•    89 percent of pineapples, 82 percent of kiwi, 80 percent of papayas, 88 percent of mango, and 61 percent of cantaloupe had no residues.

More From Rodale News: "Extreme" Levels of Roundup Detected in Food

"For decades, various toxic pesticides were claimed to be 'safe' … until they weren't, and were either banned or phased out because they posed risks to people," says Lunder. "While regulators and scientists debate these and other controversies about pesticide safety, EWG will continue drawing attention to the fruits and vegetables with the highest pesticide loads.