Update on the Growing Challenge June 4, 2008

I joined the Growing Challenge a while ago. As part of the Growing Challenge, I’m supposed to increase the number of fruits or vegetables I am growing (from last year), and I’m supposed to grow them from seed.

I did that. However, I’m also supposed to post about gardening once a week. I have not kept up that end of the bargain.

I have had some family emergencies going on that have been taking all my energy, my thoughts, and my focus.

So, to make up for it, I’m posting this mega-update of what’s going on in my garden.

We had a new wall put in:

They just finished it yesterday. It used to be an old fence that was literally falling down. So we extended the brick wall. Now I’ll be able to garden all the way to the front!

They also put in this new gate:

Here are the first tomatoes of the season!

These are the first tomatoes of the season — cherry tomatoes! They were volunteer seedlings that came up from last year’s plants.

Here they are:

They look kind of sickly but it’s because I waited too long to transplant them. They’ll come back. Or they won’t. And if they don’t, they’re not hardy. In which case, I don’t really care.

My mom taught me this about gardening a long time ago — she always said she didn’t care if plants died. If they weren’t tough, she didn’t want them. Makes sense to me. Survival of the fittest and all that.

Plus, gardening is not something you should ever get uptight about. It should be fun and relaxing and enjoyable.

Here’s my thyme and sage:

Same story with these guys — I let them get leggy and then pruned the shit out of them. So they look kind of unhappy now. But they will be OK.

As with the cilantro and parsley:

Lemon balm (this was 10 times its size before I pruned it):

Here are some purple potatoes:

I took some purple potatoes that we never got around to eating and threw them in a pot full of soil. And look what happened! It was so easy!

Here’s some rosemary:

These are actually two rosemary plants. I dug them out of the vegetable garden and threw them in a pot. I’ll transplant them tomorrow. (Baby woke up from her nap so I had to stop.)

Strawberries, lettuce and chives:

Kate and I usually eat all the strawberries as we garden — otherwise the birds get them. I need to cover them with a bird net.

Here’s my avocado tree:

Just planted it about a month ago. If we do leave LA and move up to a farm in Washington State, I will really miss being able to grow avocados and citrus.

Here’s a hibiscus:

When I was little, my mom was always growing hibiscus. It was her pride and joy — I guess because it’s not so easy to grow hibiscus in Texas. Here in Southern California, they grow like weeds. This one badly needs transplanting.

Did you know you can make tea out of hibiscus flowers? You can! Hibiscus iced tea is really delicious — like Celestial Seasonings Red Zinger. (I wonder how it would be made into kombucha…)

Here are a couple more trees I got recently, lime and blood orange:

Still don’t know where I’m going to put them…

Here’s one of the lemon trees (there are two) Seth had in the yard when I moved in:

It’s so nice to be able to just go in the back yard and get a lemon whenever you need one.

I just got this Meyer lemon tree:

Meyer lemons are sweeter than regular lemons. I have had Meyer lemon trees at two of my former homes in California — they are so fabulous!

Here’s my new grape vine, planted in the back corner of the yard:

Not sure how long it will take to produce grapes. But the real reason I bought it is so that I can use them for my lacto-fermented dill pickles. Grape leaves are the key to crunchy, crispy pickles! (I’d also love to make dolma one of these days…)

Here is the first bloom from one of the hydrangeas:

I have no idea what these are:

Some kind of flowers I planted in the shade garden. We’ll see what comes up!

This is what the shade garden looks like:

I’m calling this a before photo — I plan to do a lot to this side of the house to make it look a whole lot better.

Here’s the before photo for the front yard:

That’s it for today. I’ll keep you posted.

Support Our Local Farmers May 23, 2008

Kate is sleeping so I’m taking a break for once. It occurred to me that I need to take breaks when she is napping.

We get up at 6 or 6:30 am every day. And she doesn’t go to bed until 7. So that’s a 12-13 hour day! Plus then I still have to get dinner on the table and do the dishes and clean up the kitchen.

I don’t know how some of you moms out there do it. The ones who are homeschooling and cooking traditional foods and doing all your own cleaning. I guess if you have older kids, you can put them to work doing chores. But it is a lot of work. I commend you.

It’s a rainy overcast day today. Cold, like winter weather. Bizarre, since it was blazing hot all last week.

Kate and I went to the Japanese market this morning to get sashimi for dinner. Seth eats a lot — so I bought $30 worth. This GAPS diet is expensive. We used to be able to save money by eating more rice and beans and other things. But when all you are eating is meat and vegetables, you need more meat to fill up.

I only buy the wild-caught sashimi — so I got tuna and albacore and some snapper. All the salmon was farm-raised which I refuse to buy. I’ve also got some bonito broth simmering on the stove for miso soup. And I’ll make a seaweed cucumber salad.

I dug out some grass-fed ground beef and bison heart out of the freezer for tomorrow night. Gonna make taco salad. I’m going to grind up the heart and add it to the mix. Hopefully Seth won’t be able to taste it!

Here’s some exciting news — about a week or so ago I dumped some cut up potatoes into a big pot outside. And guess what? They already sprouted. There are green leaves coming up out of the pot! Isn’t that exciting? These were just potatoes that we didn’t get around to eating (since we went on GAPS).

See, this is the thing. People are getting all worked up about food prices and how there’s going to be a famine. And yet it is so easy to grow food! I mean, I literally just dumped those potatoes into the pot, added a little soil and water — went out and watered them a couple of times — and that was it. People need to get out of the grocery store and get into the backyard.

I was listening to Joel Salatin’s lecture at the last WAPF conference. He said an interesting thing. “In America today, there are twice as many people in prison than there are on farms.”

Doesn’t that blow your mind? Is it any wonder why so many people are incarcerated? Why so many people are dealing drugs?

We used to be able to live off the land and support ourselves. Now we are forced to work outside the home and leave our families for 8, 10, 12 hours a day. We are forced to drive cars to work since everyone is so spread out. And most families have two cars — 50 years ago, most families had one car if they had a car at all.

It’s ridiculous the way we live. Most of us are stressed out all the time, working way too many hours, not spending enough time with our kids, and yet we have huge homes with five TV sets and two cars and fancy gourmet kitchens we never cook in.

How did this happen?

Joel Salatin said something else in his lecture. He said, “Over 50% of all meals are eaten outside the home.” Isn’t that incredible? And restaurant food is not only bad for you, it’s very expensive!

Salatin said, “Try just making one homecooked meal a week.” It’s a good goal.

Here’s another statistic I heard today: 30 million people — oops — that’s supposed to be 300 million people in the world are malnourished. The person who said it said it was due to industrial agriculture and monocropping.

We need to take back our land. Even if you don’t have a backyard, you can grow something. Even if you only have room for pots on a patio — you can grow potatoes! Or herbs. Or lettuce. I remember when I was single, living in San Francisco, I used to grow baby bok choy in a pot on my tiny little postage-stamp sized deck.

If you can’t grow anything, you can support a local farmer. Local organic farmers take care of the soil. They don’t monocrop. They don’t spray poisons on the food. Go to your local farmer’s market and buy as much as you can from the local farmers. You can still go to the supermarket to get other things.

Busy Saturday and Sicilian Dinner May 17, 2008

It’s going to be a busy day. Heck, it’s been a busy day already.

Kate and I got up at 6:30. She had her bottle, I had my Dandy Blend, and then I got dressed and made breakfast while she watched Muzzy. We got to the farmer’s market a little after it opened (around 8:45) and we ate scrambled eggs and sausage and banana while we walked. I had to carry her in the Bjorn — she will not ride in the wagon anymore without trying to stand up. She’s so close to walking; she hates having to sit down.

I got 2 dozen fresh oysters, 4 dozen eggs, a rump roast, 2 pounds of ground beef, 3 huge bunches of carrots, fennel, a pound of fava beans, some spring onions, some mesclun, some yams (for Kate), a quart of raw honey, fresh organic peaches and apricots, olive goat cheese, 2 gallons of milk, a duck, and some chicken feet. It was a challenge to fit it all in the wagon.

I can’t wait to try that olive goat cheese. I got it from Healthy Family Farms — where I get my chickens and ducks. I think we’ll have some for lunch, along with the leftover chicken liver mousse. And some fresh peaches and cream.

For dinner, we’ll have the oysters (they’re very small, which is why I got 2 dozen — called luna, and they’re like Kumamoto oysters). I think we’ll go Sicilian tonight — oysters on the half shell, chilled fennel soup, fava beans with bacon or Italian sausage, and a salad of blood oranges and kalamata olives on a bed of arugula.

I wish Seth could have cream — I could make gelato. But instead I will make granita — a traditional Sicilian dessert and perfect when it is hot outside (which it is). I think I’ll try making mint granita. I have mint growing outside. Of course, I’ll make it with honey instead of sugar.

I need to make kombucha today, and kefir soda pop. And I’m going to make more sauerkraut, and Kate’s fermented yams. There’s chicken stock that needs to be strained. And there are diapers in the wash that need to go out on the line. I also really need to stake my tomatoes and prune and move some of the herbs out of the vegetable garden.

Speaking of that, right after I posted yesterday about the container gardening, I looked on Craig’s List and immediately found a guy who will build me custom planters — whatever size I need. He charges about $7/linear foot. Not bad! And best of all, it’s reclaimed (recycled) wood.

I’m going to do it! Now I just have to research how to make them self-watering.

GAPS Diet: Day 14 May 10, 2008

Just got back from the farmer’s market.

Here are the meals I’m going to make this week (not in any particular order, although I know we are doing ribs tonight and brisket tomorrow night):

BBQ Pork Spare Ribs with Beet Greens sauteed in chicken fat, tomato and cucumber salad — and broth
Brisket with Sauerkraut and some vegetables (not sure what yet), and Carrot Ginger Soup
Roast Chicken, salad, broth or soup
Bratwurst with Sauerkraut and a green salad — and broth
Miso Soup, Seaweed Salad and Sashimi
Ribeye Steak, Salad, and maybe I’ll try to make Onion Soup (sans cheese and bread, of course)
Chicken Cacciatore with an arugula and fennel salad and soup

Both the brisket and the chicken will provide leftovers which I will use for lunches. I also got 5 dozen eggs. Jungleen asked me, “Do you really go through that many eggs in one week?” Yes, we really do. Seth usually eats 4 eggs for breakfast, and Kate and I split 4 eggs. That’s 8 eggs per day right there. And we eat eggs every morning so that’s 56 eggs. Plus we use eggs to make the coconut oil mayonnaise (which we eat almost every day for lunch — either chicken salad, tuna salad or egg salad — oops more eggs for the egg salad).

And I often make smoothies with 2 egg yolks for lunch. That’s actually one of my favorite lunches. Two raw egg yolks, some strawberries or blueberries, 2-3 TBS of coconut oil, 1 TBS of Frontier brand nutritional yeast, and either kefir or coconut milk, and sweetened with a TBS or two of raw honey. (I am still doing kefir. That is the only dairy I still eat. I don’t have any problems with dairy like Seth does and Dr. Cowan said if you can tolerate kefir, you can eat it from the beginning.)

I need to check the papers from Dr. Cowan to see when we can start eating beans. I’d love to have some lentil soup. Or make black beans and taco meat.

But I don’t want to start introducing anything new until I’m sure Seth’s gut pain is totally gone and he’s not having any constipation or diarrhea.

I’m also really excited to start making my own ketchup. Seth loves ketchup and eats a lot of it. It will be great to have real lacto-fermented ketchup. Same thing with salsa. I’m going to stake my tomatoes today. We should have tomatoes in another month to 6 weeks.

It’s a perfect day to garden. Nice and cool outside.

I have some potatoes we never gotten around to eating that started sprouting… Cute little purple ones. I think I’m going to throw those into a big container I have (used to have a palm in it but it died). We’ll see if they grow. We can eat potatoes right now but maybe by the time these come up we will be able to.

Oh, PS: I’ve lost somewhere between 6 and 7 pounds now. (Sometimes the scale says 148, sometimes 147.) Yes, it’s true, I may have lost weight because we are eating so low-carb. But I was on a low-carb diet for a few months starting in December and I couldn’t lose past a certain point. I really think the Iodoral is what’s helping. Anyway, we’ll see how next week goes.

I also bought a Lumiscope thermometer — the kind Dr. Rind recommends on his website — from Drugstore.com. It was only $6. He says it’s the most accurate. I’m going to start charting my temperature every few hours like he recommends.

First Seedlings of Spring April 18, 2008

I was gathering Italian parsley and oregano for my spaghetti sauce tonight, and I was thinking, “There isn’t anything better than this. Being able to just step outside and gather herbs for your dinner.”

Then I realized there is one thing that is better. And that’s the first seedlings of spring.

I was so excited to find these seedlings this afternoon. I actually jumped for joy. They are baby chamomile plants. I love chamomile tea, so I figured I’d grow my own. It’s also great to plant chamomile around the garden, in between other plants.

Amazingly, I only planted these seeds less than a week ago. It was last Sunday — on Kate’s birthday.

Here’s my set up:

I got some stainless steel shelves from the restaurant supply store (I figure I’ll use them in the kitchen or pantry later). I’m using shop lights with fluorescent bulbs and the lamps on the sides are for warmth. And I have everything hooked up to a timer so they get light 14 hours per day.

Those are egg crates. In the ones that are flat, I used cut-up cardboard rolls from toilet paper and paper towels.

I didn’t put plastic wrap over them. I haven’t gotten around to it. Actually — I just can’t figure out how to put plastic wrap on them and still water them. I need to water them every day — and trying to get the plastic wrap off and get them watered seems like a big hassle. Anyone have any ideas?

I planted lots of seeds — including a few different kinds of tomatoes, basil (for sandwiches, pesto, tomato sauce, and lots of other things), nettles, dandelion, jalapeno (for my salsa), bell peppers, a few different kinds of lettuce, hosta and impatiens (for the shade garden), and something called blue shrimp plant. There’s a whole lot more — can’t remember off the top of my head.

This is so much fun. The best thing is — the fun doesn’t have to stop. I can’t keep planing all summer. I think I’m going to order some more seeds.

Heck, I live in Southern California. I can plant all year long.

I’m going to plant a bunch of other stuff directly in the garden this weekend. Watermelons, various kinds of flowers — including sweet pea and lavender. I forget what else.

Spontaneous Jasmine March 3, 2008

My father-in-law told me right after Kate was born that he would always come and prune all the plants — including the “weeds” growing up from behind the back wall.

Turns out one of those weeds was star jasmine! Why/how it got planted there I don’t know.

No offense, Ed, but I’m so glad it didn’t get pruned this year! Just goes to show you that one can be too efficient. Sometimes you have to let life do it’s thing and then when you’re least expecting it, miracles appear around you.

Amazing, isn’t it? Everything grows like weeds here in Southern California. We have calla lilies popping up all over the yard. They spread like crazy! I’ll take some more photos soon.

In fact, I’m going to go wander around the yard with Kate right now and look at the light patterns and dream about where I’m going to put all my new plants. It’s starting to feel a little bit like springtime. Makes me very happy!

Tomorrow Luis the gardener is coming and I’m going to have him help me move some rose bushes and the canna. They are not getting enough sun and hardly bloom as a result.

I’m also going to ask him to help me move a lemon tree to the other side of the yard. It needs more sun, too, and I’m going to put my new pallet composter in it’s place in the corner of the yard. Woo hoo! So excited about my compost!

Mountain Rose Herbs February 7, 2008

I’m excited! I just got a package in the mail from Mountain Rose Herbs.

My first non-Monsanto seeds! The seeds are from Horizon Herbs, which are certified non-GMO.

YAY!

This is the first time ever I have bought seeds that are certified non-GMO. Of course, this was not an issue ten years ago. But it is an issue now.

Here are the seeds I bought:

Stinging nettles (immune support, strengthens intestinal wall & heals leaky gut)
Astragalus (immune support)
Catnip (for Rita)
Calendula (pretty marigold flowers, and also good for the skin)
Chamomile (for tea and for my hair)
Dandelion (supports the kidney and liver)

In addition to the seeds, I also bought some bentonite clay (to wash my hair with), vegetable glycerine (to use in my homemade dishwashing liquid), and some essential oils — peppermint and lavender. I have to say, I’ve bought essential oils at Whole Foods before and they are okay — but these are so much better.

They really smell wonderful. I opened them to smell them, then put the caps back on. The air still smells like lavender and peppermint. Very pungent.

I’m going to use them in my various homemade cleaning products. And maybe in my personal care products as well. Seth said he wants me to get a diffuser so we can have the whole house smell like this. He said, “I’m very critical about smells but these are good ones — you got good ones.” I’m going to buy some more.

Oooh! I just noticed in their catalog. They have an electric diffuser for the essential oils. You can plug it into the electrical outlet. I bought one of these years ago. (I’m sure it is in one of my boxes in the garage but who knows how long it would take to find it.) Anyway, these things work amazingly well. It makes the whole house smell good. I’m going to buy another one.

I can also use it for the oils Nancy & Ed brought us back from Egypt. Yay!

PS: While I was opening the box from Mountain Rose Herbs, a commercial came on TV. Some Valentine’s thing about diamonds. Seth said, “Do you want some jewels like that?” I said, “No! I don’t care about that! I just want my potions!” (He calls all my various interests — kombucha, kefir, homemade laundry detergent — “potions”.)

Planning My Garden February 2, 2008

Okay, I really have to get busy and get my seeds started. I’m already behind! Most people are already getting their seeds in the mail.

I’m saving egg cartons and I’m going to set up some shelves in the garage with lighting. Then I’ll set up a timer and some soaker hoses. Not difficult.

I’ve been looking at the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Catalog all morning.

Here are all the things I want to grow (the asterisks are for seeds I already purchased from Mountain Rose Herbs).

HERBS
Nettles *
Chamomile *
Catnip *
Calendula *
Astragulus *
Dandelion *
Basil
Yarrow
Anise Hyssop (for tea)
Chives
Peppermint
Tarragon
Purslane
Lemongrass
Oregano

FLOWERS
Kiss-Me-Over-the-Garden-Gate
French Marigolds
Zinnias – Giants of California
Sunflower

VEGETABLES & FRUIT

Summer Crops
Rainbow Chard
Tomatoes - at least two varieties
Watermelon
Spinach
Onion
Garlic
Fennel
Spaghetti Squash
Butternut Squash
Carrot
Celeriac
Cress
Mesclun
Arugula
Red Wing Lettuce Mix
Tom Thumb Heirloom Lettuce
Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce
Blonde du Cazard French Butter Lettuce
Sunrise Hawaiian Solo Papaya

Winter Crops
Turnips or parsnips
Brussels sprouts
Cabbage
Kale
Ching Chang Bok Choy
Kohlrabi
Broccoli
Cover crops – flax, Thai peanut, sesame, buckwheat

FRUIT TREES
Meyer Lemon
Lime
Avocado
Banana
Blood Orange

Almost all of those I found in the Baker Creek catalogue. I know, it’s a lot. I may cull this list some. This is my starting list.

Problem is, I don’t know where to buy organic dwarf fruit trees. I see lots of dwarf fruit trees online but not organic.

Does anyone know?

I am so over Google. We really need a better search engine.

Insta-composting! January 25, 2008

There’s no need for a compost heap when you can just compost directly in your garden bed!

Here’s my easy composting method:

Just bury your kitchen scraps directly in the garden.

You don’t have to dig very deep. Just barely enough to cover the scraps with dirt.

Do not use any meat scraps or anything from animals — otherwise you will have pests in your yard.

If you have worms, they’ll go at this right away and it should break down completely within a matter of a few weeks. If you do not have worms in your soil, add some. You can buy them at any garden store.

I’m just adding new mini-compost holes in between in the plants in a line along the garden in my side yard. To keep track of your holes, just leave the shovel standing where you left off — then you will know where to make your next hole.

When your good rich compost is created, you can dig up a little and pat it around the roots of your plants.

A good book to read (one of my all-time favorites for organic gardening): Lasagna Gardening by Pat Lanza.

Her lasagna method is even easier because there is no digging. Just lay down some wet newspaper and do layers of scraps, peat moss, hay, what-have-you. You can plant directly into it. I’m going to do this in my vegetable bed.

PS: I’m till going to do a real compost heap because I have a lot of yard and grass clippings that I need to put somewhere other than the city yard scrap recycling bin.

Lasagna Composting and Seed Starting January 17, 2008

So I’ve been thinking a lot about my garden. One of the New Year’s resolutions I have for this year is to vastly increase my vegetable and herb gardens. I also want to grow a lot more flowers.

I was pondering buying some fancy composting equipment but now I’m thinking maybe I don’t need it after all.

In mid-December, I buried a bucketfull of kitchen scraps in my vegetable garden and last week I went out to see how it was decomposing and IT WAS GONE. There was no evidence of scraps whatsoever. So it only took about 3 weeks.

Those worms eat fast!

So I guess I don’t need any fancy equipment. I still want some… because I like toys. But I’ll use the money to buy a water filtration system and grain mill instead.

But for now, considering the amount of worms in my garden beds, I am going to start layering my kitchen scraps “lasagna” style as recommended in the book “Lasagna Gardening” by Patricia Lanza (one of the best gardening books EVER).

She recommends laying wet newspaper or cardboard directly on the bed. You can even lay it directly on sod or hard ground — if you want to start a new bed. No digging required. Then on top of that you lay kitchen scraps, and various other components both brown and green, add some peat moss and manure if you can — and on top of that soil. Then cover with tarps or plastic trash bags so it can bake (like lasagna!).

This will get my beds ready for spring planting and no need for any equipment.

And it’s a great way to use up all these Wall St. Journals we have lying around.

I suppose if you didn’t have as many worms as I do, you could simply add worms to your beds and you’d do fine. You can tell if you have worms by using the shovel to dig up a bit of soil. You should see them immediately.

By the way, I did this in the last garden I had and it was staggering how big my plants got. They were absolutely mammoth. Tomato plants taller than me (I’m 5′5), a lemon grass bush as big as a 5-year-old. And I used no fertilizer and no pesticides. Just the lasagna gardening method.

Next on my list is to figure out what I’m going to plant, where to plant it, and then to buy the seeds and set up a place to start them. I’m going to do various vegetables and herbs. Now that I have my dehydrator, I can even dry my herbs for herb tea. Or make fresh mint tea straight from the garden — there is nothing better than that!

I want to buy only non-Monsanto, non-GMO (genetically modified) seeds. Just about every seed purveyor out there sells Monsanto seeds, however I have found three mail-order sources for real heirloom seeds that have not been tampered with:

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

Fedco Seeds

Seed Savers

There’s really no place in our house to put seed trays. However, I just read that I can set up some basic metal shelving in the garage and start my seeds out there. You just have to add some lighting. I can probably get everything I need at the hardware store.

Gotta get back to work now. I’ll post more about this when I decide what to plant!

My New Toy January 5, 2008

Yay! I am really excited! I just ordered my Christmas gift:

A 9-Tray Excalibur Dehydrator!

They were having a sale. I got free shipping and a free 10-year warranty.

Now I will be able to dry all my soaked nuts, dry herbs from the garden, make beef and fish jerky, fruit leathers and dried fruit, even yogurt (from raw milk). I love snacking on dried peas (with a little palm oil and sea salt). And all the beef jerky at Whole Foods has sugar and soy sauce in it so now I can make it without.

I can’t wait until it arrives!

The Future of Food December 14, 2007

I just read my friend the latest post on my friend Louisa’s blog:

http://constantstateofflux.wordpress.com/2007/12/14/the-future-of-food-life-stuff-and-eveything-else/

After I read that, “coincidentally” (not), someone else on a newsgroup posted a link to this video about the history of genetically modified food:

This is just an intro; I want to buy the whole video.

The scary thing is that pretty much everything you buy in the grocery store is now manufactured by companies like Monsanto. Everything is sprayed with pesticides and most things are now genetically modified. Anything with soy oil or vegetable oil (which is mostly soy oil). Anything with industrial corn or soybeans. It’s hard to know what’s what because the way they label it, you can’t tell.

For example, did you know that when you buy a food product at the store and it lists “spices” as an ingredient, that can contain anything? It usually (almost always) contains MSG.

It’s disgusting that Monsanto is going out and suing small farmers for saving and reusing seeds. It’s disgusting that there are only FOUR varieties of potatoes grown today. It’s disgusting the way huge corporations have driven small farms out of business.

I’m not buying seeds from catalogs anymore. Why? Because it’s all seeds from Monsanto!

“Virtually every large mail-order garden company in the United States uses a seed broker to supply them with stock.”

“The American nursery trade is a 39.6 billion dollar a year industry. With the purchase of Seminis in January of 2005, Monsanto is now estimated to control between 85 and 90 percent of the U.S. nursery market. This includes the pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer markets. By merging with or buying up the competition, dominating genetic technology, and lobbying the government to make saving seeds illegal, this monolith has positioned itself as the largest player in the gardening game.”

“Monsanto holds over eleven thousand U.S. seed patents. When Americans buy garden seed and supplies, most of the time they are buying from Monsanto, regardless of who the retailer is.”

http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com/2006/02/garden-seed-monopoly.html

I’m going to step up what I’m doing to change the future of our food. I’m going to join a seed saver organization and start growing all my vegetables and herbs from seed.

http://www.seedsavers.org/membership.asp

Here’s another place to buy seeds:
http://www.rareseeds.com/

Of course everything I grow is organic. But I want truly organic non-Monsanto seeds in my garden. I’m going to rip out everything that’s in there — it all came from Home Depot. Which means it’s all from Monsanto. UGH! It makes me sick that even people who are growing their own food are still unknowingly buying seeds genetically modified by this evil corporation.

I don’t have a lot of land but I have some and we live in sunny southern California — I can grow food all year long.

This is my first New Year’s resolution! I’m excited to start planning my garden. It’s a small step to take, but if more of us do it, it will impact the planet.

Composting November 28, 2007

Quick post… baby's about to wake up from her morning nap.

I'm excited about getting back to composting. I've been reading about compost bins — just trying to decide which kind to get. We have a ton of leaves and garden cuttings. I will need to work with our gardener to make sure he puts everything in the compost.

In the meantime, I am going to order a small kitchen compost pail so I can stop throwing away all this good stuff! It's so ridiculous to throw away good decomposing matter and then go out and BUY fertilizer. What a waste.

I'm also looking into harvesting rainwater. I know we don't get a lot of rain in LA — but we do get a lot in the winter months. You can actually set up a rainwater harvesting system that purifies the water and makes it good enough to drink. I may not be able to do it in this house — it may have to wait until we move to our next house. Along with my cow and chicken coop and my solar panels.

Busy day already November 27, 2007

So much to do… today Kate and I are going to Whole Foods and Rawesome. If there's time (I doubt it but maybe) we will stop off at the YMCA. I want to find out about their swimming classes for babies.

I also need to harvest my basil and freeze a bunch of pesto. Not sure if that will happen today… maybe tomorrow or the next day. I have a thousand other things to do today.

Speaking of harvesting the basil, I really want to do more gardening. This site http://www.homegrownrevolution.org/ has inspired me. I guess I have been sort of busy this past year, what with moving and having a baby and all.

Anyhow, I did manage to grow some edible things this year:

Basil
Tomatoes
Sage
Rosemary
Thyme
Parsley
Flat-leaf parsley

Everything in my garden is doing GREAT. I can grow herbs outside all year long. And I cook with herbs all the time. There is simply no reason to buy them in the store when I can grow them myself.

I want to grow some more herbs:

Dill
Oregano
Cilantro
Mint

I also want to get a Meyer lemon tree. Not sure where we would put it but perhaps I could just keep it in a pot. I bet I could also keep an avocado tree. And a lime tree. Those are fruits we use all the time but they don't come in my CSA box.

I'd also like to grow:

Potatoes
Fennel
Radicchio
Carrots
Celery
Onions
Arugula
Cabbage
Cucumbers (for pickles)
Grapes (I want the grape leaves for my pickles)

All things we either don't get in our box, or, in the case of carrots, we get very few. And I use carrots, celery and onions constantly. I love fresh carrot juice. I've been using Seth's juicer lately to make carrot juice, beet juice, and apple juice. It's so good.

I still have tons of room in the side yard to plant more stuff.

I'd also love to plant some beautiful springtime tulips and other bulbs in the front yard.

I think I shall order some seeds and bulbs.

I need to buy or make a compost bin of some sort. It is such a shame to throw all those good banana peels and eggshells in the garbage. And it will make my soil so much better.

Must go shower and dress now and get Seth's breakfast.