Home Fire #8 - Grow Your Own, Vegetables That Is

Home Fire

Grow Your Own, Vegetables That Is

Watermelon on the Fourth of July; pumpkins on Halloween; chocolate on Christmas and Easter—like so many of my generation, as I grew up this was the extent of my knowledge about the relationship between food and seasons. If you wanted strawberries, you went to the store and bought them, regardless of time of year. Fresh fruits and vegetables were different from Twinkies and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese only because they were less fun and became stinky and slimy when they went bad in the drawers at the bottom of the fridge.

After a few years as an undergrad, I started to realize my complete ecological illiteracy. In graduate school we heard a lot about human-caused global changes in the biosphere. We learned about global warming, native people becoming radioactive, disappearing wildlife, and overpopulation. But I must have missed the discussions about food.

I’ve since come to realize that food is central to every pertinent discussion: sustainability, social justice, national security, and, oh yeah, individual health. Every day, several times a day, we ingest (incorporate) substances that, at a closer or further remove, come from seed, dirt, and water. If that seed has been modified, that dirt contains industrial solvents or petrochemicals, or that water has suspicious levels of lead or mercury or what have you, that is what we’re made of. That is what our children take into themselves.

Facts about Children, Food, and Chemical Exposure courtesy of our government *

Standard agricultural chemicals are up to ten times more toxic to children than to adults. This is due to the fact that children take in more toxic chemicals relative to body weight and have developing organ systems that are less able to detoxify those chemicals.

Children receive 50% of their lifetime cancer risks in the first two years of life.

Half of conventionally grown produce sold in grocery stores contains measurable pesticide residues.

Laboratory tests of eight industry-leading baby foods reveal the presence of 16 pesticides, including three carcinogens.

In blood samples of children aged 2 to 4, concentrations of pesticide residues are six times higher in children eating conventionally farmed fruits and vegetables compared with those eating organic food.

Organophosphate pesticides, which account for half of the insecticides used in the U.S., are found in the blood of 95% of Americans tested. Exposure to organophosphate pesticides is linked to hyperactivity, behavior disorders, learning disabilities, developmental delays, and motor dysfunctions.

Over 400 chemicals can be regularly used and combined in conventional farming to kill weeds and insects. None of these chemicals are present in organic foods.

Over 300 synthetic food additives are allowed by the FDA in conventional foods. None of these are allowed in organic foods.

Inheritance

When we moved into this house, I doubted I would make use of the 30’ x 4’ raised garden, especially at first, pregnant as I was. Who has the time or energy to garden with a newborn? And anyway, I’d never grown a plant in my life. I’d just barely managed to keep a few houseplants alive, and that was due more to their hardiness than to my attentiveness. So, we thought we might tear out the garden and use the space to put up some kind of enclosure where Rich could build his dream car.

The following spring nothing had been done. On the day it occurred to me that we might be able to rent out the garden—surely someone in a small apartment was itching to work that dirt—my parents announced their intention to build a garden in their yard. (Around here the native soil most places is caliche, which is impermeable. Any viable garden is raised.) It was quickly decided that they would use my garden. And, after the initial planting, it was just as quickly revealed that I was on my own with it, as they were called hither and yon for most of that spring and summer.

There it was. The universe had handed me a planted vegetable garden. All I had to do was water, weed, and figure out what to do with all that zucchini.

When I go into my garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.

Emerson

New Life

That first summer was nothing short of miraculous to me. Food sprang from dirt. How bizarre! There it was, big as life—Life.

Since that first year, I have set out to do a few new things with the garden. First, I want it as “organic” as I can get it. In gardening, that means growing food as naturally as possible, without using synthetic chemicals. Turns out, the more you follow organic precepts, the easier it is to garden. The most important part of an organic garden is the soil. Healthy soil creates healthy plants that can fend off weeds, parasites, and unwelcome bugs all by themselves. The need for pesticides and fertilizers is astonishingly reduced. Two key elements to healthy soil: add organic matter (we use compost) and don’t mess with it—don’t dig it up or till it. Rake the compost into the top and plant.

Unfortunately, large-scale organic producers, such as Earthbound and Greenway’s, are unable to leave their soil alone like this. Because of the shear vastness of their enterprises, hand-picking weeds is untenable. They have to till the ground much more often than an old school organic farmer would recommend; tilling disturbs (some say pulverizes) the soil near the plants, compacts the soil between them, and uses fossil fuels for every pass. Industrial organic is still better by leaps and bounds for the land and the consumer than “conventional” production; just another reason why small is beautiful.

Another goal of mine is to have a year-round garden. This has meant learning not only which vegetables are best suited to our climate, but also when to plant, how to rotate different types of plants, and how much to water during different times of the year.

I am also continually experimenting with the garden, trying new plants, new foods, native species, and using flowers to attract beneficial insects and repel harmful ones. (Actually, Rich is the one researching and growing the flowers. What a man!) I want to use the garden to discover the bare necessities of growing food in our arid climate and to further reduce our consumption of fossil fuels by relying less on food grown between tractor tire prints; sprayed with petrochemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides; harvested by machine; flash frozen; bagged; and transported cross-country or even internationally. At first I worried about using so much water here in the desert, but our underground soaker hose uses a fraction of what’s used in the conventional process. And, once we install a rainwater harvesting system, it will take care of all our outside watering needs.

Gardening has become a manifestation of my environmental ethics; of my desire to live a lighter life; a way to simplify, to become rooted, to take part in the miracle.

Work is love made visible.

Khalil Gibran

Growing Up Green

Ben, at age three, doesn’t eat much that comes from the garden right now. In fact, cantaloupe is about it. And he’ll eat the pumpkin seeds when we carve our homegrown jack-o-lantern. It’s more important to me that he sees food grow than that he eat peppers and squash. He knows about seeds and bees and the time it takes for a plant to produce. He plays “gardening” when he gets a hold of a hose or a rake. He knows that food scraps go in the compost bin and become dirt again. In fact, the compost bin is probably his favorite thing about the garden because of the sonoran gopher snake who lives there. We don’t see him much but we know he’s there, protecting our future gardens’ nutrients from rodents.

Ben will understand seasons. He will know why we have watermelon on the Fourth of July and pumpkins on Halloween. And hopefully he will grow up enjoying the simple pleasure of eating food he planted and grew himself.

Home Fire

Resources

Kimbrell, Andrew Ed. Fatal Harvest: the Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture.
Washington D.C., Island Press, 2002.

Lappé, Frances Moore and Anna Lappé. Hope’s Edge: the Next Diet for a Small Planet.
New York; Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2002.

Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.
New York; Peguin, 2006.
See also Michael Pollan’s New York Times article, “Behind the Organic-Industrial Complex”
http://www.mindfully.org/Food/Organic-Industrial-Complex.htm

Sandbeck, Ellen. Eat More Dirt: Diverting and Instructive Tips for Growing and Tending an Organic Garden.
New York; Broadway Books, 2003.

* adapted from U.S. Government Facts: Children’s Chemical & Pesticide Exposure via Food Products
http://www.organicconsumers.org/organic/wic-faq.pdf

Amy Vaughn