Greening my House

Why Have Your Own Garden?

There are many advantages to having your own garden:

• Things taste better. Vine ripened tomatoes for example are a world of difference compared to store-bought tomatoes. The reason is that they pick the store bought ones while still green so that they are firm and can handle the rigours of transportation to your local supermarket and then to your home. They make these green tomatoes look red by exposing them to ethylene gas for a while. Yes, ethylene gas is naturally produced by various fruits, but still the tomato is firm, mealy, and has disappointing flavour compared to the sweet, flavourful ones you can get fresh off your own vines. Of all the things you can grow in your garden, tomatoes are the thing that makes the most sense to grow for the flavour alone.
• Healthier (possibly) because you can grow them organically. Of course, this means you will need to do a number of extra things to stay green, like practicing crop rotation and soil solarization, using mulches, soil covers, nitrogen fixing bacteria, and organic fertilizer, and also using natural pest killers like ladybugs and other beneficial insects. It’s a lot of work, but the benefits are potentially huge. Officially, the jury is still out on the long term health effects of eating organic food over non-organic. But, I can’t see how it would be a bad thing, especially considering how well documented it is that farm workers exposed to pesticides have various problems as a result.
• It can be cheaper. Red bell peppers and various hot peppers are $4.00 a pound where I live, but I can grow them for less than that. You have to factor in the cost of the fertilizer, soil amendments, and water you use to grow them, but overall, it is still cheaper. My green bean plants for example produce so many beans for so cheap that I have to give some away or they will be wasted! Some type of veggies are not cheaper than in the store, though, because the farm can produce them in such mass quantities that you just can’t compete.
• Convenient. When I need some herbs such as parsley or thyme, I just go outside with some kitchen shears and cut some. My herbs are never wilted because they are always harvested moments before they are used. It doesn’t get any fresher than that!
• Gives you a place to put your compost. In a previous posting, I talked about composting kitty litter. I’m still not doing that for the litter yet, but soon I will be composting the kitchen wastes and some garden wastes so that I can use it as fertilizer in my garden next year. Otherwise, where would all this nice, fertile compost go?
• There are also a few intangible benefits. First off, there is tremendous satisfaction in seeing your garden reach maturity and eating from it. (Thanks to Jeff for reminding me of that!). Also, whenever we have people over for dinner and tell them they are eating food from our own garden, they are usually very impressed. Well, most of them are impressed. Some of them call us Mrs. and Mrs. Martha Stewart. Haha.
• If you have kids, it is a great way to teach them where our food comes from and how the cycles of nature work. Part of the reason that I plant my garden now is that my parents always had a garden growing up, and I remember the fresh, sweet strawberries and tart red and black currants from the bushes. Back then I didn’t care for the veggies too much, but I’ve grown up now and do eat my broccoli.
• Finally, the reason that I wrote this posting: they help cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. Why? Well, on average food travels 1500 miles before it gets to your dinner plate. That means someone drove it, flew it, or sailed it that distance most likely using fossil fuels. That means the food on your plate represents a part of your carbon footprint and you haven’t even eaten it yet! This is a good segue to my next topic, eating locally to help reduce your carbon footprint.

Eating Locally

Back in 2005, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon from Vancouver, British Columbia, decided to do a little experiment that they called the 100 Mile Diet. They noticed that the average American meal shipped from the average 1500 miles away uses up to 17 times more petroleum products, and increases carbon dioxide emissions by the same amount, compared to an entirely local meal. (Yes, they’re in Canada, but the average Canadian meal is similar to the average American one.) They decided that for one whole year they would attempt to eat only food that was grown within 100 miles of where they live, and then blog about it as they went along. Well, they survived the experiment, but of course sorely missed some things, especially things like fruit during the winter.

But, they learned some things too. First, it is possible to survive like that and eat well. You can find substitutes like honey instead of sugar. Second, they found you can reduce your carbon footprint if you eat more local, fresh foods.

Now this experiment was pretty radical of course, but if we all attempt to eat more locally where possible, we can at least reduce our carbon footprint. Given a choice at the supermarket, what I have been trying to do is choose foods produced locally in California instead of from other states. Of course, lots of things are grown here in California, so I don’t really have to give up much. However, we still buy bananas, coffee, and chocolate of course (who can live without chocolate?!?), even though they are not grown locally. In fact, you can’t grow them locally because of the environmental conditions, so we’re stuck there. But, when given the choice between local California soy beans and ones grown in Texas or Ohio, I’ll choose the local ones.

The ultimate local food, of course, comes from our own garden. Very little fossil fuel is used to grow it, and pretty much none is used to transport it. There is still a little carbon footprint because the water we use for irrigation is being pumped using electricity generated from fossil fuels, and we had to drive to the nursery to buy the seeds and soil and planting pots, etc. But, this is much smaller footprint than if the food came from 1500 miles away.

What I’m Planting

This year, I’m planting a little bit of a lot of different things:

• tomatoes of course. 3 different types: big boys, romas, and heirlooms
• grapes – maybe I can make a little wine out of my new Zinfandel vines?
• green beans – we even have a few volunteers from last year’s beans
• carrots
• onions. 3 different types: white, red, and spring
• garlic
• potato
• radish
• cumin
• basil. 2 types: italian and thai
• cilantro – hmm, can you say “fresh salsa” ?
• lemon. Just planted a new dwarf Meyer lemon tree.
• lime. Also a dwarf tree.

Also left over and still growing strong from last year:

• strawberries
• oregano
• thyme
• parsley
• rosemary
• mint
• peppers: 4 different types: serrano, jalapeno, bell, and poblanos. (Again, fresh salsa, hmm hmm!)
• quince. We found out after we bought the house that we have a medium sized quince tree in the back yard!
• white pomegranate. Same thing here. I didn’t know they were pomegranates until the first fall when the fruits fell off the bush and started to rot and crack open. Then, I recognized them!

Many of these herbs are pretty weedy. The oregano is threatening to take over for example. I have to cut it back severely every year. The strawberries are going nuts too, which is great. I love strawberries.

More Pictures

There are lots more pictures of the garden as it is now on my flickr account. I’ll post more later when things really start to grow.