The Dirty Dozen

Posted on July 1, 2011 by CarolM

The Dirty Dozen.

Yes, it’s a ’67 American war film but it’s also the name of a list of 12 fresh fruits and produce that should be purchased organically whenever humanly possible. Why should you fork out your hard earned money for organic? Because doing so can lower the volume of pesticides you consume daily by 92 percent!

The Environmental Working Group (EWG), a non-profit organization that consists of scientists, engineers, policy experts, lawyers and computer programmers, pour over government data, legal documents, and scientific studies to do their own laboratory tests to expose threats to your health and environment.

The EWG has their 2011 list ready. This year the apple tops the charts with a whopping 98 percent of apples testing positive for pesticides and 92 percent containing two or more pesticides. Here’s the kicker: Nearly all the studies on which the guide is based tested produce after it had been rinsed or peeled.

Look, I’m not saying everything you have to buy must be organic. I’m really not the tree-hugging type and I’ve got a grocery budget, too. What I am saying is that you should do what you can to buy these 12 food items organically. There’s a Clean 15 list, too, which boasts the lowest in pesticides. This list gives you the power to choose which of the organic foods to buy.

Discover which foods have been hiding this dirty little secret: http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary/

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Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Brian Gallimore

EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce (click link for full article)

Eating fresh food is very valuable, but what if that food is contaminated with a bunch of pesticides that you really do not want to ingest?

Use EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides to reduce your exposures as much as possible, but eating conventionally-grown produce is far better than not eating fruits and vegetables at all. The Shopper’s Guide to Pesticide in Produce will help you determine which fruits and vegetables have the most pesticide residues and are the most important to buy organic. You can lower your pesticide intake substantially by avoiding the 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables and eating the least contaminated produce.

Commodity crop corn used for animal feed and biofuels is almost all produced with genetically modified (GMO) seeds, as is some sweet corn sold for human consumption. Since GMO sweet corn is not labeled as such in US stores, EWG advises those who have concerns about GMOs to buy organic sweet corn.

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Fall Planting for DFW / North Texas Area

Posted on June 25, 2011 by Brian Gallimore

When the temperature each day is getting up above 100°F and staying above 80°F each night, it doesn’t seem very instinctual to plan for a bunch of new plant life in your vegetable garden — but that is what people in the know do.  It is one of the secrets of vegetable gardening in the north Texas area.  We can get 2 crops in and the fall crop typically works out better than the spring crop.  (so I’m told)  The trick is to get them in the ground at the right time so that when that brief period of cooler weather finally hits, your plants will already be to maturity and will start setting fruit.

Right now (end of June to early July) we can:

  • place tomato, pepper, and eggplant seedlings in the ground.
  • start broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage from seed indoors
  • seed watermelon and cantaloupe outdoors

Before long (first of August) will be time to start placing the cool weather crops out for the fall.  Most of those crops will grow all winter long, unless we have a super cold period like we did this past year.

More detailed information about when to plant can be found in the DFW/North Texas Planting Calendar thread on the North Texas Vegetable Gardener Forum.

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Growing vegetables – How to start

Posted on June 21, 2011 by BeepP

Growing vegetables can be fun as well as saving you a lot of money in the long run. And it’s a great way to spend time with children or just to have a place to get away from it all and spend time outdoors in the sun. However, one thing for sure is growing vegetables isn’t as hard as you may think.

In no time at all, you can enjoy a beautiful vegetable garden full of the fruits of your labor.

First things first: you need an area of ground to plant vegetables. My preferred way is planting vegetables in raised beds. You can buy raised beds in packages and then assemble them. Or you can make them yourself. We made ours from planks of wood which we bought from the local timber yard.

Second: you have to prepare the area you’re going to plant. You do this by digging the area or if you have a raised bed you need to fill it with soil. Anywhere from half full upwards. That should be enough.

Third: Now comes the fun bit. What are you going to sow? The majority of vegetables grown in a garden are started of as seeds. But you can also plant young plants that you buy in the local nursery or supermarket. Planting seeds is lee expensive but you have to wait a few weeks to see some activity. Putting in plants … and hey presto… you have an instant garden.

Depending on the size of your garden you need to choose what you want to grow.

Salad crops are very popular because they’re so easy to grow. You can grow different varieties and also sow salad bowl – this allows you just to pick the leaves.

Other popular and easy to grow vegetables are: radishes, carrots, onions and leeks. But the most essential thing is to grow vegetables that you like to eat.

If you are cramped for space you can also grow vegetables in pots and containers. Plants such as potatoes, tomatoes, chillies or peppers can thrive in these containers.

The most important thing is that your vegetable gardening is a fun and relaxing hobby for you. Oh and of course… you get some tasty vegetables from doing it.

Discover more about gardening and growing vegetables at vegetable gardening – for all types of gardeners.

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DFW Aquaponics Group

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Brian Gallimore

Creating a closed-loop system of growing fish and growing plants without soil is aquaponics.  It utilizes the plants as a filter for fish waste, or maybe is uses fish waste as plant food, but however you say it, these systems are pretty exciting and fun to experiment with.  Adam Cohen is mentoring folks interesting in learning how to build there own systems.  Once a month, the group meets up to build a complete system in a day.  It is a hands-on classroom.  Here are a few pictures from the meetup this past weekend.  If you are interested in learning more, check out the DFW Aquaponics Meetup.com group.

I made a small starter system myself, and I’m fascinated with it.  You can read more about my aquaponics system my clicking the hyperlink.  Eventually, I change out my goldfish for a more edible fish like catfish or talipia.

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Brian is a backyard vegetable gardener, aquaponics experimenter and permaculture designer.

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