Food is Free

Herbs

There are many herbs that are able to thrive indoors in a household that lacks green space. The article below lists many tips for starters on attempting to grow your own herbs. The article mainly gives tips on lighting, soil, humidity, potting and harvesting. The blog very like our own is a great source for common herbs along with the second link that is a University of Illinois list of common herbs.

 

http://theherbgardener.blogspot.ca/2008/06/tips-for-growing-herbs-indoors.html

http://urbanext.illinois.edu/herbs/list.cfm

Facts about Gardening

1) During the 1600s, tulips were so valuable in Holland that their bulbs were worth more than gold. The craze was called tulip mania, or tulipomania, and caused the crash of the Dutch economy. Tulips can continue to grow as much as an inch per day after being cut.

2) A sunflower looks like one large flower, but each head is composed of hundreds of tiny flowers called florets, which ripen to become the seeds. This is the case for all plants in the sunflower family, including daisies, yarrow, goldenrod, and many others.

3) The first potatoes were cultivated in Peru about 7,000 years ago.

4) Compost can be made in a number of ways, from simply piling up old plant material, to using complicated plastic bins.

5) Plants have many ways of spreading or dispersing their seeds.

• Gravity - heavy seeds will just fall off the plant.
• Wind - very fine seeds will blow away on the wind. Some seeds have special parachutes or wings to help them fly, for example, dandelions.
• Hooks - the seeds are covered with hooks which catch on to a passing animals' fur; they then catch a free ride to another place where they are rubbed off later.
• Animals - the seeds look like tasty treats for the animals to eat, but they pass undigested through the animal. Animals, including birds and insects, sometimes bury the seeds.
• Floating - some seeds grow with air trapped in them, so they can float away from the parent plant.

7 Edible Flowers

1. Nasturtium

They’re easy to grow and the flowers’ vivid reds, yellows, oranges and maroons are a bold contrast to salad greens. The petals have a strong, peppery flavour, so use sparingly.

2. Dandelion

 

The roots, leaves and buds have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries. The leaves are a good source of vitamins A, C and K, calcium and potassium; and the flowers are a natural source of luteolin, an important flavonoid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Borage

A delicate cucumberlike taste makes this pretty star-shaped flower an obvious choice for salads. Sometimes used in alternative medicine as an anti-inflammatory, it is one of nature’s few blue-coloured edibles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Viola

These dainty flowers can be used to decorate salads, but don’t be afraid to eat the odd one or two. The flowers, leaves and roots of viola species are rich in vitamins A and C and also contain the antioxidant anthocyanin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Roses

Generally, the flowers of the older varieties, such as rugosa roses, have the most flavour—a distinctive perfumed taste. Pick off the petals and remove the bitter whitish base before adding to salads or jelly.

 

 

 

 

6. Basil

This kitchen herb produces tiny white flowers that you’ll need to snip immediately to stop the plant from setting seed. But don’t toss the blossoms—they can be added to salads.



 

7. Bee balm

The odd-shaped white, pink, red or purple flowers add colour and interest to dishes. Their citrusy, minty flavour makes them nice salad garnishes.

5 Steps to Starting a Vegetable Garden

1. Sowing the Seeds

Mark your row with stakes at each end, and stretch a garden line between them. Make furrows, known as drills, barely 1 centimeter deep for small seeds, perhaps 2 centimeters deep for the larger ones. Scatter small seeds evenly and close together.

Larger seeds can be planted about 3 centimeters apart. Especially where soil tends to crust over, cover small seeds with a thin layer of potting mix, compost, or of soil mixed with sand or fine peat moss. Tamp down over the seeds and water gently. Mark the row with a plant label on which you have written — in indelible ink — the name of the vegetable, the variety, and the planting date.

Seeds must have continuously moist soil around them until they sprout. Check for moisture every day, and if the soil seems too dry, water it lightly. Do not overwater: soggy soil can cause the larger seeds to rot — the soil should be damp, but never waterlogged.

2. Thinning

For beginning gardeners especially, thinning can be a painful process. It seems wasteful to destroy perfectly good seedlings. But it must be done. If unthinned, radishes will not form bulbs. Carrots will not grow or will twist grotesquely. Lettuce will form puny heads.

You should begin thinning when the seedlings are 3–5 centimeters high. Do not try to thin out seedlings all at once. A thick row of leaf lettuce can be thinned at first by removing every other plant. You can remove more plants in later thinnings, when the lettuce will be large enough to eat. When thinning a thickly seeded row, pull each plant out carefully, lifting straight up, to avoid disturbing the roots of neighboring plants.

3. Weeding

Weeds compete with vegetables for whatever moisture and nutrients are available and will grow rampant in rich, well-cultivated soil. And if you allow weeds to grow undisturbed at the beginning, when you pull them up later, you may injure the roots of plants you want to keep.

Work out a weeding program, a once- or twice-weekly trip between your garden rows with a hoe. When weeds are small, you can simply scrape them away. But if you dig your hoe more than 1 or 2 centimeters into the ground, you run the risk of cutting into vegetable roots. Large weeds and those growing within the rows have to be pulled out by hand. Weed pulling is easier if the soil is moist; try to weed after a rainstorm, or schedule weedings for the day after waterings.

4. Watering

Plants need between 3 and 4 centimeters of water each week. During hot, rainless weather, or whenever the garden soil becomes powdery and dry, you will have to water your garden. Watering is particularly important for young plants with shallow roots. As plants grow larger, their roots thrust deeper into the soil, where moisture remains even when the surface soil is dry. Thorough, deep waterings are far more effective than brief, shallow ones.

A garden hose is a basic watering implement. Use an oscillating or rotary sprinkler for efficient use of water. Keep the droplet size as large as possible to reduce evaporation. Soaker hoses (perforated plastic tubes) laid with their holes down are an efficient way to water. The water soaks into the soil in a fan shape, soaking the root zone. Whatever you use, schedule your waterings for the morning or early afternoon, so that leaves can dry off before nightfall. Wet leaves are more susceptible to fungal diseases.

5. Mulching

A mulch is a soil cover composed, usually, of organic materials, such as leaves, hay, or grass clippings. Gardeners who use mulch do not have as much weeding to do and find that a layer of mulch around their plants helps to conserve moisture in the soil. It may also help to prevent the spread of various soil-borne diseases.

Some good mulching materials include hay, especially "spoiled hay," which has already begun to decompose; grass clippings after they have begun to dry and turn gray; shredded or composted leaves; well-rotted manure mixed with straw; peat moss mixed with sawdust or wood chips (peat moss alone will pack down and dry, and water will not penetrate it).

When seedlings are about 10 centimeters high, spread a thick layer of mulching material among the plants and between the rows. As summer progresses and the mulch breaks down, add more. If you keep a perpetual cover of mulch on your garden, the soil will take longer to warm up and dry in spring than will unmulched soil. For early planting, therefore, push aside the mulch where you intend to make seed furrows, and wait for the ground to warm up and dry.

Lawn Obsessions

Lawn Obsession in America

 

 

People trace America's obsession with the lawn back to the rise of suburbia in the 1950s and the image of the cookie cutter house with a white picket fence as the ideal home. The verdancy and trimness of one's lawn was (and is still) a sense of pride in American culture. It is a reflection on the state of one's home - after all, if the lawn isn't manicured then what else could be falling asunder inside the home? How far are we Canadians from this ideal? How far do we go to put the outer appearance first? We are monocroping ourselves into a state of unparalleled ignorance. Using pesticides and herbicides to rid our perfect little lawns of all of the creatures that allow our Mother Earth to thrive. A few pests versus extinction, it is time to choose. The more we monocrop the more likely we are to loosing it all. We have seen in the past how easily entire crops can be wiped out, now imagine what would happen if we were all hoping and praying on a sole crop of corn, of potatoes, of wheat to keep us alive.


America grows more lawn than food. Here are some statistics on just how much space is used for cultivating this purely ornamental herb.

• 80% of all households in the US have privately-owned lawns (Templeton).
• North Americans currently devote 40,000 square miles to lawns, which is more than the amount of land used for wheat or corn (Fulford).
• The average size of a lawn in the United States is one-fifth of an acre (Vinlove and Torla) to one-third of an acre (Templeton).
• Space devoted to turfgrass is growing at 600 square miles a year (Kolbert).

Tips and Tricks

Pick the Right Spot

The key to success is to make sure you have the right spot. Most vegetables do best with full sun -- at least eight hours of direct light a day. No matter what kind of soil you have, your vegetables will thank you if you amend the ground with organic matter (such as compost) before planting.

Here's a tip: Site your garden where you can get to it easily. Harvesting fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs is easier if you can quickly dash out and grab what you need (especially while you're cooking) instead of having to trek across the yard.

 

 

 

Grow Up with Raised Beds

Raised beds offer many benefits. You can fill them with any type of soil you want (an advantage if your ground is full of clay, sand, or rocks). Raised beds also warm earlier in the spring so you can get a jump on the planting season. And, if you build them 3 to 4 feet wide -- so you can easily reach the middle from both sides -- you'll never compact the soil by stepping on it.

 

 

 

 

 

Words of Welcome

Hello and welcome to the Grow Food Not Lawns Fredericton start up group. We are in the process of starting a chapter here in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. We are a group of 11 university students tasked with creating the foundations for the Grow Food Not Lawns movement here in our city. We are glad to see some people interested in our cause and hope that this blog filled with ideas, helpful tips, and videos will inspire you to transform your patch of lawn into a beautiful garden. Don't have any green space on your property? Living in an apartment? No worries, we've got tips and ideas for you folks too. Welcome to the age of sustainable food ideas. We hope you visit our blog often as we will be posting at least one article, video or report everyday until the end of April. We are hoping that our efforts continue to inspire even after we have left Fredericton for the summer months, returning to our hometowns and spreading the news. Follow us as we travel through our journey and if you have any questions or suggestions feel free to email us. Have a wonderful green day.

How to Turn your Lawn into a Food Garden

Food Not Lawns The Beginnings

Food Not Lawns was founded in Eugene, Oregon in 1999 by a small group of activists who had been cooking Food Not Bombs (free meals in the park) for several years and decided to start gardening too.

People's Food Policy

Resetting the Table: A People's Food Policy For Canada

"Canada urgently needs a national food policy. Close to two and a half million Canadians are food insecure. Farmers and fishers are going out of business, our natural environment is being pushed to the limit, a quarter of Canadians are considered obese, and we are the only G8 country without a nationally-funded school meal program. The status quo is no longer an option. The need for change is widely recognized and plans to develop national food policies are being advanced by many sectors, including the majority of federal political parties and influential industry groups."

 

Seven Pillars of Canadian Food

Sovereignty

1. Focuses on Food for People

2. Values Food Providers

3. Localizes Food Systems

4. Puts Control Locally

5. Builds Knowledge and Skills

6. Works with Nature

7. Recognizes that Food is Sacred

 

 

Wooden Crate Planter | Garden | Library | ReUse Ideas | The ReBuilding Center

Wooden Crate Planter | Garden | Library | ReUse Ideas | The ReBuilding Center

Seed Starting Made Simple

Starting seeds indoors is a sure cure for the restlessness that plagues gardeners in the off season. Just follow these basics steps to prevent mistakes, such as damping off or using the wrong seed starting mix, and watch your seedlings — and your savings — grow.
You’ll love the benefits of growing your own transplants. You can grow unique heirloom selections as well as the best varieties for your garden’s conditions — which will boost your yields and reduce losses to pests, disease and severe weather.
The potential money savings aren’t small potatoes, either. Consider the cost of filling a single 4-by-12-foot bed with purchased transplants — typically selling for $4 to $5 each — versus paying $2 to $3 for a packet of at least 50 seeds. If you grow a big garden, the savings can quickly grow to hundreds of dollars. Indoor seed starting is easy, and the small initial investment in equipment will pay off quickly. Learn how to start seeds indoors with these 11 steps.

1. Sow What? Starting seeds indoors gives you a jump on the growing season, allowing you to harvest heat-loving crops such as tomatoes, peppers and melons earlier and over a longer period of time. (If you have a short growing season, it’s the only way to get mature produce from these crops.) Some cool-weather crops, such as broccoli, also benefit from an indoor start so they have time to mature outdoors in spring or fall, before midsummer heat or winter freezes set in.
Not every crop is a good candidate for indoor seed starting. Beans, peas and root crops should be sown directly in the garden because they don’t transplant well.

2. Seed Matters. Start with high-quality seeds and varieties suited to your region’s conditions. Buy from reputable suppliers who do their own germination tests and, preferably, their own variety trials, advises Steve Solomon, founder of Territorial Seed Co. in Cottage Grove, Ore., and author of Gardening When It Counts. Quality seeds sprout faster and at a higher rate, they grow into stronger seedlings, and they produce more, he says.
Try getting seeds well-adapted to your region from local seed swaps, or you can buy from regional suppliers. Companies that do their own germination tests and field trials usually say so in their catalogs. Most seed companies offer a free catalog, or you can order seeds from their websites. For background on nearly 100 mail-order seed companies, go to our Directory of Companies Offering Mail-Order Seeds and Plants. To search for varieties among a stock of more than 500 seed companies, use our Seed and Plant Finder.


3. Timing Matters. Most beginning seed-starters jump the gun, says Rob Johnston, founder and chairman of Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine. Transplants held indoors too long can become root-bound and weak — a setback that makes plants more susceptible to problems outdoors. However, starting seeds too late can mean you miss the optimum growing window. To find out when to start seeds of specific crops in your area, check out our What to Plant Now pages and click on your region.

4. Cells, Flats or Blocks? You need 2- to 3-inch-deep containers with drainage holes to hold your seed-starting mix. If you have plastic six- or eight-packs from nursery transplants, use them. Many people use recycled yogurt cups, or you can buy a simple seed-starting tray with cell pack inserts. Some come with a plastic dome that will help preserve moisture (more about that in a minute), but covering trays with a sheet of plastic wrap will also work. Some gardeners sow their seeds in furrows in a single flat, but sowing in individual cells saves time and reduces the risk of disturbing roots at transplant time. Smaller cell inserts called “plugs” are useful for bigger transplants — such as tomatoes — that you plan to pot up indoors. Soil blocks, made by squeezing prepared starting medium out of a tool called a “soil blocker,” are another option. Soil blocks use no containers at all — each block serves as its own seedling container.

5. The Planting Mix. It’s important to use a loose, well-drained mix for indoor seed starting. Commercial peat-based mixes are widely available in garden centers and hardware stores, but peat moss is virtually nonrenewable because of its extremely slow growth rate and because harvesting it destroys the wildlife habitat provided by the peat bogs. You may be able to find seed-starting mixes that contain coir instead of peat.
“Coir, a byproduct of the coconut industry, is a better alternative,” says Solomon, whose homemade seed-starting mix consists of one-third coir, one-third compost and one-third good garden soil. “Coir provides the same porous texture as peat moss and is easier to keep wet,” he says. To supply nutrients for the seedlings, the mix should include quality, screened compost and an organic fertilizer blend, suggests Eliot Coleman in his book Four-Season Harvest. The compost supplies trace nutrients and helps prevent disease.

6. Feed and Water Wisely. Several hours before you fill your containers with seed-starting mix, put the mix in a bucket and stir in enough water to moisten it uniformly. (This is much easier than watering the mix after you sow, and it prevents you from dislodging newly sown seeds.) Fill your containers with the pre-moistened mix, then plant two or three seeds per cell at the depth recommended on the seed packet. Cover the containers with plastic wrap or a plastic dome if you have one — the plastic will hold just enough moisture to encourage germination. Remove the plastic as soon as sprouts emerge. Water seedlings gently when the soil feels dry to the touch, either with a mister or by filling the tray below the cells with water. If your starting mix didn’t contain an organic fertilizer blend, feed seedlings a diluted, liquid organic fertilizer (such as fish emulsion) when they form their first true leaves.
     
7. Prevent Damping Off. Too much moisture and humidity can encourage damping off, a fungal disease. Prevent this problem by adding a half-inch layer of light-colored sphagnum moss to the top of your seed-starting mix. Research from the University of California at Davis shows that sphagnum moss absorbs 20 times its weight in water while offering excellent aeration for seedlings. The moss also contains bacteria known to inhibit certain plant diseases and fungi that attack young seedlings. The researchers estimated that using sphagnum moss could prevent 80 to 90 percent of damping off problems.

8. Warm Up to Heat Mats. Ideal germination temperature for most vegetable seeds is between 70 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit — a range most homes can’t provide steadily in winter. Encourage fast sprouting by providing warmth from below your seedling flats, which is easiest to do with an electric germination mat (about $40). You could also simply set the container on or near another source of heat, such as a shelf placed above a radiator (not on the radiator itself!), near a furnace or in the same room as a woodstove.

9. Light Right. Seedlings need brighter light than the average home can provide in late winter. You could buy grow lights for your seedlings, but standard fluorescent lights will do just fine. Keep the lights suspended an inch or less above the tops of seedlings, raising the lights (or lowering the containers) to maintain that distance as seedlings grow. Seedlings do best with 14 to 18 hours of light per day. Using an inexpensive timer (about $20 or less) makes achieving that range easy.

10. Strong and Steady. Help your seedlings grow steadily, without interruption from insufficient water, nutrients or root space. After they’re well established, pinch out the weakest seedlings in each cell, giving the strongest survivor room to grow. Lightly brush your hand over the tops of seedlings daily to promote sturdy stems (this simulates the effect of wind). If your starts appear to be outgrowing their containers, move them into bigger ones as soon as possible.

11. Transitional Tactics. After four to six weeks, your seedlings will have grown into sturdy plants ready for the outside world. Help them make the transition by allowing them to adjust to outdoor conditions slowly, a process called “hardening off.” To do this, keep your transplants in a sheltered location, such as on a porch, for about a week, bringing them in at night and gradually moving them into brighter sunlight each day. (If you move seedlings from indoors into a full day of sun, they’ll sunburn.) After your plants have been hardened off, they’re ready to grow in the garden, where they’ll reward you with a bounty of tasty, nutritious food.
Article written by: By Vicki Mattern
February/March 2012 edition of Mother Earth News
This information and more articles about food and nature found on http://www.motherearthnews.com/