Organic Gardening Tips

The Holistic Mom’s April guest was Rita from theherbfarmacy.com - a farm in Salisbury, Ma – she has bee hives, chickens, greenhouses and lots of great advice for growing your own veggies. She sells veggies at 3 different farmer’s markets.

We do a CSA  - however we still have a small plot at our house for growing our own veggies – it’s fun for us, and great for the kids to grow stuff at home – so I love good gardening advice, especially if it helps us get more from our little 10×12 patch of garden.

She REALLY emphasized “site selection” as being crucial to the success of your garden –  choosing a place with good soil, lots of sunlight & proximity to water being key.  I wish ours got more sun – but unless I chop down some really big trees – that’s not likely.

Planning was also emphasized – (we tend to swing thru a garden store – grab some plants that sound good – and throw them in the soil). Hmmmm – planning?

Rita was saying that if you plan carefully – you can get 3 crop rotations out of your garden.  You can do “spring items” such as carrots, turnips, peas, beets, and broccoli rabe in August – and harvest in October – this sounds so cool – and I”m excited to try it. Usually – our garden is “1 and done”.

She emphasized several times that you need to plan your space – that tomatoes need a ton of room (2.5 feet) – and that sometimes people who come to her looking for 10 tomato plants leave with only 3, after she discusses proper placement.  She suggests putting radishes & lettuce in the space in between.

Other key points were:

Re-build your soil every year with compost, “Coast of Maine” fertilizer, and send a soil sample to Umass for testing to see if you need calcium or lime added.

Water only in the early morning – she recommended using a soaker hose – that traditional sprinklers waste a ton of water – plus – you only need to wet the roots – not the leaves.

Do companion planting – certain flowers such as Nasturtium will attract bugs, and keep them off your veggies. Fennel will repel rabbits. Human hair & coyote pee will repel deer. (At this point you’ve got to wonder how hard-core you want to be – we just put a fence around our garden).

She was such a wealth of information – it was more than she could get out in 90 minutes, there was a lot more that she said, but my furiously scribbling is kind of hard to read now. I look forward to visiting her in Salisbury and getting some more good info!

3.5 miles felt great!

Happy to have completed the Melrose Mother’s day run for women.

http://mrfw.melroserunningclub.com/2011/

It’s a beautiful morning, and I’m exercising, bonding with my family and helping to raise awareness for domestic violence. About 800 women are with me, and we look great in our pink t-shirts!

This was the 15th annual race, I actually did the 1st one – I was a bit faster when I was 27 – but I’m excited to be back here doing it again.

3.5 miles later my legs are sore, but I feel a great sense of accomplishment. It wasn’t as fast as I’d hoped, but hey, I’m off the couch, right?

Now I can go dig into a plate of fried clams – guilt free!

Love to discover new foods

So excited to have stumbled across this blog.

http://www.theleangreenbean.com/foodie-penpals/

A blogger & nutrition student – Lindsay started with 30 people exchanging care packages and in only 6 months it’s grown to 600!!!

Seems like good fun – I signed up to try it next month – can’t wait to report on the results.

A rude awakening

This was the start of an un-published draft from November……….

*****************

Well, thanks to Mother Nature’s crazy rainstorm the other night, there was too much traffic to get to yoga – so I opted for my gym instead. There was a “Kettlebell” class starting – and I’ve never been – so I though “what the heck”.

The instructor was giving some pointers to the newbies about what to do if you need to modify, or if you get tired – but I only half paid attention.

After all – I’ve been doing hot yoga 2 or 3 times a week for months. It gets my heart beating & I work up a heck of a sweat – so I should be fine, right?

I was so, so wrong.  Ten minutes in, I was wondering if I could walk out the door without looking like too much of an idiot – I was dripping with sweat, gulping for air, and wishing I’d done more cross-training.

Because as much as I’ve fallen in love with yoga – I’ve been blowing off doing other types of exercise – and what I really learned Thurs night is how much I need to do a variety of things. No one thing is the miracle cure.

I did make it thru the whole class (I modified A LOT).

As I was gulping air, I thought back to several episodes of “Biggest Loser” that I’ve watched from the comfort of my couch, and thought look at those poor fat people who can’t even do 1 pushup.

**********************************

Sadly – 5 months later – I have not done much to improve my overall conditioning – still doing yoga once or twice a week.    But nothing will ever change – if I don’t change it.

Acupuncture

Oh my poor Blog – I’m sorry I’ve neglected you.
Let me get back into swing by telling everyone what I’ve been up to.
About a month ago – my distressed shoulders were creeping up my neck until they felt attached to my ears.
Just as I thought I couldn’t stand it – an email came announcing a Living Social deal for New England Community Acupuncture – http://www.necacupuncture.com for only $20.
I had gone to an informational class in the fall at Groton Wellness – a place that I love – and it was fascinating – however 4 accupuncture sessions were going to be $400 – way out of my budget.
So for a $20 deal – I was in!
Just about 30 minutes after I bought the online deal – a good friend (known as Christina the bow lady) came into my store and was raving about how she’d discovered accupuncture – and how she thought it was working great on her back pain – sure enough – the deal I had bought – was for the same place – I called immediately to set up my appt.
The next day when I walked in – I bumped into one of the moms from my store – she was sitting in the office – and turns out her husband owns the place – I guess the Merrimack Valley is a pretty small place!
I met with Anya, the accupuncturist – we discussed the knots in my neck & shoulders, my digestive woes, and my weight loss failures. All of which might be helped by regular sessions with the needles – we agreed to 2 times a week for 15 sessions total. I’ve been six times so far, and definitely have had improvement in my digestion and in the my shoulders.
It’s been very interesting – it can be peaceful at times, and other times if feels quite stimulating. It is not often that I sit still for an hour – no kids, no laptop, no tv – just my thoughts.
However, making room in my schedule for acupuncture (each session is about 90 minutes) has affected time for yoga and working out.
As always – I’m working to find balance in my life.

Oct 15th – Last CSA pickup of the year – so sad!

I knew it was coming – but October 15th, it was official – the CSA veggies are done for the year.

Last year when this happened –  I was relieved that I didn’t have to try to keep up with the vegetables – but a few months later I felt the loss, the deprivation of my nice fresh local veggies. The supermarket veggies in January are just a sorry shadow of the beauty of fresh summer local produce.

This year – I’ve kept up so much better – I didn’t feel the same relief that it’s over – just bummed – because I know winter is coming and the veggies are gone.

The one weird thing – is no squash this year. Last year – we got an entire box of butternut squash that we were told to keep in a cool dark place and that it would last for months – we actually ate quite a bit of squash so it was gone faster than that – but we did have it  a month later on Thanksgiving.

However this last box included the usual beets, parsley, leeks, cauliflower, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes and  lots & lots of lettuce, and a few pumpkins our kids used to decorate the front stoop.

Good bye summer and fall – winter is coming!

 

 

An Eating Plan that makes sense

A few people have been asking me about what I’m doing.

Is there a name for what my diet is? I don’t know.

I’m not vegan, I’m not vegetarian, I’m not raw, I’m not Paleo – but I think all of those have something to offer – and I like eating all of those things, sometimes.

Basically, I’m trying to eats lots & lots of veggies, eat more whole, natural foods and I’m avoiding dairy, and gluten (though not 100% – I just had pizza & cake at a birthday party). I’m not going to be a lunatic about this – I’m just trying to be better & healthier.

I’m following a lot of recipes from the books “UltraMetabolism” and “You are what you eat“.

And I was really excited to find this list from the Institute of Integrated Health – I think it sums up healthy living and what I’m striving for perfectly:

1.    Drink more water
2.    Practice cooking
3.    Increase whole grains
4.    Increase sweet vegetables
5.    Increase leafy green vegetables
6.    Experiment with protein
7.    Eat less meat, dairy, sugar and chemicalized, artificial junk foods; consume less coffee, alcohol and tobacco
8.    Develop easy and reliable habits to nurture your body
9.    Have healthy relationships that support you
10.  Find physical activity you enjoy and do it regularly
11.  Find work you love or a way to love the work you have
12.  Develop a spiritual practice

I hope to work on all 12 of these things – I wish everyone would – so we can all live long happy lives!