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!

Our garden is in! (from May 28)

Our newly planted garden – May 28th

We planted our garden last weekend (yes it was heavily watered after this picture was taken – although I have yet to invest in a soaker hose).

I took the advice of Rita from theherbfarmacy.com – and we only planted 3 tomato plants. They seem REALLY far apart. I want to go get radishes as she suggested for a quick use of the space until the tomatoes fill in.

It’s really hard – because it seems so empty now – even though I know the plants will get bigger. The urge to cram things in is hard to resist.

We did another of her suggestions – we dug a hole – and filled it with compost – and then put in the tomato plants.

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Whoops – I totally forgot to hit “publish”. This is from 3 weeks ago – and the garden has been enjoying rain & sun, and is growing nicely. We even have cauliflowers coming!

Holistic mom’s meeting 9/12/11 – Paleo nutrition

September’s meeting featured a guest speaker – Diana Rodgers from Radiance Nutrition in Hamilton. http://www.radiancenutrition.com/

She lives on a farm – and her family runs a CSA at Green Meadows Farm – if Hamilton were a bit closer – I would love to go check them out. But for now – I’m just following on facebook- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Green-Meadows-Farm/96185700552

She said that she had struggled with tummy problems her whole life – and then after discovering she has Celiac – changed her diet and felt great – also – she’s a firm believer in the Paleo diet. The Palio Diet is based on eating like a caveman – meat, eggs, fruit, and some veggies – but no grains. According to Diana – humans shrunk and got sicker after the farming of grains began. Things only got worse after the introduction of  processed foods in the 50’s and 60’s, and don’t even get her started on “high fructose corn syrup” and vegetable oils (they bleach them to get that light yellow color – yuck!)

She also spoke about “leaky gut” syndrome – describing a connection between food allergies or intolerances and much bigger problems like auto-immune issues, and possibly even autism.  She suggested a pretty strict diet for people with auto-immune issues eliminating food that cause the most sensitivities – no dairy, no grains, no legumes, no nightshade family (tomatoes, bell peppers, white potatoes, eggplant). It was pretty interesting and made me think about how many women I know with auto-immune issues – 2 friends from high school have Lupus, 2 friends have MS, a good friend with pretty bad psoriasis, another with Fibromyalgia – way too many women in early 40’s have their bodies turning against them.

I must confess – I sort of 1/2-listened at during this part  – thinking that some of what she was saying made sense – but also that some of it seemed super strict, and that I wasn’t sure I’m willing to try it, and thank goodness it didn’t apply to me.

Of course on Monday I didn’t know that two days later on  Wednesday my doctor would tell me I have an auto-immune disease…….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Holistic Mom’s club

I joined the Holistic Moms in Spring of 2010. I sort of fell into it. I had met a nice guy at a Chamber of Commerce meeting – he had mentioned that his wife belonged to a mom’s group that might be interested in my business. A few weeks later he called to tell me that they were meeting that night,  and I got in my car and drove over.

I had gone hoping for some business opportunity – but I actually found something super exciting for me. The room had about 35 women in it – and the guest speaker, Christi, was actually one of the members who is a nutrionist – she was talking about beating sugar cravings (definitely of interest to me), and she was really fascinating & motivating. She even brought her VitaMix blender and whipped up some green smoothies. Christi is available at http://www.bostonhealthcoach.com.

I decided to join immediately – the group has a monthly meeting – sometimes its a guest speaker – and topics range from nutrition, to green lawn care, to raising happy kids. Other times the meeting is for the moms to mingle, or enjoy pampering such as chair massages or organic ice creams.

There are chapters all over the country – check out the Holistic Moms at http://www.holisticmoms.org.