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Browsing Tag
produce
Gardening

How Much to Plant in Your Vegetable Garden

 

Each year, my goal is to grow enough produce for my family to eat all year. Each year, I get closer to this goal. It is a bit of a trial-and-error process each year to answer the age-old question: how much should I plant in my vegetable garden? In this vlog I’ll walk you through my process of assessing what’s left from our preserved home-canned and frozen foods to decide how much I should plant in this year’s garden.

Some plants have a more direct correlation of seed-to-food ratio, like beets, carrots, and cauliflower where each seed produces a single unit of produce. Others produce many units of produce per plant, such as squash, zucchini, cucumbers, or green beans. Healthier plants, of course, produce more while less healthy plans produce less. Because of these varying factors you will find there is no magic answer to knowing how much of each plant to put in your garden, it takes this sort of year-by-year assessment and adjustment to get as close as possible.

If you don’t succeed on your first try – welcome to the club! I’ve been gardening for years and have yet to hit that nail perfectly on its head, but each year it gets a little easier and I get a little closer and I’m happy with that! We’ve greatly reduced our reliance on the grocery store and a few years in (with some seed-saving knowledge) we have also decreased our grocery budget by quite a bit. Here are a few tips to help you succeed:

 

Plant What You’ll Eat

Every gardener does it – inevitably you will end up planting too much of something your family won’t eat. I’ve got a freezer full of turnips from 3 years ago that we are still working on for this exact reason. I just couldn’t resist how picturesque and farm-y they looked growing!

By all means, plant things you enjoy and try new things – but save the majority of your space for well-loved staples that your family traditionally eats plenty of.

 

 

Plant Extra if You Can

Decide how much you think your household might eat, and then plant a few extra if you have space and resources. Seeds are cheap and it’s pretty common to lose some plants to disease, pests, or just the garden gremlins that inexplicably leave your plants sad and wilty. Having a few extra means you’ll be much more likely to hit your mark

 

Start With Growing for Summer

If you’re a beginner gardener, and especially if you haven’t preserved food in the past, a great goal is to aim to grow the food your family will eat fresh during the summer months. You will have plenty to learn and do as you plant, tend, and grow your first garden. Preserving and canning are amazing and incredibly useful skills, but you don’t have to overwhelm yourself by planning to do all of it in your first season. Eating produce all summer from your garden is incredibly rewarding – give it a try!

Have a Preservation Plan

If you’re looking to preserve the produce from your garden, have a rough plan in advance of how you’ll preserve it. Will you can, freeze, or dehydrate? Do you have space for storage? Do you need to learn these skills before your produce is ready? Make sure you are prepared when the time comes…your produce rarely waits for you and it is a heck of a disappointment to put in all the work to grow a winter’s worth of produce and watch it go bad before you get to it!

 

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Gardening

Seed Starting for Beginners

Seed starting is a key piece of getting more from your garden sooner, especially if you live somewhere with a shorter growing season. This video will give you all you need to start seeds indoors and get a jump on tasty fresh produce!

 

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Eating Well on a Budget

A Dietitian Weighs In: Buying organic – yay or nay?

Should I buy organic

 

To wrap up our series on Eating Well on a Budget, we’ll address one of the more common questions I get as a dietitian: is it worth spending more money on organic foods?

The answer is complex and individual. There are so many factors to consider – research, finances, and health concerns to name a few. The answer is a personal choice based on your consideration of all of these factors and how they interact in your own life. In an effort to inform those decisions, we will discuss some of the research surrounding these topics.

What Makes Produce Organic?

 

The USDA allows the use of the term “organic” on produce and products that meet the following criteria:

  • produce or ingredients are “…certified to have grown on soil that had no prohibited substances applied for three years prior to harvest. Prohibited substances include most synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.”
  • Do not contain artificial preservatives, colors, or flavors
  • “Not grown or handled using genetically modified organisms”1

 

Is Organic Produce Healthier?

 

Food that meets organic criteria also often touts a higher price tag (49% higher, according to Consumer Reports2). So for the budget- and health-conscious consumer, the question is: does eating organic vs. non-organic foods have a significant impact on my health?

The trickiest part about answering that question is that humans are such complicated critters…it is difficult to tease out the health impacts of something like eating organic produce vs. non-organic produce because in most cases, the effects of that decision would be long-term – some even lifelong. That makes research difficult, because over the course of a lifetime there are so many confounding factors that it is darn near impossible to definitively pinpoint a specific cause or even correlational relationship. For example, since organic produce is more expensive, those who eat organically-grown produce regularly might be more likely to have higher incomes than those who don’t. If there is a difference in health outcomes, could it be due to living in less polluted areas or having better health care? I’m not sure that there will ever be a direct, consistent, and documented difference in many of cases, for that reason.

Instead, what often happens is that research tends to produce a lot of conflicting or confusing results. Here are the findings of a just a handful of different research studies:

  • A study of organic vs. non-organically-grown greens found that organically grown spinach had higher concentrations of iron, zinc, and calcium than non-organically grown spinach, but no difference between organically vs. non-organically grown romaine. Non-organic romaine contained higher concentrations of magnesium than organic romaine.3
  • In a review of the nutritional content of organic vs. non-organic produce, organic foods were “nutritionally superior” (based on an assessment of the content of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, nitrates and protein) in 61% of cases, while non-organic produce was “nutritionally superior” in 37% of cases.4
  • The USDA’s report on pesticide testing in 2016 found that more than 99.5% of foods tested “well below” benchmark safety levels established by the Environmental Protection Agency.” 22% of the samples had no detectable pesticide residue.5
  • Meanwhile, other studies have linked intakes of foods with higher pesticide residues with fertility issues. Non-organic produce with lower pesticide levels had no negative effect on fertility.6, 7

 

Just a little research muddies the water a bit, doesn’t it?

 



 

Is Buying Organic Produce Worth It?

In these cases I keep a mental category of recommendations that I call “common sense” recommendations. These recommendations apply to these complicated situations where research makes things less, rather than more, clear. Common sense would tell us that it is probably best for us to eat in the form in which God provided it to us. Common sense tells us that it is probably best to eat foods that was not grown with chemicals designed to kill other life forms.

That being said, these “common sense” recommendations are not wholeheartedly supported by research, as you saw above. They are not, by any means, hard and fast rules and, as mentioned earlier, there are many factors to consider.

One thing we absolutely know for sure is that eating plenty of fruits and vegetables every day is significantly beneficial for cancer prevention, heart health, reducing inflammation, and so many other health conditions.2 Those benefits exist regardless of whether those fruits and vegetables are organic or not. I can say with certainty that eating several servings per day of non-organic produce is much more beneficial than no produce at all! So that’s where it ultimately comes down to personal choice. You need to balance your own personal health goals with your own personal budget. For those who feel that they would like to limit their exposure to pesticide residues but simply find it beyond what their grocery budget allows, there are a few options:

  • Prioritize your purchases: Each year, the Environmental Working Group produces a list of the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen. These are the produce items with the highest and lowest levels of pesticide residue, respectively. If you can’t afford to buy all organically-grown produce, you can prioritize the dirty dozen items as organic to reduce your pesticide exposure.
  • Look for a cropshare or a wonky produce subscription: Small family farms and waste prevention programs have created subscription services to purchase local organic produce. Some of these programs feature fruits and vegetables of unusual size or shape that grocery stores don’t want to sell. These programs offer these items at reduced cost to consumers to prevent food waste. Check out Imperfect Produce to see if they provide these services in your area!
  • Grown your own: This can certainly be a commitment, but the benefits are so delicious! You’ll enjoy fresh, tasty food grown in your own yard, containers, or window boxes. You can even use SNAP/EBT benefits to purchase seeds for growing. If you’re a total newbie, ask Google or a local librarian to help you find info on growing your own crops of delicious (and very low cost) produce.

 



 

You might also like…

Money-Saving Tip: When Good Produce Goes Bad

How to Meal Plan on a Budget (step-by-step walkthrough)

What to do When Your Healthy Plan Falls Through

References

  1. McEvoy, M. “Organic 101: What the USDA Organic Label Really Means.” U. S. Department of Agriculture. https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2012/03/22/organic-101-what-usda-organic-label-means.
  2. “Eat the Peach, Not the Pesticide: Our new produce guidelines show you how to make the best choices for your health and for the environment.” Consumer Reports. https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/health/natural-health/pesticides/index.htm.
  3. Rose, S. B. et al. “Mineral Content of Organic and Conventionally Grown Spinach and Lettuce.” Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. September 2011. 111:9S. p A45. https://jandonline.org/article/S0002-8223(11)00868-6/pdf.
  4. Benbrook, C. et al. “New Evidence Confirms the Nutritional Superiority of Plant-Based Organic Foods.” The Organic Center. March 2008. https://www.organic-center.org/reportfiles/5367_Nutrient_Content_SSR_FINAL_V2.pdf.
  5. “USDA Releases 2016 Annual Pesticide Data Program Summary.” United States Department of Agriculture. February 2018. https://www.ams.usda.gov/press-release/usda-releases-2016-annual-pesticide-data-program-summary.
  6. Chiu, Y. et al. “Association Between Pesticide Residue Intake and Pregnancy Outcomes Among Women Undergoing Fertility Treatment With Assisted Reproductive Technology.” Journal of the American Medical Association. January 2018. 178:1. p 17-26. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2659557?alert=1. 
  7. Chiu, Y. et al. “Fruit and vegetable intake and their pesticide residues in relation to semen quality among men from a fertility clinic. Human Reproduction. June 2015. 30:6. p. 1342-1351. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25824023.

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Down Home Dietitian

Diet culture is determined to tell you that you have to be miserable to be healthy.

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Becki Parsons, MS, RD, CEP
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It is not my job to: - Tell you what you "shouldn It is not my job to:

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Announcing my new Virtual Accountability Subscript Announcing my new Virtual Accountability Subscription! If you want someone to help you stay on track but don't necessarily need regular appointments, this is the plan for you! Click the link in my bio to start your subscription today! Use the promo code "DHD 22" to get 10% off through the end of June!
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Cabbages and broccolis are in! 🥦🥬 It is FIN Cabbages and broccolis are in! 🥦🥬

It is FINALLY starting to get warm enough in the PNW that I feel comfortable putting my plant babies out to fend for themselves. This is one of the later times I've planted outside but it's okay. My harvest will come in a bit later than normal, but we will be rolling in delicious produce before we know it! 😋🍅🌽🥕🫑🥒
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Choosing to work with a dietitian is NOT "turning Choosing to work with a dietitian is NOT "turning yourself in" to the food police! It's finding a teammate to help you find the eating plan that works for you. I frequently joke with my clients that they are dating healthy changes and I am their matchmaker - it's not about forcing your life to fit a plan, it's about finding the plan that complements your life AND helps you meet your goals and feel your best without being miserable or deprived!
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  • Planting a Small Permaculture Orchard on our Homestead
  • How Much to Plant in Your Vegetable Garden
  • Recipe: Immune Boosting Winter Smoothie
  • Choosing an Exercise Plan you can Stick To
  • Working Toward Your Health Goals When Life is Busy or Stressful

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