Planting your own produce is very popular in Sacramento and growing, particularly among people who want fresh organic produce, can’t afford the supermarket prices, find some farmer’s markets aren’t organic, and need to eat healthier foods and to fight childhood obesity. Even school gardens are growing in popularity. In Sacramento county, in addition to what’s in the city, there are a total so far of 60 community gardens.
Greens: Bok choy, Pac Choy, Napa Cabbage, Head Lettuce, Radicchio, Spinach, Collard Greens, and Chard all do well here in the fall and mostly through the winter.
The goal is to get the local surplus produce trucked to food banks. The law would give financial assistance to the farmers. Otherwise, the local farmers would not be able to afford to move the surplus produce to the food banks and similar places where the food is given away to local people in need.
When you have a garden, which is based on mulch like mine and heavens open for days, the slugs have found their Four Seasons hotel and invite their whole family. My plants resembled the Erie Horror Festival victims, not PA Farm Show contestants. I consulted our local Organic Gardening experts, The Rodale Institute outside of Kutztown, Pa.
Sets are the third method of planting onions. When purchasing sets, you can figure that one pound is enough to plant a fifty-foot row. Trench your rows out about 2 inches deep and place the sets with the stem end up. This is the one thing that you will need to watch for when planting. Once you have the sets in place cover with a good garden soil and maintain then with the same methods as transplants.
Children and infants are at a dramatically increased risk for damage done by chemicals and pesticides. Children have excretory systems that are still developing. This means that they are less able to rid their bodies of chemicals consumed. Chemical damage can alter the biology of their bodies permanently, causing all sorts of problems. Developing organs and tissues can suffer when chemicals block absorption of nutrients.
You can go to your local nursery or hardware store and purchase organic soil by the bag full or even by the truck load. Many organic gardeners will put this soil on top of their compacted soil and then plow it into the regular soil. However, for this method to be effective you must have enough organic soil to be from a minimum depth of three inches up to six inches or more. The great thing about it is as you repeat this procedure through several growing seasons you will soon have brought the life back to your original soil.
