Healthy Garden...Healthy Belly!

Growing your own food can be one of the most rewarding experiences. There will never be a better way to keep tabs on your food quality than to get your hands in the dirt that brings forth this bounty. So keeping your garden free of pesticides and herbicides is one great step you can take for your health and it's easier than you think!

After you've decided what yummy vegetables will work well for your garden, follow these tips to keep your garden toxin-free and "green".

1. Garden in pots or raised beds with loose soil which makes it easier to pull weeds. This is also easier for gardening in small spaces.

2. Mulch around plants and in walkways using thick layers of organic material such as newspaper, straw, dead leaves, grass clipping, etc. This helps conserve moisture and because it is organic it can add to the foods' nutrient content.

3. Plant in square foot sections rather than rows. Grouping allows you to plant more, but it also blocks weeds out as the plants grow.

4. In the fall, cover your garden with dead leaves and water down. This will keep weeds down in the spring.

5. Rotate crops every year. By not planting a veggie in the same place each year, it prevents the bugs from easily finding their chosen veggie and prevents diseases that stay in the soil over winter from infecting a plant.

6. Use the concept of companion planting. By planting crops such as onion, garlic, shallots and other members of the allium family next to susceptible crops, pests will be less likely to feast because they do not like allium vegetables. Also, marigolds dispersed throughout a garden are helpful as they repel pests as well.

7. Beneficial bugs like ladybugs will eat aphids that may cause problems. You can buy packs of ladybugs in gardening centers.

8. Ask your gardening center for varieties of plants that tend to be disease resistant.

9. Compost kitchen scraps, grasses, and dead leaves which give you rich organic material to put in your garden each year to add to the nutrient content.

Tips from - "The Vegetable Gardener's Bible" by Edward C. Smith

If you don't have a green thumb for gardening, consider community supported agriculture. Healthlinks is proud to partner with "My Mamma's Hat Farm" which is one such CSA that uses green agricultural practices, so it's good for you and the environment and it's just a few miles away. Their produce will be sold at the Longmont Farmers Market starting in May and they will be providing the rich produce for our cooking classes starting in June.

Either way, you stay more connected to your food and in better control of you health!