Harvesting

Recently I have been enjoying the produce from my very own garden. First it was sweet potatoes. I planted some sweet potatoes plugs and forgot about them. When I finally remembered that I planted sweet potatoes and went digging, had a lovely harvest and delightful mashed sweet potatoes side for dinner. Wonderful thing about sweet potatoes, they will grow just fine neglected. I plan to save some plugs for my parents so they can let them grow wild on the back section of their property. The arugula is now ready for harvest but unfortunately I do not like to taste of arugula, so my friends who do like arugula have hit the arugula jackpot. The radishes are ready as well and was a delight to eat tonight after sauteed in butter with salt and pepper. In about a week, the beets, lettuce, and possibly cabbage will be ready and now I must scavenge my old cookbooks for recipes to try. The tomatoes and peppers have flowers or tiny fruit growing, really look forward to that harvest.

Given this economy you would think there would be more pushing for people to grow their own food like they did in the depression era. Most I hear is a little news bite here and there. I think a tax break for people who grow their own food and free classes and materials to get started would be great. They have this wonderful program called GIFT Gardens that was here in Gainesville. It was a program for low income families to get a free square foot garden stocked with vegetables and a experienced gardener to help supervise and teach the family how to grow and maintain their garden so that people can have healthy meals for free. Not only would the families have this tasty garden that they can reuse over and over again and save money buy not buying vegetables but growing their own and encourage healthy eating. Unfortunately it seems our local government decided not to fund the program this year but instead put all the money toward food banks. So it looks like they will not be able to give any more gardens away. I really think this is bad promoting or something because how can this program NOT help. Food banks provide food true but the families will have to continue going back again and again for the food wheres this gift garden will enable them to get food and then proceed to grow their own again and again. It's like that saying about how you can give a man a fish and he can eat once but teach him how to fish and he will never starve.