12 Steps to Whole Foods

Reaping a Gardener’s Rewards
Where to Put Your Gardening Efforts—And How
Many gardeners love to grow vegetables and then wonder what to do with it all when the plants offer up a
yield. In this chapter, gardening tips are minimal, and I stick to the basics related to getting whole foods on the
table economically rather than giving a detailed how-to of the science of gardening.
The main goal of this chapter is to give a beginning or intermediate gardener a few suggestions, to offer new
ideas for ways to use some garden vegetables grown easily in U.S. climates, and to convey a description of
why, nutritionally, each one is a great addition to your family’s menu. Covering every vegetable is impossible;
thus, I have included only those I find (a) easy to grow, (b) very high in nutrition and yield, and (c) harder to
think of uses for. Secondarily, I chose vegetables to include in this section that yield great benefits when grown
at home because the store-bought vegetable is often chemically sprayed and nutritionally inferior.
What to Plant
I find broccoli difficult to grow, with a low yield. Pumpkins take a massive amount of space, and peas are low
yield, high effort. Thus these are not featured in this chapter, though you may wish to grow them.
Onions are in many of the recipes in this book already, especially main dishes coming in Chapter 6 (page 157).
Garden staples tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, radishes, and corn are easy to grow, well known, and a snap to
use raw in virtually any salad—including recipes in Chapter 2 (page 53)—as well as salsas. Many people don’t
know that radish tops are edible, so don’t throw them away, and try them in your green smoothies. Raspberries
and strawberries are also great perennial additions to your garden, if you have the space, and you can use them
in everyday green smoothies as well as desserts. An excellent resource for gardeners wanting hundreds of
recipes and color photos for 30+ garden vegetables is Marian Morash’s Victory Garden Cookbook.
Many communities offer gardening space for free, or for a very small fee, so ask your city about its resources.
When my husband and I were college students and living in apartments, we still had huge gardens, because one
year we asked an elderly neighbor with unused garden space to let us use it, and another year we used the
university community garden plots.
These are foods I recommend growing, depending on the space you have:
Beets Corn Lettuce Spinach
Bell Peppers Cucumbers Onions Strawberries (perennials)
Cabbage Goji Berries (perennials) Radishes Summer Squash
Carrots Green Beans Raspberries (perennials) Tomatoes
Chard Kale Spaghetti Squash Zucchini
© Copyright Robyn Openshaw 12 Steps to Whole Foods 123