• my place
  • the rural story
  • gardening tips
  • using garden tools
  • Privacy Policy
  • Join Me

    • Facebook
    • Pinterest
    • RSS
    • Twitter
    • YouTube

Home Garden Companion

Ilona's Garden Journal

  • Plant Library On The Journal
    • All Season Garden Color
    • Sitemap
  • Garden chores
    • Essential Garden Tools For Beginners
    • Garden Tips and Advice
  • Ilona’s Garden Home
    • Old House Blog
    • Garden Librarian
  • Ilona’s Garden Flavor Shop

Food tomatoes Vegetable garden

Growing Organic

Just to underline the fact that there is more than one reason to “grow your own” and that organic methods are the best way to do that.

clipped from www.msnbc.msn.com
It’s happening to crops in the United States, too. In 2004, Donald Davis, PhD, a former researcher with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas, Austin, led a team that analyzed 43 fruits and vegetables from 1950 to 1999 and reported reductions in vitamins, minerals, and protein. Using USDA data, he found that broccoli, for example, had 130 mg of calcium in 1950. Today, that number is only 48 mg. What’s going on? Davis believes it’s due to the farming industry’s desire to grow bigger vegetables faster. The very things that speed growth — selective breeding and synthetic fertilizers — decrease produce’s ability to synthesize nutrients or absorb them from the soil.
blog it

When Stress is a Good Thing…

The article goes on to say:

“A different story is playing out with organic produce. “By avoiding synthetic fertilizers, organic farmers put more stress on plants, and when plants experience stress, they protect themselves by producing phytochemicals,” explains Alyson Mitchell, PhD, a professor of nutrition science at the University of California, Davis. Her 10-year study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry showed that organic tomatoes can have as much as 30 percent more phytochemicals than conventional ones. ”

Phytochemicals are substances that plants naturally produce to protect themselves against bacteria, viruses, and fungi.

More?

From and article by Winston J Craig, PhD, RD,Phytochemicals: Guardians of Our Health“

“phytochemicals, non-nutritive substances in plants that possess health-protective effects. Nuts, whole grains, fruits and vegetables contain an abundance of phenolic compounds, terpenoids, pigments and other natural antioxidants (including vitamins A, C and E) that have been associated with protection from and/or treatment of chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and hypertension as well as other medical conditions (3). In addition to the phytochemicals, fruits and vegetables are naturally low in fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, calories and sodium, and are rich in potassium, fiber, folic acid and vitamin C.”

The truth is that it takes time to build up soils, and it takes effort to gain a skill set for gardening. It takes physical effort to plant, grow and harvest your food, as well as cook things yourself. But here is the payoff: it is a great satisfaction to work in a garden, to eat from ones own table, it is a more enjoyable existence when one is healthy. There are great things that come from the modern food industry, I’m not going to deny that. We have fruits and veggies, spices and specialty foods from every place on the globe imaginable…. all available to us in the USA. We have fresh fruits and vegetables at any season.

But we have lost much, and that is due to our own indolence. It is not a choice between shopping in a grocery store or growing your own food, but it is apparent that we ought to incorporate both.

It does take effort, it does create change, but some things are worth it. Growing your own food is one of those things….especially when it is so easy to start small and with little investment.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Related


« Rock Dust
Sloe-ly Found Out »

Oh, hi there!

I was a garden blog pioneer, and began writing on this blog in 2003. Before that I had begun a garden website that has been at its own domain since 2006, Ilona's Garden.

I still love writing, gardening, and art after all these years, although travel and grandchildren have become a big part of my life, now.

Mission

Finding your way home via the garden path

Portrait of a Gardener

gardener musings

Musings

What’s Wrong With Today’s Gardening?

Modern gardening

What Is Wrong?

Garden Journal

fine garden journal

Journal, Planner and Log Book

Newest Postings Here

  • Deals from Amazon
  • Hawaiian Flower Arrangements
  • HELLLOOOO, From The Other Side
  • February Gardening, Last of Winter in the Flower Garden
  • Compilation of Past Mini-Posts of 2003
buy quality plants

On Facebook

On Facebook

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Standouts

10 Useful Gardening Tips For Spring

You might also like

seeds

National Seed Swap Day in January

Garden advice

What Makes a Low Maintenance Garden?

Create A Child’s Garden, Grow Love For Nature

Growing Indoor Flowers In December

I Found Out About “She Sheds” And Coincidentally, About Friends

Top Posts & Pages

  • Grandma Can Make Fairy Houses From Forest Finds
  • A Little Something For You: Garden Journal Template
  • Shirley Poppies, Papaver rhoeas
  • Making Moss
  • Saturday Was Slave Day OR Ilona's Terrible Awful No-Good Day
  • Print Your Own Garden Journal
  • Flowers Of May: Bearded Iris
  • Hawaiian Flower Arrangements
  • How To Plant Dutch Bulbs For Fabulous Spring Flowers
  • Flowers that Monet Grew In Giverny

Past Posts

ilonagarden

Instagram post 17959863785360234 Instagram post 17959863785360234
Instagram post 17989258745013455 Instagram post 17989258745013455
Instagram post 17976222752103831 Instagram post 17976222752103831
Instagram post 18056018824416584 Instagram post 18056018824416584
Instagram post 18335731483076224 Instagram post 18335731483076224
Instagram post 17977547744261532 Instagram post 17977547744261532
#atlanta #beautiful day☀️ #atlanta #beautiful day☀️
#atlanta #chattahoocheeriver #atlanta #chattahoocheeriver
Load More... Follow on Instagram

Copyright © 2023 · Part of Ilona’s Garden by Ilona Erwin

Copyright © 2023 · Ilona's Garden Journal