Garlic and Arugula... Or Is It?

          The first few vegetables that we grew in our garden was not, in fact a seed. We were handed these by a fellow gardener, one of the head ones I believe. One was a couple of garlic plants which were doing well. The other, however, was a few dying sprigs of a leafy green. They were no bigger than a tiny basil leaf. We were told that it was arugula, and planted it, thinking of it's pitiful state. To the right you can see the green plant and to the left is the garlic.

          Surprisingly, this John Doe vegetable seemed to do better than the garlic. It grew and became huge leaves stretching towards the sky. The garlic stems became green and lush, and we were very pleased that our start at gardening had worked out so well.

          Now let me tell you something about garlic. There are two ways to harvest it. The first way, is the one that is know by many, waiting until the bulb has grown. You will know that a bulb has grown because the stems will brown and wither. Be careful however, for your garlic could start rotting if you wait too long. If you want you can pull them out a little early the first year and from there you can decide for yourself. The second way you can harvest garlic is by cutting off the fronds like a leafy green and using that as a herb. This is a good idea while you are waiting for your bulb to grow or if you plant the garlic too close. Planting too close and not thinning would result in bulbs not being able to grow, so you would get more green but no root. When you cut a stalk off, leave some fronds so that photosynthesis can occur to regrow the garlic.
          Anyhow, back to the arugula. When I first ate this, I was shocked not to find the bitter taste, that arugula gives. My parents were also surprised, and speculated that this was due to the cooking of it. We also noticed though, that the leaves were not spiky like the arugula plant.
         We finally were enlightened a week or so later, when a gardener saw our plant and said that it was not arugula, but romaine lettuce. That explained it. Sadly, as I will tell later, the slugs and pests ate at it, but this romaine lasted until the end of spring, and is one of the hardiest plants I've ever seen to make such an amazing comeback.

Costs

       Now that I had my garden bed and seeds, I am going to give my first cost. I set up my cost in a spreadsheet (the picture will also be included with the other photos, I am uploading to this blog).
       In the first section I had the expense. The second section had the cost. After this I added the vegetable savings. I first had the vegetable name, then the total weight and amount, and finally the total cost of each vegetable that I grew. I also added the savings that were left over after each vegetable paid it's amount of the garden cost. With that I added the amount needed per type of vegetable to get a saving. I know this all seems very complicated, but the picture will clear things up.
      Anyhow, I had a few things to add to the expense side. First was the participation fee and the space fee. The full cost of these two things are for the area of 3 raised beds. Considering that I am only keeping track of my bed, I divided the cost by 3. The final cost for these fees was $47. $17 for participation, and 30 for space. Also, though the compost was free, the Spagnum peat moss had to be bought.  The Spagnum peat moss came to $14. When we were getting this peat moss, my parents did buy many more seed packets, however I didn't use any. The seeds that I did buy came to $15.84.
      Finally, the discussion of gas came into the factor. I couldn't walk or bike there, since the road leading to it, is very dangerous. I think I might have come up with a long detour, but I'm not sure. I decided that there would be a cost of gas, so I decided to keep track of how many trips I took. I made a chart. I gave the date, the number of times we went that day, (going there and back would be going 2 times), what we did there, and who went. Next to all of this, I would make a star. If I worked on my bed, then I would put a star counting the trip. If I was just looking and didn't touch anything, or if I worked on beds other than my own, then I wouldn't count it. I found the cost of a one way trip, by first finding the mileage. Our route is two miles long. Our car is a only 18 miles a gallon, which I know is non-environmental. A gallon gas is about $4, so you simplify 2 out of 18 miles to 1 out of 9. Then you find 1/9 of $4 and you find the gas cost. It was a stunning 44 cents there and 44 cents back.
         So, in total, not counting car trips, the expenses have come to $76.84.
        Already, a home garden would be winning, with no fees, or car trips. However, I still believe that more vegetables will grow in the community garden, so I haven't given up.

A Sorry Delay

I feel like I am saying this quite a lot on this blog, but I have never been great at keeping a journal, so this process is new to me. I will make a harder commitment, however. I am sorry for this delay, and after Hurricane Sydney lets out, and I can write without fear of no power, you'll hear more about the garden, and... BALD EAGLE SIGHTINGS!!!!!!!

Being Pure Organic

I have to admit that I might have really overdone it a bit with being completely organic, such as the hybrid tomato seeds and such. But I just don't want my garden to be non organic at all.
One of the most controversial subjects about this topic was when we were told that it would be a good idea to put in some soil additives. They are those little round pill things that you sprinkle around your bed. Being the paranoid person I am, I wanted to see if these additives were truly organic. The first pill was phosphate, which my dad says comes from a rock so this was organic. The phosphate is used to put phosphorous, a fertilizer, in the ground. The second additive was sulfur. This too is a mineral so organic and is used to put helpful organisms in the soil since they eat the sulfur. Finally, there was cow urea. This was a problem. Reading The Omnivore's Dilemma I know that conventional cows are treated quite badly and are stuffed full of unhealthy antibiotics. So I was wondering does the urea come from organic cows or conventional cows. I asked one of the starters of the community garden who is a seasoned gardener, and she replied, "Unless the organic farmers followed the cow around the pasture until it gave it's urea I'd say this was conventional." This made me uneasy. My dad reasoned that the antibiotics probably don't come into the cow urea, but I wasn't too sure. We each did our research for quite a bit and we both came to the conclusion, we would pass on the urea. My reason was that cow urine actually does have traces of antibiotics in it. That would make my garden non organic. My dad's reason was partly that, being a vegetarian, he didn't feel comfortable using an animal product. His main reason however was that it seems that even though the urea has lots of nitrates (fertilizer) and balances the pH (acidity and alkalinity) of the dirt, it kills the small organisms that sulfur brings. So, we decided to skip it. I don't know if my garden was affected because of my lack of cooperation for the urea, but I do know that it's a little more organic, because of it.

My Plan

My plan for my garden was a very very hard thing to put together. I never really thought about how different each vegetable was. Vegetables grow at all different times. They like and dislike climates, and take different amounts of time to grow. Some keep producing, while some need to be planted in succession. While I juggled with all these aspects I had to consider how deep each seed should go. Also how high they had to grow. You couldn't have a plant block sunlight from another. Also how many plants for each square foot and some spread, so the book had an idea about vertical gardening. It's where you take a vine plant like a pumpkin or a cucumber and trail it to climb up something like a vertical net. That way it doesn't take up so much room. (We wanted to do this but we didn't really complete it for all the vegetables. We did get a cucumber to crawl up this catchers net we erected. Instead we let the other vine plants trail out into our plant walking aisle. This turned out fine except now it is barely possible to walk in some of our aisles at all.)
Anyway back to my plan. At this time you know I was in trouble. Every time I thought I understood this a new problem or exception would come up. How in the world would I graph this? My dad had an idea. He made a calender from March to October in weekly intervals. After that I caught on to the idea. I put my 16 vegetables vertically while my dad's calendar weeks were horizontally. I started with looking at my seed packets where they said how long it took and roughly divided by 7. Then I put how long it took to germinate. (I thought it was one week. Big mistake as I'm going to find out.) Then I put the indoor starting time. Of course some can't be indoors like radishes, so they were just put in the ground at the appropriate time. I followed this with putting all plants outside in the ground, and how long till harvest. Some had to be replanted while others kept creating vegetables. Then it was brought to my attention the fact that the vegetables liked and disliked certain seasons. So after finding the seasons I created dead seasons, when the plant wouldn't be growing. All of this was based off the idea that April 23rd was the end of frost and October 10th was the start of frost. I then color coded and made a key for the calender. I then made a separate spreadsheet about the seed depth, width from other seeds, and the height of the plant. I used this to help plan out my bed. When I first drew it up, I had just tried to make it symmetrical. Once again my dad said I had forgotten something; height. The small plants should be up front, and the big ones behind, so they would all get equal sunlight. Plus the vine plants should be near the edge. I then rewrote it. I realized how much space I had in the bed. (In real life with the plants growing everywhere the space gets cramped.) Anyhow I color coded, labeled, and keyed the bed. In the key there was the abbreviation of the vegetable I was using, how many plants per square feet, how many seeds I needed and how many I needed indoors.
This plan was made using confusing research, modern technology (is Spreadsheet modern), and, yes, a few arguments (how about discussions?), among other painstaking things. But at the end I think I have a clue what to do.
I don't have good pictures of the climbing cucumber plants, the clogged aisles, and my plan, but I will upload it shortly.

Coming Up

My school year is about to start so I might not be able to do posts for a couple days. But after that be ready to learn about my garden plan.
The Blomer signing out.

Making the Raised Beds

Now everyone needed raised beds. Well not everyone. I believe 1 or 2 families just wanted row gardening.

The majority of people were going to have wooden boards connected in a rectangle. It would be like a box with no top or bottom. I was at the Pennsylvania Association of Environmental Educators with a few classmates but my dad was there. His back was sore for a whole day. He said they had to construct the boxes, carry it down a hill and place it in the spot. And there were 180 of them, 3 for every plot. Each box was 16 feet by 4 feet. That's 64 sq. ft a box. The height was probably a half foot maybe more. Then we had to fill the 3 boxes with dirt. But even before that we had to pull out the weeds. I had chosen the middle bed with a medium amount of weeds. My mom's bed was really weedy so we covered the bottom in a tarp thing. I believe it was bio degradable but I'm not sure. It might not have been. My dad and I didn't have as many weeds so we opted out on this tarp material. Our community garden is right next to the place where all the leaf compost goes, so there are mounds and huge hills full of compost. We used that to fill our beds, about 12 wheelbarrows per bed. This was hard because the mounds were on the other side from our beds, and up a hill. Unlike other plots we filled our boxes almost to the brim. Then we realized that you can make the bed better for a plant by mixing in peat moss and such sandy fluffy material so that the soil isn't so hard for a plant's roots to breach through. It was about 2 bags to cover 1 box. We had to go to the garden twice that day to fill all the beds. In between the 3 beds there were walkways, which we covered with remaining tarp and wood chips. So by the end of the day there were three filled beds with two walkways, and a thin perimeter which made up our plot.                                

Here is what a bed of ours looked like.

Here is our walkway half finished next to two of our beds. The string you see on the right was the beginning of my square foot plotting. I already planted in this picture.

Here is part of the community garden with the beds filled.

The Experienced Dad

You might have seen from these past few blogs that my dad has a pretty good idea of what he's talking about with the garden. The reason for that is that when he was a child he lived on the property with the pond. If you remember I said it was rural so one summer I belive he went and worked with the farmer there in exchange for some vegetables to take home. That is how he became so experienced. He still calls himself an amateur which is true when you see some of the other gardeners beds at the community garden. But we're both learning fast

Square Foot Gardening

Whenever I pictured gardening, being the amateur I was, I pictured neat rows of plants with a hoe in hand. Okay maybe not the hoe, but I pictured this from
a)the various books like Peter Rabbit that I've read over the years and movies/ T.V shows.
b)From seeing conventional crops. That's different from a community garden because their crops are much bigger and are usually monocultures (1 type of crop). Also they use pesticides and fertilizers which help keep things tidy but in the long run are bad. Well, also in the short run.
   Anyway I was picturing this when my dad got a book from the library. All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew.
  What is Square Foot Gardening? It is where you take 1 square foot of a bed and fill it with 1 type of vegetable. The number of plants per sq. foot depend on the plant size. For example you could have 16 carrots in 1 square foot, 1 squash in another. The number of plants per square foot could be 0.5,1,2,4,8,9,16. Square Foot Gardening works for all plants: fruits, vegetables, flowers, etc.
   The book provides more information on this plus many other facts and tips. The book is definitely something you should consider looking at. Another is What is Wrong with My Vegetable Garden? My family  thought we needed this before we even started. Talk about pessimists!  The book discussed the various pests and diseases and how to deal with it. It also had growing and regular facts about a lot of the common vegetables.
  Anyway getting back to Square Foot Gardening. There were some problems with this planting idea which I will mention in future blogs. The idea is a pretty good one though. It is supposed to be easier and give 5 times the harvest! That is because every part of the bed is used, unlike row gardening where there are walking paths in the rows. Though I was at first reluctant to the idea, my dad persuaded me to try it out. I've decided to do this more or less every year. In Square Foot Gardening you use raised beds: planks constructing a box with no top or bottom, which you then fill with dirt. Most of the people at the community garden used raised beds.

Seeds

       Now again I return to my garden. It seems every time I try to continue this story, other stories pop up.
       The beginning of my garden experiences was continued in Gentile's a fresh produce store. I've always known that Gentile's had many seeds so I knew I wanted to get my seeds here. You should have seen how many types there were for some vegetables. There were 8 types of beans! Every seed packet was $0.99 even though some were bulging like the peas and beans and others like the oregano and lettuce were so thin that it seemed there was nothing in there until you shook it, where you would be greeted by a pleasant rattle.
      I bought 16 seeds though some I couldn't find like onions, potatoes, and such bulbous roots. The thing was that these tubers don't have seeds in them. They can be started by planting small onions or the eyes of a potato (the black lumps). Had help from wiki about the onion; it turns out it bolts and sends seed heads up but there are none in the onion itself. So instead of waiting to get those vegetables I swapped for radishes and spinach. I then went around the store and found the prices.
      The herbs were pricey! $2.49 for 1/4 pound of basil! The rest was moderately priced. At least to me the inexperienced shopper. I couldn't find a couple of the vegetables so I'll come back in season. The crazy thing is, to a lot of people, everything is always in season! That's because of food coming halfway around the world. People have gotten used to that and have forgotten about "in season". Of course some vegetables like pumpkin aren't really needed in the spring so they're not bought, but I bet if there was a demand, pumpkins would appear any season. Anyway I thought I would have a savings. (My dad says profit sounds to industrial. True.)
       As we drove, I realised that one of the seed packets had hybrid on it. I looked at the rest of the packets. They were from the same company but didn't say hybrid. It just occurred to me I should have emailed the company to find out. I was feeling uneasy. To me this wasn't natural. Even to my teachers, they said that hybrids and greenhouses were natural. But I believe changing the way a plant lives is unnatural. I came to reluctantly change my mind about greenhouses, but hybrids... I don't know. My dad explained how most seeds sold must be hybrids, changed a little to be immune to some diseases or able to fight them off. He said Genetically Modified Organisms were very unnatural but hybrids weren't. Think about it. With GMO crops, scientists are changing the very being, DNA, of a living thing to be bigger. They're not breeding them which is what a hybrid does. They're changing the plant by itself. Breeding is natural in nature. Forced breeding may be not perfect but much better than GMO. Because of the fact I wasn't going to return a $0.99 packet, I used it, and it's actually not doing better or worse, I think.
       Here is a list of the seeds I bought.

•  Sweet Basil
• Top Crop Beans
• Carrot
• Cilantro Coriander
• Cucumber
• Lettuce- Salad Bowl
• Oregano
• Sweet Snap Peas
• Pepper
• Calabaza Pumpkin
• Radish- Early Scarlet Globe
• Spinach
• Squash- Zucchini
• Thyme
• Tomato- Early Giant
• Tomato- Red Cherry
• I also got sunflowers and zinnias though I didn't count it in my experiment.

A few had hybrid sounding names. I still got to find out.

A New Angle To My Animal Sketches

At my grandmother's I realised how difficult it was to sketch live wildlife, with it constantly moving. It was much harder than I thought. I decided that rather than sketching on site, if I could identify the animal than I could sketch it using pictures off the internet. My observation notes I could write when I saw the animal. It would let me see more animals, and would save more time. I would only be allowed to record a animal however only if I saw it.

Causes and Remedies

Here is a rough sketch of my grandmother's property.

So what really caused the disaster and how do we remedy it?
Here are the notes from my sketch book. They're only ideas, they might not work.
Causes:

• Grass Clippings, falling plant debris, feces, and dead matter.
• Lots of Nutrients 
• Aquifer (main supplier of water to pond) is dead. This causes less water
• Too many water plants
• Too warm (winter wasn't cold enough to kill algae.

Remedies

• Desludge Pond - NO  Too expensive
• Stop Cutting Grass Near Pond- YES 
• Pick Up Grass Clippings - NO Too hard or Too expensive (lawn mowers charge more to pick up)
• Riparian Zone (natural barrier of mainly vegetation which blocks bad runoff. Also will take nutrients)- YES  Might Spread Though. Find Non- Spreading Plants.
• Algae Eating Fish- MAYBE Can get too big and you need to take them out. Also you need a license.
• Nutrient Eating Plants Near Where Septic Water Comes Out- YES
• Fountain in Middle of Pond (Aeration is a way to get DO and will disrupt algae)- MAYBE Expensive, Electricity, and Do you need to Clean it out?
• Sprays and Such Methods- MAYBE Might kill beneficial plants and animals. Not natural. If natural use.
• Dig Back Small Outlet- MAYBE May lower pond levels but would get rid of nutrients and algae. Maybe if dig it so it loops around but goes through Riparian Zone again.

Before I had the idea of a Riparian Zone, I had come up with all these ideas from computers that would be expensive, so it seemed like we could do nothing. I had felt bad and said that my first job leading a restoration project and I had failed. My grandmother said I hadn't. Some things you just can't save, but  you can help them. So even if you can't save something in your neighborhood, or where you live, you can slow it down. You might not be able to stop the rain forest from being cut down, but who knows? Even if you can't, you can launch a campaign. Even if you don't have lots of time use some of your free time to do something, because if you don't sooner or later you'll have to. We'll all have to. So why not start now. The Earth still has everything we need to live, even if it's not a super comfortable life. We should keep it that way.

My grandmother said one time the pond was in this same state and had oil on the surface. She said it wasn't as bad as the current situation but she said, when the pond seemed to be gone, it just came back. She says she feels that the spring is gone this time, but I don't know. I'll guess I'll just see.

The Problem With Algae

When I saw what had happened to the pond I was aghast. My aunt was trying some things like putting in barley straw, but that seemed to have made it worse. Sadly, she also put in chemicals which I believe made it worse and better. Let me tell you a little about algae. Algae can be caused by huge amounts of nutrients in the water. These nutrients are made by grass cuttings, leaves, pretty much any decaying plant or animal matter, including feces. Algae is very bad for a pond besides being an eyesore. A little bit is good, for it provides shelter for animals, and some food. But excessive amounts is bad. Firstly it blocks sunlight from reaching plants and animals below so the temperature lowers. It also does not let air touch the water which is the major reason oxygen is in water. Though algae produces oxygen thru photosynthesis it takes oxygen at night. This is called respiration and depletes the water substantially of DO (dissolved oxygen. These two problems kill off the life. Plus, on the bottom of deep parts of the ocean are sludge and fish need special adaptations so that they don't sink in the mud. Is this a problem then for the fish in the pond? Maybe. So I was sure that it was a nutrient problem, but when I tested for nitrates it came out 0! What? Some explanations might be that I got this kit last December from my sister and it might be old. Also I never checked for phosphorous which is a lead cause in algae too. (Never had phosphate test strip). I don't really know.

The Disaster

To begin with, just to let you know, this is no small pond. This is a large 20 foot deep pond.
For as long as I can remember my grandmother's pond has been covered with algae, the thick slimy type. Though there was lots of it, the bottom of the pond, or at least the water around the outlet had been rocky. The other surrounding parts and bank had a marshy plant like lesser celandine, just as a marsh plant, and probably not invasive though it might be. It also didn't have flowers. I didn't take this picture.

http://www.inff.ie/index.php?do=photos&gId=19

When we were small we called this plant duck weed and it was only till recently I found out duck weed is a algae particle, microscopic. Oops. Anyway, it wasn't a major problem, because the algae died off in the winter, and it was fun to clean the algae coming towards the outlet. My cousin, sister, and I spent hours down there doing just that.

Then the disaster came. Over the past years the pond became worse. Now the level has sunk a few feet down, giving way to a marshy ground, with that marsh plant. My sister and I were walking on this marshy ground to see the muskrat burrow, when my sister's foot actually went through the ground! Because of this lowering water level, the outlet now lies empty with all the rocks gone and grass in it's place.

That's not the worst part. The algae is now in the middle, with duckweed, (the particles) near the edges. There are hundreds of frogs, which live near the edges and all jump into the water to escape you (we caught a few). And the bottom, oh the bottom is covered in a black sludge, with black leaves, grass, and mud. Even near the outlet now. It is nasty. The pond sadly looks dead. But I'm not going to give up trying to save it. This was my next project.

The Problem At My Grandmother's House

My grandmother lives in a sort of rural area, filled with forests, rivers, ponds, and animals. This was a perfect place to do my research. Though I didn't manage to put all these animals in my sketchbook, I saw them: Heron, Muskrat, Groundhog, Frogs (tadpoles and adults), Garter Snake, 2 fawns, 1 doe, and plenty of roadkill. It's very sad but my aunt says that she suspects some people of actually driving and trying to hit these animals on the side of the road. Why are some humans so cruel? Why do we inflict unnecessary pain? It just doesn't make sense. Once we rid ourselves of this type of cruelness and juvenile behavior, we're well on the way to a better planet. Anyway back to the point. My grandmother has a house surrounded on I believe two sides by a thin amount of trees which then become civilization. It used to only be 1 side but then a house was being built. On the other two sides there is still lots of wood, though my grandmother doesn't own it. The bad news is, the woods are being turned into more houses. How much longer until the forest is gone. That's another problem, how long until rural, isn't rural. My grandmother owns a large expanse of grassy land with a large pond at the bottom. A small outlet near the bottom used to carry water into the trees until the disaster.

Coming up next week

Hey, I am posting from my grandmother's place up in Pittsburgh. This place is a wildlife haven with it's lake and forest, so I won't be able to blog this week. But coming up next week be prepared for a story about my adventures here including trying to salvage a pond. This is the BLOMer signing out.

My Idea; A Community or Backyard Garden?

Like I said Omnivore's Dilemma made me want to start a garden, but for another reason other than the pleasure of gardening and the satisfaction of biting into a vegetable you grew. It was to run an experiment. I wanted to see if a backyard garden could produce enough vegetables to outweigh the costs of making it. How would I figure out how much each vegetable saved? I would check the prices of the actual vegetables at the store. Then whenever I grew a vegetable in my garden it would save that much money. For example, I bought radish seeds. The actual radishes at the store were $0.79 a pound. So for every pound of radishes I grew it would save $0.79. At the same time I would keep track of the costs that my garden had and then balance it against the vegetable savings. My theory is that you can save money doing a garden, due to some articles I read about how they saved money. Of course I now realize that those were talking about much larger farming. I wanted to show those of you that have space or have access to a garden that you can (or if my experiment disproved my theory) that you can't support yourself on a garden. Either way you should garden if you have the chance because it's a delightful hobby. The BLOM committee agreed to do a garden too, and then to bring in their first yield and later we'd give workshops about gardening. I told my dad of this garden idea and he liked it but he said that instead of doing a backyard garden I should do a community garden. Thus ensued a battle. My argument was that more people can garden in a backyard than at a community garden. He said that I could exclude the cost of community things and pretend it was in my backyard. I didn't like that idea. He also said that our soil was bad and that my plants would be killed by poor planting conditions and creatures and that all I'd be proving is that my backyard was not good for gardening. I retaliated by saying we could get mulch and put up chicken wire like the community garden, and that he was thinking they would die due to the time we planted in my backyard before. I was referring to the time when my dad took me and my sister around our backyard and planted seeds. Then we left them there to grow. They died of course! The plants in my mom's garden gave a small vegetable yield and the episode was basically a failure. I told him that I would care for the garden much better. Finally I decided to have two gardens: 1 in the community garden and 1 in my backyard and see which would give a better yield. On one hand my backyard garden would cost much much less than the community garden with the community garden's admission fees and gas bills ($0.44 there and $0.44 back), but the backyard garden would give a smaller yield. I am so glad I did the community garden which though it is expensive for my experiment has been a wonderful and better experience and garden than my backyard garden could have been. Later, I had to drop my backyard garden because I was so overwhelmed with school, BLOM, Organic Week, and 1 garden. Maybe next year I'll be able to do 2.

The Latest BLOM News

I now will return to the stories and history of my garden, with occasional breaks in it to update you with the latest BLOM news. Now that the Organic Week is over I (more me than BLOM) am gardening, and researching. After Watershed I wanted to continue with conducting field studies and data, doing special spots (where you sit a chosen spot in the forest for a hour or so and write poems, sketches, and your thoughts. I will be recording a sketch book. It will hold my data, or a lot of it. It will also be the start of my nature field guide. When I see an animal, I will either sketch it or take a picture of it, study it and record what it's doing and observations, then go home and tag the name. I will then add facts about it's place on the food chain, it's reproduction, and such gathered from a website. I am right now preparing a pack and finding some sites and pocket guides for these excursions. Now I return to my garden. Because I had started this blog so late and have not kept up with the events, I will now attempt to catch up to where I am now. It will be difficult since a lot has happened.

Delay

I'm sorry for the long delay. After the end of Watershed I wanted to take a week or so off to relax from the busy school year. I'm so sorry for the sudden stop of blogs bit I'll try to do a bog every other day or weekly. I will have one tomorrow however. Sorry again.

The Day After B.L.O.M Week

It is now officially the day after the end of B.L.O.M week. The last thing I had was a cup of organic local grass fed milk. By the time the week was over, I had pretty much finished all the leftover dinners, but there was a ton of bread, milk, etc.
When I look back on that week, I didn't seem to starve as I thought I would. Pennsylvania, though it's not known as the agricultural state of the nation, still produces enough organic vegetables. There was more than enough. Just two problems however. One it's expensive, (my bill came to $160 with tons of leftovers) and two you can't sustain a family on just organic local food.
I think that's what this week has taught me. It's very very good to have a organic side dish, or eat a meal part organic, but it really is not practicable for a family, like 5, to eat complete organic local food. It's expensive, and hard. That's why my final conclusion is: Eat organic or local, but don't limit yourself to it. Eat the different food chains. One thing that I mentioned, before was that their was a lack of fruits in May. That's why you have to eat non local. Organic food is very pricey, that's why you sometimes have to eat industrial. Every little bit you eat counts towards voting with your fork, for the food you believe in.
It wasn't actually very hard to eat completely organic and local. Maybe just a little when resisting foods that I liked, but I overcame them.
What I don't really like is that soon this week became my challenge rather than my help towards the environment. That's why I also want to not have a steady diet of organic local food.
Nothing really changed with me. It's just that I know that I'm helping those animals and farmers, and that I ,along with every other organic local eater, is helping the environment.
This is the BLOMer signing out.

The Last Day

Sorry I'm doing this post on Tuesday, instead of Monday. Nothing really happened that was unusual today, that I won't mention in my next post. Well, I guess dinner was unusual : Pancakes with Maple Syrup and Strawberries, all either organic, local or both.

Lunch consisted of pizza, and leftover chicken.
Breakfast was Spinach Mushroom Foccacia with Strawberries.
Snacks were the same as yesterday.
 Now read my next post to get the full details on the week.

Finished

I'm finished all my meals. More information later!

Two Days To Go

5 days down, 2 to go. I am not doing to badly, but like my mom said, I might owe that to the fact I can eat my dad's pizza, and not starve. Today for breakfast I had something different: French Toast. We used the bread mixed with eggs and other ingredients like that. Even the brown sugar was organic. I used Maple Syrup and strawberries for toppings.

Nothing out of the ordinary really happened B.L.O.M wise today.

I snacked on strawberries, yogurt, and milk.

I had pizza for lunch.

For dinner, I had Sausage, Potatoes, Garlic, Herbs, Swiss Chard, Asparagus, Baby Zucchinis, and a salad. It was all either organic local or both.

Sorry for this dull post folks.

Pete's Produce

Today was the day that I went to Pete's Produce along with my family. After quickly eating my Cheese Bread with more cheese topping it along with some swiss chard we headed off. My mom and I went to find some food for the rest of this B.L.O.M week, my father to find some healthy transplants for his garden, and my grandmother just came along. Pete's Produce didn't disappoint any of us. The first thing we saw when we walked up to the store was a huge arrangement of hanging basket flowers.

We then saw some signs that said things like how organic it was and how it supported the food bank.

 I had already been at the store, so I knew what it was like (refer to the Sticky Situation). The food was top quality, and there was more than enough local organic food. My mom agrees that it was a little bit pricey, but that's organic for you. We got food for the next few days from maple syrup to strawberries for 50 bucks. Now that I  won't be buying any more food that means this week came to about $160. That sounds crazy for 1 person, but I have a ton and I mean a ton of leftovers that I will be having along with my family for a little while later. It's still more than usual. My dad found huge beautiful transplants which were also pricey but good. We didn't get to pick strawberries but the right hand manager said that I could ask them some time later.
As we drove back from there, I saw how many farms there were, one after the other. I wondered why Chester County was a food desert (no easily accessible healthy food) when there were so many organic farms. It also made me wonder why, if these farms could sustain the county why each county had it's own farms. Then we wouldn't have to ship. Of course, that's not possible, with population, space, and climate, but it is possible in some areas.
Lunch was the pizza, and throughout the day, I had fruit yogurt, strawberries, and milk. I think that I am dehydrated and thirsty for juiciness. I haven't had any fruit apart from the strawberries and I am dying for some fruit. That's why I'm eating large amounts of those three things. I think the milk saved me from completely losing it with "fruity dehydration".


 My dad and I went to the garden (don't worry I will get to that!) and harvested a mind boggling amount of veggies. We got a bucket of lettuce, radishes, and romaine, plus some garlic.

That night I had a complete meal all from our gardens, except the strawberries and beets that were in it. Not bad for the end of spring.

Who said pizza isn't organic?

Today was the final school day of B.L.O.M. I made my final speech, and gave a treat of organic local strawberries, and local pretzels to those that signed up. We made a total of about 45 dollars, and 50 names. I am now so close to finishing my week. Just some problems. I don't think it's due to the organic food, but I have lost 3 pounds. I have had some stomach problem which is not making me hungry, and especially this week. I just haven't been hungry. I doubt it's the organic food. I mean I have as much food as if I wasn't eating organic. I don't know. But today I was very hungry when my mom showed me the organic homemade pizzas my dad made. My dad makes lots of pizzas, and so this was as usual, except he used organic flour, organic oil, organic local herbs, organic local cheese, and organic sauce. The yeast, salt, and sugar was not, but you got to cut him some slack. He added pepper without thinking, but that's also okay. He said if you take the ratio of those things compared with the others, it's very small. I also discovered another thing today. Burning food adds more taste. Take my popcorn, before the butter idea, it was bland. But burned it had a new flavor. Same thing with the pizza. It's a useful thing to know.

Also today in German class we have fake Euro's and if you get enough you get gummy bear. My friend and I (he also was part of the event) thought we had combined enough, but then I realized I couldn't have them. I convinced not to have them, and then we realized we didn't even have enough. Just thought I'd put that in there.
For breakfast I had Organic Local Toast with Organic Local Jam.
For Lunch I had Organic Local Popcorn, Organic Local Beets and Lettuce, and a sandwich with some of the chicken from the chicken salad, with some of that mayo still on it (oops).
So, now it's going quite well. I sent an email out to my community garden people to let them know about B.L.O.M and this is the BLOMer signing out.

The Sticky Situation

Sorry that I'm blogging today but I had a concert that I was performing in that was late.
Before I get to the "Sticky Situation" I want to quickly about Breakfast and Lunch.
Breakfast:  Organic Steel Cut Oats with Local honey.
Lunch: Jam and Cheese Bread (don't ask) with lettuce and beets, Yogurt, and Popcorn. My mom had found out a great way to make the popcorn taste good. We took some of our Organic Butter and melted it. We then poured the popcorn into the melted butter, and whalla! Tasty snack!
Now I can get to the Sticky Situation. We had just come from a local organic farm which our class had stopped by coming back from a field trip. Amazingly this was the same farm, I was going to visit with my parents on Saturday. They said that they would let me pick strawberries when I came. So anyway, they had given us ice creams. The ice creams were local, and had 6 ingredients. Whoops, that meant it had to be Organic. I asked my teacher through the noisy bus and she said yes through the confusion. I then ate my ice cream and boy was it sticky. It was everywhere! When I got back, I learned that the ice cream, was actually probably not organic. That just shows how confusing and how deceiving food can be. A label says one thing, a person says another, an ad says yet another. It's so hard for the consumer to know what's organic, local, industrial. etc. Anyway, I don't blame anybody, it was an accident. I was feeling a little guilty, but my teacher said something that was dead true: "You don't have to be miserable for this week". And that was true. Also it was close to 5 ingredients, so I dropped it, though feelings of guilt still stayed.
It got even worse that night. I had my leftover drum stick and sweet potato with asparagus and swiss chard. My mom had made organic chicken, with organic broccoli/carrot slaw, with organic mayonnaise (8 ingredients), and pineapple (nothing). It looked so good, and tempting, and I was dying to have some. It's true, I could take out the pineapple and then I would be able to have it, except there was the mayonnaise. It was only organic. Then there were also onions, which my mom was sort of sure were organic. My family finally talked into eating some. I didn't have the pineapple or the celery (there was also celery). I might not have gone completely pure, but that's impossible, and I'm doing so much, I can afford a few mistakes.
That's pretty much it.

The Hard Lunch

Wow today was a hard hard lunch for me. It seems that on the second day of BLOM the school has a barbecue. That means while I was eating my (nonetheless good) lunch of my leftovers of dinner, organic local lettuce, organic local yogurt, and organic local beetroot I was watching people chow on burgers, hot dogs, potato chips, watermelon, and ice cream. The burgers and the ice cream wasn't so appealing but the rest was very. To add to that we celebrated someone's birthday in class and I had to eat my organic local yogurt while I watched people eat cupcakes and cookies. It's not as hard as I make it out to be at school, but when I got home, it was a temptation to snack, even on some celery. Again this is what I was talking about snacking. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I forgot to mention my breakfast. It was organic (not so local) oats with some local (not so organic) honey. It was bland but it was okay.
When I got home hungry, my mom said that once this week ends I shouldn't eat completely unhealthily, and I agree with her, because that would defeat the purpose. It's not to go a week for a record, it's to try to eat more eco-friendly.

For dinner it was local chicken with organic local sweet potatoes and organic local herbs. Now with this chicken my mom said sheepishly that it was actually not organic but that it was all natural, the chickens were free ranging, and they were grass fed. Now from reading the Omnivore's Dilemma, I knew that some farms were not labeled Organic because they didn't manage to get certified but that didn't mean they were not using organic methods. A farm is allowed to put anything they want on their package like all natural and grass fed but they were not allowed to say organic. Now from Omnivore's Dilemma I also learned not to always trust free range, but since this was all natural, free range, and grass fed, plus it was local, I ate it. Here is a picture of another organic local chicken the rest of my family ate (my chicken would have to sustain me for the rest of my week (sort of)). Their's had potatoes which I couldn't eat, so I took a picture showing how two meals can be different but look the same. It would have helped the purpose more if my family had cooked a non organic chicken but it's good they were eating organic too. Mine is on the right, their's is on the left.

Well that's the BLOMer signing out.

My Earth Day Meals

Here were my meals when I did the Organic  Local Earth Day:

The Start Of Organic Week

This is it! This is the start of Organic Week. I managed to get so far about 30-35 people and $28 for our school garden. It's looking good for BLOM. People have goals from 10 organic meals to giving up Pop Tarts.
So what is my  goal? I am following the rules of 1. Organic       2. Local              3. Less than 5 ingredients.
For every food I eat, it must be 2 out of those 3 conditions. I know that that's not going the whole whole hog, but  it's not practical for a growing person in Pennsylvania to eat completely Local and Organic. I'm doing as much as I can. I'll give you my meal plan tomorrow, but today I'll just give you my meals today. I started by waking up full and with some nausea. Yesterday I  went to Washington D.C where I had some food which didn't suit me too well. My mom had prepared me local organic scrambled eggs, with organic local bread and organic local jam. My milk was organic and local and grass fed. Sadly, I was feeling so awful I couldn't eat much. My mom took advantage of this by using the leftover toast for my lunch sandwich. My dad and mom had gotten organic local popcorn which they popped in an popcorn machine and the microwave. Finally with this lunch, I had organic local yogurt and organic local lettuce. My meals when I got home weren't as pure as my lunch and breakfast. I  had a snack of organic local spinach and mushroom foccacia sandwich with Wisconsin (oops) Organic butter. While I was eating this dinner was being prepared.  It was Organic pasta from Italy with Organic Local asparagus and Organic Local swiss chard. It was sauteed in the Wisconsin Butter. After that I had a snack of Organic Californian strawberries and Organic Californian blueberries, along with Organic Local yogurt. So I managed to survive my first day.
Some thoughts:
I never realized how much I snacked.When I get home I usually have a snack, but I had to wait for dinner. It's hard to wait for dinner.
Pennsylvania is not the easiest place in the nation to eat locally. Unlike California and Florida, it's difficult to get produce, especially fruit.






My Organic "Local" Dinner

Sorry for the delay

I'm so sorry for not posting anything for a while. I've been very busy with my garden and with the BLOM movement. I finally on Friday found some wristbands (there is a picture here of them) and was allowed by my school (they kept delaying my speech) to give my speech. However, I wasn't allowed to do 3 minutes like they had said I could do. I had to go quicker because they didn't want me taking up the relaxation time of my fellow students. (Complete bogus I say). I gave a quick snapshot, cutting out pretty much everything, I had planned to say, and decided to just skip the rules all together. My teacher says that it was a good thing that I made it short, because he said that after 30 seconds, everyone was tuning out.
Despite all this, I got about 15 people to sign up at school, and 10 of them payed a dollar (one of them 3) to support our school garden. At the garden party on the day after Friday I managed to give out 4 more wristbands to a few garden members. Also the garden director promised to put a link of this blog out to all the garden members, so if you are reading this because of that email thank you for looking at this blog.

The Interview

Today I got interviewed along with two other fellow students buy the PA 21 news about how our school won the Green Ribbon School Award with the 77 other schools. I had just one minute to talk, but I managed to mention BLOM and if any of you readers are here because of that, I want to thank you for joining!

My Organic Earth Day

Even if no one else was doing a organic local day I was going to. So I decided to, with the food we bought at the Bryn Mawr farmer's market to have Earth Day be a organic local day. I started off with a breakfast of oatmeal. The oats had 1 ingredient: 100% rolled oats. I believe it was organic; I'm not sure. The oats were, I admit, from Minnesota, but I had on of the rules down, so I decided to eat it. With it was some local less than 5 ingredient honey which we had bought from Gentiles (a produce market). I also put on some cane sugar from (gulp) Texas. It was organic and had 1 ingredient so I ate it. One problem occurred when I was halfway through eating my oatmeal when my mom said "Oh I gave you leftover oatmeal from the fridge. It had some regular milk in it." I froze. We had put in raw local organic goat's milk, but forgot about the milk already in the oats. Luckily, the milk said that it had no rgbh. It seemed like some chemical or hormone which makes the cows produce more milk. Looking on the web that day, my mom found a website that said that the rgbh was really the only thing that you wanted to keep out of your milk, or at least one of the most important things. I know my breakfast was a half- hearted attempt and I do admit that we hadn't really prepared for this day, something that will not happen during May 22nd. My lunch was much better at staying local and organic. Arugula that was organic from California, local organic sausage with rustic bread also from California with a local organic pepper goat cheese spread on the top. It was delicious, and tasted fresh. I will upload some pictures of my meals later. That day was a day of hunger though. It feels weird, because it feels like you can't eat anything, and you are usually hungry. That can all be avoided if you plan ahead. Halfway through the day, my brother taunted that he would buy wings, my favorite food, but I stayed resilient, though it was hard. In the end he didn't even buy any wings. In between lunch and dinner I had local organic yogurt which was the free sample which the Whole Foods man gave to me. For dinner I had organic local duck egg with organic local sausage. In addition was some local organic asparagus and some California organic rustic bread with local organic pepper goat cheese spread. I have to say that that was my most local organic meal of the three. Well now I have put to the test a local organic day, and have come to the conclusion, that though it was hard, it was worth it. I kept money in my state and saved fossil fuels by eating local and bought food that was humane and healthy. Sure it was really expensive, but who says you have to buy it every day. Just once in a while. Also you won't starve like me if you buy all your food in advance. Not too far, mind you, because than the fresh food might spoil, just the weekend before the 22nd would be good. There you have it, folks.

The Farmer's Market

Hello everyone,
On this day I will talk about the experience of a very pure local organic farmer's market. It was in Bryn Mawr. My family decided to check it out, to see if it held any promise. It was a wide selection of organic food, but boy was it expensive! We bought a sausage, duck eggs, chicken eggs, asparagus, goat pepper cheese spread, goat's milk, and some fruit jelly candies. The asparagus was $6 for a bunch, the sausage $13, and the candies 20 bucks! The cheese spread was $6 dollars for just a little cup. Though all this food was expensive, it was top quality, and as I will talk about in my next post made for a delicious organic local day! So basically what this farmer's market proved was organic expensive and local even more. At first I thought that local was the same price as far away, but my mom said at this other farmer's market she went to, the organic local strawberries were much more expensive than the organic California strawberries at Trader Joes. Right now organic food is expensive, but that is because conventional food is now our main diet. If more people bought organic food and less conventional food, the cost would lower. So buying organic is for a worthy cause!
The BLOMer signing out.

Mushrooms and Herbs and Herbs and Mushrooms

To start off this food aware week, let me talk about the reason why the organic week was pushed back to May 22nd. It all started in Whole Foods. I had gone there, knowing it was an organic food place, to find what food was available that was in season and was organic. Well from a glance around the vegetable aisles, a lot was organic, but local? Well that was a problem. There was oranges from California, bananas from Florida, and even these love beets from England! Anyway, it didn't look too good. I went and asked the manager what they had that was local and organic. She called up a assistant, and he was very overjoyed that I was doing this movement. He first took me to the vegetables.
" So what's local and organic here"? I asked.
" Ummm..." was his reply for, how could there be anything, when it was so cold and all the farm stands were closed? Finally he found something.
" Oh those things over there, mushrooms and herbs" he said.
Mushrooms and herbs. That was it. Just great.
Then he took me over to the meat counter and the man there helped me see what was local and organic. Pretty much everything was organic, and a good deal was local, but the price! Wow. $32 for 1 pound of grade 4 organic beef. That's a lot of money. If that doesn't prove how expensive organic food is, then I don't know what does. It's sad, for those who can't afford it, are not therefore getting the best quality food for them and their environment.
Afterwards he took me to the dairy and eggs section. Not bad, there was a ton of yogurt from farms like Seven Stars, and eggs. There was one or two brands of local organic milk, but I don't think any cheese, which makes no sense considering it's just milk transformed. A man who was helping me in this section gave me a free sample of yogurt, and it was delicious!
Besides what I just mentioned there was nothing else. Most of the farm stands were not open yet, except for some which  I will mention tomorrow so it did not look good for organic, local week. It is so hard to get food which is local and organic that it is not a wonder why people can't give up the luxuries of getting food any season. We walk into a store and expect our fruit to be there. That is what has happened over the years due to transportation.
Here was my menu for Earth Week:
Sunday and Monday Dinner- Roast Chicken with mushroom and herbs
Tuesday and Wednesday- Omelet and Sausage with mushroom and herbs
Thursday and Friday- Homemade bread cheese breads with herbs
Saturday- Omelets with mushrooms and herbs
Pretty bad huh? But not only that. Expensive huh? It's just not possible for a middle class family of five to have a complete diet of organic local food. It's too expensive.
When I told the BLOM committee about my meal, my sarcastic friend said " Well, our menu will be one day mushroom and herbs, and the next herbs and mushrooms." And he was right. So Earth Week was postponed.

Urgent Announcement!!!

I am so so so so sorry but there has been a change of plan for the Earth Week! Earth Week has been postponed until May 22nd until May 28nd the reason why will be on my next post. This week I was going to get people to sign up and be aware of their food, but that was also postponed to next week because in my class I have been very busy preparing for an Earth Fest this Friday. My class is doing presentations about why our school is green, because I'm proud to say that we are one of the 78 schools in the nation to be awarded the Green Ribbon School award. The GRS is basically a competitionwhere schools try to meet the requirements of being "Green". Because we won we are hard pressed to do well during this Earth Fest. Between this and a holiday on Tuesday, and a field trip on Thursday I had no time to present though at Earth Fest BLOM is going to be presented (It was also mentioned in the GRS application essay). So that's it. If any of you have done this Earth Week of Organic food you can either continue, stop and finish it during May 22nd, or do it both times. Thanks and sorry again!

BLOM's First Event

Hey Everyone,
Earth Day starts BLOM's First Event. First to how it started. As you know, after reading the Omnivore's Dilemma, I wanted to do something with the knowledge I now had. My lunch group (I guess you could call them the BLOM committee) and I had started talking regularly about food. We decided to start a movement. We didn't know what to call it. BLOG (Big Local Organic Garden) was the one that was our best idea, but I disagreed. Our Movement was about other stuff besides gardens so I decided with BLOM. After that, (or rather before we had even had a name) we came up with an idea for an organic event. This was going to be based on Earth Day and the week after that day. It was convenient that Earth Day was on a Sunday so it would start off the week (I don't understand why Monday isn't the first day of a week). It would be a week of just organic, local, sustainable meals. Here were the rules:
1. All food must be local, organic, sustainable, and/or homemade.
2. Food must come from within 150 miles max. though it would be nice if it was within 50 miles.
3.Don't eat food with more than 5 ingredients or ingredients you don't know.
4. If you shop in a supermarket, stick to the outside perimeter of the supermarket.
That was pretty much it. We had at first wanted local to be any bordering state, but we realized with our teachers' help that that is a little to far. Another big change was made when we realized that it's hard for people to do it. Let's face it, pure organic food's pricey and sometimes difficult to attain. I will later talk of a farmer's market which was extremely expensive! The only way to lower the price of organic food is if it becomes more common and more people buy it. So anyway, because it would be difficult to do a week of all those rules for people we decided to say that whatever you can manage you can do. Even if it's one meal four times in the week that's good enough. Hopefully those that do BLOM will like eating organically and will do it more in the rest of the year.
So who's going to do this, some people might look skeptically on this, people like to get something out of it, or like to feel a part of something. Because of that we want to have wrist bands of some sort with BLOM on one side and the person would write their goal on the other.
We were trying to get the whole school to do it. Along the way sometimes I would give speeches at lunch about food, and try maybe to hold conferences. I will post a fact or two on this blog every day of this week. I told people about this at an environmental conference; try to spread it yourself.

Earth Day

Hey everyone it's Earth Day! This will be the start of your learning about what you eat and where your food comes from. To start us off for Earth Day, I have composed a poem, which is pretty bad, but rhymes.
It's called What You Can Do For Earth Day:
Plant a tree,
Don't kill a bee,
Watch the animals go,
Watch some plants grow,
There are so many things you can do,
You just never know.

Questions?

Hey Guys,
If any of you have any questions about gardening or anything that I mentioned, ask me in the comment section. Now, I am a begginer in gardening and Organicness so I may not be able to answer your question off the top of my head, but I'll look into it on a website. I won't site my sources unless I thought you'd want to read more on the site, but I do not have a claim to the credit. I will just find the answer the site will be the answerer.

The History of my Garden

Right now there are two things going on in BLOM. My event for Earth Day or should I say Earth Week and my start to organic gardening. I will speak of the Earth Day event later and commence with my narrative on gardening ( a bit of Sherlock Holmes literature right there). Both this event and this garden were inspired by a book called Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen. My whole class read it (the junior edition of course) and boy did it make me open my eyes to what I'm eating. I mean I haven't become vegetarian and I might have the occasional fast food or restaurant(though I haven't had McDonald's or Wendy's for a couple of months) but I have become very aware of what I eat. A few things that have happened since reading the book: 1. I remember a 1 hour drive for an away game with my squash team where I spent quite a lot of the trip there talking about the amount of corn in everything. Believe me if you read the Omnivore's Dilemma you'll know what I'm talking about. There is corn in everything from food (almost all processed food has either corn or soybean in it)to explosives and plastic. It's quite scary how much corn there is and how it can affect us. Maybe when I don't have a lot to blog about I'll do a whole post on corn. 2. I used to have whole lunch talks about food with my lunch group. You guys who were there can attest to that. We'd sometimes sit there and read the labels of food to see if we could find corn. I know that sounds weird but we were interested. 3. My mom has been asking me is this sustainable or industrial? and I'll answer. We already eat a lot of of organic food though that's not completely environmentally friendly (during Earth Week I'll talk about that). Though not over zealously I have been searching for some local food stands in my area. 4. Finally my Earth Week and my garden. In the last part of Omnivore's Dilemma (the book is broken into the four food chains: Industrial, Organic, Local Sustainable, and Hunting Gathering method)Michael Pollan talks about hunting, gathering, and growing. This growing part really appealed to me because I have always wanted a garden (you'll hear about my family's failed attempt at gardening). That started my garden idea and just like the plant, the seed in my head grew into an action. I've got to go to bed now, and I have a lot to catch you up on. The BLOMer signing out.(I've always wanted to say that).

Hello everyone, I have started my first blog and am calling it The Big Local Organic Movement, in other words BLOM. Since being in an environmental education integrated program I have really become interested in trying to preserve this earth, so this blog will be about that, plus it will be shared by my experiences in starting my own garden in a community garden. Please post comments if you would like to. Now I have great pleasure in introducing The Big Local Organic Movement to the blogosphere!