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EXCERPTS FROM Container Gardening for Health: The 12 Most Important Fruits and Vegetables for Your Organic GardenISBN: 0978629329
"...Anyone who has children knows they go through phases where they will only eat one food or one group of foods. Since the government is not in your dining room calculating how many pounds of strawberries your tot has eaten this week, they cannot tell you if she has consumed too much of a certain pesticide. The government can tell you what foods have chemical residue even after they have been washed and prepared for eating. In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the US Food and Drug Administration conducted nearly 43,000 tests on produce samples from 2000-2004. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) analyzed this data and created a simulation of thousands of consumers eating high and low pesticide diets... Their study showed people can lower their pesticide exposure by almost 90 percent by avoiding the top twelve most contaminated fruits and vegetables and eating the least contaminated instead.(5) They nicknamed this list of foods the dirty dozen. As of June 2007, the dirty dozen is as follows:
Peaches
Apples
Sweet Bell Peppers
Celery
Nectarines
Strawberries
Cherries
Lettuce
Grapes, Imported
Pears
Spinach
Potatoes
Author's Note Updates to this list are provided here on the Gourmet Gardener's website.
Unfortunately, my kids really like to eat the foods at the top of the EWG's list. The dirty dozen includes a lot of fruits such as strawberries, peaches, nectarines, cherries, and apples -- all foods that my children prefer over other fruits and vegetables. My kids are picky enough! While I don't want them to eat pesticides with their fruit, neither am I content to further limit their diets from the wholesome produce they are most likely to eat.
After talking with other parents, I realized we all wanted an inexpensive way to feed our children more foods with less pesticide residue. None of us had time and few of us had the space to grow large gardens. I began researching the problem and soon realized a family's intake of pesticides could be substantially reduced by selecting their favorite foods from the EWG's Dirty Dozen list and growing these in containers or small space gardens.
An average strawberry plant, for example, produces 1 quart of strawberries. Just a few pots hanging from your patio can keep you in strawberries for most of the year. An ever expanding variety of dwarf fruit trees make it possible to grow cherries, peaches, nectarines, and apples in many regions outside the typical grow zones.
Growing a few pots of your family's favorite fruits and vegetables is not only healthy, it's enjoyable. Watching fruit ripen on the vine provides almost unbearable excitement for small children. There are many lessons to teach children through gardening as well. Patience and long term gratifi cation are at the top of this list.
So that is what this book is about: growing fruits and vegetables for your family using only organic pesticides and fertilizers. You'll find it takes very little time or space and, in addition to peace of mind, you'll gain a fun activity for the whole family.
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"Container Gardening for Health" is a how-to book about growing the "Dirty Dozen." Here's the table of contents:
Contents
List of Figures : 8
Introduction : 9
1. Chemical Residue on Your Food : 11
2. Peaches and Nectarines : 15
3. The Forbidden Apple : 23
4. Sweet Bell Peppers : 31
5. Celery : 35
6. Strawberries, Mother Nature's Candy : 39
7. Cherries : 47
8. Lettuce : 51
9. Grapes : 55
10. Pears : 61
11. Spinach : 65
12. Potatoes : 71
13. Primary Pesticides Found On the Dirty Dozen : 77
14. Pests and Diseases : 83
Raised Growing Beds : 99
Selected Resources/Bibliography : 100
Glossary : 103
Index : 107
About the Author : 111
References:
1. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR, An agency of the U.S. Departmentof Health and Human Services), Public Health Statement for DDT, DDE, and DDD, (September 2002), section 1.6, http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofi les/phs35.html.
2. If you would like to read about the distinctions of pesticides in greater detail than I off er in this book, go to this website: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/about/types.htm.
3. Read the Total Diet Study at: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/tds-toc.html
4. National Research Council, Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children, (1988), 359-363.
5. http://www.ewg.org/sites/foodnews/methodology.php
copyright 2009 Barbara Barker -- All rights reserved
"There are a number of books on bookstore shelves these days that offer to help us become container gardeners. Barker's book,
however, is unique, for she combines the information you need to know about gardening in containers with what you need to know to
protect your food supply. Most of us don't have a great deal of extra time on our hands these days, so concentrating our efforts on replacing
at least some of the "dirty dozen" with our own pesticide-free fruits and vegetables makes very good sense."Susan Wittig Albert, Ph.D., Editor,
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The Gourmet Gardener™
Phone us: 386-362-9089
Fax us: 407-650-2691
e-mail us:
gginfo@windstream.net
Dear Gourmet Gardener,
Welcome to the
Gourmet Gardener™ Catalogue
! Welcome to another year of living life well. While we at The Gourmet Gardener™
continue in our mission to provide you with gourmet choices of herb, vegetable, and edible flowers, our emphasis this
year has switched to providing information instead of plants. We are especially thrilled to announce the publication
of Container Gardening for Health: The 12 Most Important Fruits & Vegetables for Your Organic Garden. As
many of you have read in my BLOG, I am committed to gardening organically and inexpensively. Conversations
with friends and family led me to understand there is a strong interest in affordable, clean, delicious food. Many people
want to eat organic food, but can't afford to buy it in the grocery store. Others would like to grow their own food organically,
but don't have the space or time for large gardens. With these limitations in mind, I researched a practical way to
garden with the biggest impact on reducing pesticide consumption for entire families. Using USDA data of the foods with the
most pesticide residue, home gardeners can focus their efforts on growing foods with the highest impact on their diets.
Dubbed "The Dirty Dozen" by the Environmental Working Group, these foods were washed and prepared for eating and STILL contained pesticide
residues. You need not grow all the food from the Dirty Dozen list. Just focus on those foods you eat most often. To make
health gardening especially convenient, I focused on gardening in containers. Whether you have a rooftop garden or a small patio,
you can still reduce your family's pesticide debt by growing a few pots of strawberries and lettuce or a couple fruit trees. Better yet, you
will enjoy the delicious taste of fresh food from your garden.
We want to know more about your garden. Send us a photos and we will post them on this website.
Here's to a Happy, Healthy Garden.
Sincerely, Barbara Barker and all of us at The Gourmet Gardener™
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