Food

Gardening Indoors- Easy and Organic

Gardening indoors is not so much an alternative to outdoor gardening, but rather another way to garden. You work in smaller spaces and will have fewer problems than your outdoor plots, and you can do [ … ]

Food

The Synthetic Path to Ruin

If you watch a lot of commercial television or listen to the radio several hours a day, you probably have your fair share of commercials that you love to hate. It seems that some stations and networks tend to run the same annoying messages a dozen or more times a day, sometimes two or three times during the same program. If you’re anything like me, you eventually just tune them out, mute the sound, or change the station. [ … ]

Food

Growing Bountiful Blueberries

Blueberries are high in vitamin C and are very versatile; they make great pies, preserves, juice, or can be eaten right from the bush. Blueberries are among the easiest berries to grow, but soil preparation is crucial to a good crop. They grow best in sandy, well-drained soil rich in organic material with a pH level between 4.0 and 5.2. Soil should be prepared well in advance, at least two weeks before planting your bushes, but some say that preparing the season before is best. [ … ]

Food

Composting in Winter

In the northern hemisphere, November sprawls across the border of autumn and winter like a damp gray blanket. While the eleventh month brings a few pleasant days to us in North Carolina, it also carries stretches of time burdened by chilly winds and cold rains. It’s enough to make an old fellow want to pull the comforter up to his furry chin and stay in bed to ride out the whole sloppy mess. Bats, bears, hedgehogs, squirrels, chipmunks, and a host of other critters are either… [ … ]

Food

The Horror of Crystalline Fructose

As I sit down to write this column, Halloween is right around the corner. Strolling through my neighborhood, I’ve noticed a wide variety of goblins, ghouls, and tombstones decorating the lawns. In a Halloween frame of mind, I’d like to suggest a plot for a future horror movie. Imagine a place where the population receives about a quarter of their calories from a poison that is disguised as food. The overlords of this society have not only labeled this toxic substance “generally safe”…. [ … ]

Food

Forget Spring Cleaning: Fall Chores for a Great Garden Next Year

We have now passed the mid-point of October. With the arrival of October 19, only 73 days remain before your 2011 calendar becomes obsolete. While I’ll still be growing broccoli, collards, carrots, and some other hardy crops for a few more months here in North Carolina, most of my friends up north are preparing to shut things down for the season. With that in mind, I thought today might be a good time to mention a few things you can accomplish around this time of year… [ … ]

Food

Grow Roses the Old-Fashioned Way

Roses are beautiful additions to any garden, and the hips and petals can be eaten for their vitamin C content and flavor. My grandmother and great-grandmother’s roses have always intrigued me, as they were always very beautiful. Now that I have my own home, I want to propagate some of my grandmother’s roses in my own garden. We will learn how together! [ … ]

Food

Growing a Low-Carb Garden

Many of us have chosen to change our eating habits from traditional western fare to a low-carb/high-protein diet. Whether it is for weight loss or better health – or both – this type of eating is becoming more popular. So this session we will talk about planting a low-carb garden. So what shall we plant in our low-carb garden? As it is cooling off, let’s start with cool-weather plants. [ … ]

Food

The Not Simple, Not Natural Story of High Fructose Corn Syrup

The marketing mavens who work for the Corn Refiners Association have spent a bundle of money trying to convince the public that “high fructose corn syrup is simply a kind of corn sugar.” Anyone who has ever savored a batch of freshly picked sweet corn can testify that the tender kernels might just deliver a tasty liquid that could be boiled down to make a healthy and delicious syrup. If you think of it that way, high fructose corn syrup sounds like a simple, natural…
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