More BPAwful news

Hello garden buddies!
More bad news on the BPA front. BPAs (Bisphenol A) has been found in most canned foods and drinks. Pretty much anything we wrap up in metal. Not a chemist, and I won't pretend to be--but I will say that studies show that pregnant women who take in a lot of BPAs may negatively impact the health and development of their baby. Suck-o. It might not cause problems, but it is worth thinking about.
This got me thinking about convenience foods in general, and what makes our hearts skip a beat when we walk through the grocery store aisles. Progress. Interesting idea. Seems like sometimes, we are better off staying closer to the dirt--the more steps between the dirt and our bellies, the more things to go wrong. And that's lame. Our hope would be that a couple of people read about how we are doing our little garden, how much produce we are getting out of it, how clueless we are, and think maybe they should give it a shot too. Why let big veggie have the chance to control what you are eating? BPAs, pesticides, underpaid workers, and big veggie putting small farmers out of business don't need to worry you anymore when you take that little bit of money from Green Giant and keep it in your pocket.
If you want more information about BPAs, you can read about it here: http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/cancer/articles/2010/05/19/health-buzz-bpa-lurks-in-most-canned-foods-study-finds.html

Happy Planting!
D&A

Fabulous florals

Happy Monday to everyone!
It's a beautiful day here in the great state of Minnesota, and we are happy that the birds are singing, the plants are sprouting, and summer vacation is fast approaching! We have been behind on our posts for the past few weeks, as you may have noticed. My handsome husband the law student was getting through his finals and getting re-accustomed to having to work every day (his part time research assistant job becomes full time this summer, which is awesome). In the midst of the busiest time of the school year, my final projects for my class work for my masters, Desmond starting his new job, and his finals, we decided to buy our house. Good timing, Jensons. We have signed our purchase agreement and we are really pumped to close in a few short weeks. Needless to say, we have been spending a lot of time busting stress by gardening, not by writing about it.
Here are some pictures of our beautiful flower beds. When we first moved in, our flower beds were full of three things: weeds, hostas, and daylilies. For those of your who don't know, Hostas and daylilies are really just pretty weeds: Control your plantings or they will go out of control! Our garden had lost control, but we have now planted a lot of beautiful perennials: roses, coralbells, daisies, black-eyed susans, and sedum. There is lots of other stuff that we don't know the name of, and a few things we just planted this year.

We have been burned by dead flowers before. Here are some tips:
1. Perennials come back. Annuals don't. Annuals work well for container plants, BUT you will need to buy a new one each year. We suggest you spend a bit more for the perennials.
2. Pay attention to the little tag thing: light vs. shade, water a lot vs. no water--if you plant stuff in the wrong spot or water too much or too little, they will die and you will be sad.
3. Consider height and color. A tall plant in front of a short plant will create a lot of shade.
4. Some stores, like Lowe's, take back plants for a year if they die. A good investment for those of us that make lots of mistakes (like me)....



We are pretty happy with our outdoor progress, and we can't wait to start bringing you more of our indoor progress as we work hard to make our 1940 bungalow into the energy efficient and beautiful home of our dreams!! Soon enough we will be wielding hammers as often as a spade, and we couldn't be more thrilled!

Happy Gardening,
Allison (and Desmond)

Progress...

Hello Garden Enthusiasts,

It has been a while since we last gave you a glimpse at our garden. It has been a busy few weeks. We are in the process of buying the house that we are currently renting. The closing will be coming up later this summer but we are under contract right now. We are very excited but as you can imagine it has been a very consuming process so we haven't had a chance to update the blog. Without further ado, here are some pictures.

Here's an overview of the whole vegetable garden. Everything is up and some of it is getting pretty big. The potatoes are off to a great start. The onions are looking very healthy. Some of the radishes have already been harvested.

Here's another view of the veggies. You can see some height in this picture. The herbs are in the front on the left. The carrots are in the foreground. They're still small but eventually they'll be delicious. The radishes are behind them on the right. The onion stems are behind the radishes on the right. The potatoes can be seen in the back in the center and the salad greens are in the back on the left.

We're less than a mile from the Mississippi River and as a result we have very sandy soil. Root vegetables like radishes and potatoes do very well in our garden. We had a very warm early spring so we were able to get most of our seeds in early. We are hoping to have a bumper crop this fall. Hopefully the rest of the summer is kind as well.


Holy Rhubarb! It's a well known fact that rhubarb, once established, is really easy to grow. We don't even make an effort to water ours. There are actually four separate plants in there. I believe last year we only had three. One plant went to seed while we were away for a weekend. If you don't want more rhubarb make sure to remove the tops once you see buds. We made some rhubarb crisp a few weeks ago with some of the nicer stalks. The recipe will be coming soon.

We'll try to give you an update again very soon but hopefully these pictures will tide you over. Enjoy the weather!

-D&A

Sprouts!

I will have to add pictures later, but for those truly interested in the status of our garden:
Radishes have sprouted. Cute little rows of little leaves.
Cabbage has sprouted. I have found a whole mess of cabbage recipes that I am dying to try, so I am excited!
Romaine and arugula are both sprouting up nicely.
Should be delicious over at casa Jenson starting shortly!
Also, we are hoping to have a big announcement for you all reading at home in the next few days. Normally, when people in their twenties say things like "big announcement," I know you all assume the same thing, so I will just go ahead and let you know that I am absolutely not pregnant. The belly is strictly from my deep love of all things food.

Question to all of you gardeners

I love basil. I love it all the time. I have tried to plant it in sunny spots and water it daily and give it worm juice for food (my grandpa is a worm juice farmer) SO WHY DOES MY BASIL KEEP DYING? Help me, please! I just found a new pesto recipe, and I am a good share-r....

Happy Friday!
Allison

Aaaaaaaaaaand we're off!

Garden is in! Not all the way, of course: we still need to put in the cucumbers, tomatoes, zuchinni, squash, and eggplant. However, we dug around in the dirt for a few hours on Saturday and Sunday. It took a little extra time, because we had to rip out all of these little tiny trees that had apparently planted themselves in our garden over the winter. After getting the trees and the weeds out and grating our the soil, we were ready to plant. Now, we had treated the soil by adding in some compost a few weeks ago. Tedious, but now it's done!
So far, we have planted: broccoli, onions, kale, potatoes (both red and white, but no sweet potatoes, unfortunately), some more herbs, romaine lettuce, arugula, cabbage, spinach, radishes, and carrots.
And, I might add, looking cute and like it will be delicious.

Oh, and check out our really cool looking rhubarb:


Wahoo!
The Jensons

Big endeavors for jardin de Jenson

So, as you may know, this garden thing is in part an effort to green up a little bit, and an effort on Allison's part to channel Laura Ingalls Wilder. But, most of all, we wanted to save money. You know how it is: the economy, the single income thing, the price of food, and so on.
Then, we had a brilliant idea: why just save money when we could MAKE money off of our garden??
Desmond is using his deep knowledge of all things science-y (thank you, Wikipedia, for the free education on everything), and Allison will be managing our new crop: corn. We are plowing up everything we can and just growing corn. Grass? out. Trees? out. Herbs, flowers? out, out. Veggies? Well, if it's corn, it's in. Otherwise, out. We will be plowing up the concrete if the landlord okays it, and then: corn driveway.
Here are some of the many things we will be making with our corn; popcorn, delicious movie treat; cornmeal, mmmm cornbread; Corn starch, for thicker gravy; Xanthan gum, for spelling bees. Sorbitol, food additive to many of our favorite non-expiring treats; Hominy, corn soaked in lye, yum; Maltodextrine, no explaination needed; High fructose corn syrup, for the people in those commercials; Corn mash, for our moonshine makin' side business; Gum arabic, which I am pretty sure is in Snapple; Dextrose, which you probably use with the maltodextrine; Corn cob pipes, in case Frosty comes to town; tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol, used to make paint and varnish (who knew?); monosodium glutamate, better known as MSG; and ethanol, which makes me feel better about my Escalade.
Hmmm... I don't know if we have a future in satire. Hopefully, Big Veggie doesn't find out about our lil blog.

All April fools joking aside, we both love delicious corn on the cob in the summer, but we choose to get it from the farmer's market, because it isn't the best for your soil. Interesting to learn what all shows up in the stuff we now consider food, isn't it?
Did you hear/ see any truly hilarious April fools jokes today?

Wishing you a corn by-product free evening,
the Jensons

Awesome image by Natalie Dee.