Gardening for Health

Gardening is an Antidote for Empty Shelves

By Maria Price

My most recent trip to my local grocery store was met with shock and surprise. The entire produce department was practically empty with barren shelves. For a moment I felt like I was in a sci-fi movie. Other products were depleted as well. Granted, not every grocery store is like this but this was a major chain.

It brought to mind the endless food lines I’ve seen in Anne Arundel County, Baltimore and other parts of our abundant country. This is the time for slowing down and rethinking the basics of life.

I am personally comforted by the fact that I have two freezers full of vegetables from my garden.

As Americans, we have become rather “soft” and don’t worry about where our food comes from. I would like to encourage people to be more independent and grow whatever food you can. It’s educational, fun and leads to better health.

I welcome the onslaught of seed catalogs that come to my house this time of year. I know not everybody has land to garden on but there are ways to grow vegetables in containers with grow lights or maybe find somebody to partner with where you can grow some vegetables together.

Lettuce and spring greens are easy to grow in a container. You’d be amazed at how much lettuce you can grow in a pot and have a little salad with a few herbs tucked in between the lettuce plants. Burpee (burpee.com) offers some great new varieties. Their ‘Merlin’ hybrid cucumber matures in 50 days. The crispy cucumbers are 5 to 7 inches, long vining with good disease resistance and then produces one to two fruits per node every few days. It is an all female-flowering type that requires no pollination for fruiting.

A new pepper called the ‘Nibbler’ hybrid series produces seedless 4-inch bright red and yellow peppers. They also have a new potted tomato called ‘Veranda Red Hybrid’. It is a determinate, container-friendly tomato. It is a dwarf cherry bush tomato ready in 55 to 60 days. If you sow the seeds in April, you’ll be picking tomatoes by mid-July.

Burpee also has a new lettuce called ‘Dynamite’ which matures in 65 days. It has a sweet flavor and lots of beta-carotene with the unprecedented blight resistance. It also fends off aphids, lettuce mosaic virus and water mold.

All of these plants can be grown in an 18- to 20-inch pot and guarantee yourself a tasty salad when shelves might be bare again.