There’s no better way to eat locally than to grow your own food. Maintaining a home greenhouse lets you do that all year round. With a home greenhouse kit, installing and maintaining a greenhouse has never been easier. Because I’m such a huge fan of growing your own and eating local, I’ve teamed up with Emerald Kingdom Greenhouse this holiday season to highlight the benefits of having your own greenhouse. Maybe it’s time to put a home greenhouse kit on your Christmas list!

Why Put a Home Greenhouse Kit on Your Christmas List?

1) Go Organic More Easily

Growing your own food gives you the power to produce organic fruits and vegetables that aren’t contaminated by toxic pesticides and herbicides. It’s easier to protect your plants from infestations from bugs like Japanese beetles, tent caterpillars, locusts, spider mites, slugs, and other pests, as well.

Plus, when you’re able to create an ideal growing environment for your plants, with healthy soil and just the right amount of irrigation, additional fertilizers, which may be full of excess chemicals, may not be required.

2)Eat Locally Grown Food 12 Months a Year

A big benefit of having your own greenhouse is that you can grow many of your favorite vegetables 12 months a year. As long as you maintain the conditions inside the greenhouse that your plants require, you should be able to keep your greenhouse producing. Greenhouses enable you to garden 12 months a year, in good weather and bad.

3)Keep Your Plants Safe From the Elements

One of the great advantages of greenhouses is that they keep your plants safe from the elements. This is particularly useful if you live somewhere where the weather hits extremes, with very hot or cold temperatures, or even lots of winds or regular hailstones.

Apart from just generally keeping plants inside a greenhouse protected, this type of structure is also handy when you want to transplant some of your yard’s plants or grow new ones from seedlings or other small sizes. When they have been moved or are very young, plants can struggle to survive if meteorological events like dust storms, blizzards, and high winds come along and erode the soil and buffer them about too much, so this protection can make a huge difference. It will also save you from having to race home from another location to try and cover them up if the weather changes!

4)Create the Optimum Growing Environment

Another reason to utilize a greenhouse is that doing so gives your plants the optimum growing environment, regardless of the time of year. When you use these structures, you can typically set the temperature, light, feeding, and soil conditions to the ideal levels, even if the conditions outside are completely different.

When you can have control over these factors, it means you can plant new crops any time you’d like, rather than having to wait for a particular season. Ideal conditions also help fragile or smaller plants to grow more quickly, while giving you the chance to grow plants which normally aren’t found in your region because they’re not sustained by your local climate. Compost works great in the greenhouse, too.

NOTE: You can put a small home greenhouse like the one pictured above in the middle of an existing garden if you need to protect or cultivate plants that aren’t “ready for primetime” in the main garden yet.

5)Grow Flowers and Houseplants for Your Home and Yard, Even in the Winter Months

If you prefer to grow flowers and houseplants rather than food, a home greenhouse still does the trick. When you add a greenhouse to your backyard, you can quickly start building up your collection of plants, by propagating cuttings from existing plants, sowing seeds in flats you can transfer to pots or the garden, and cultivating exotic species like orchids and roses that might not otherwise survive outside the protection of the greenhouse. You’ll enjoy having a botanical paradise to admire in the depths of winter!

6)Enjoy Gardening Year Round, and Any Time of Day or Night

If you’re one of those people who loves to garden and hates to put away your tools when the bad weather sets in, a greenhouse lets you indulge your favorite hobby no matter what the weather. You don’t have to stop gardening when the sun sets either. Just string some lights in your greenhouse and keep going.

7)Make New Friends

Gardeners are a sociable lot! You could end up making lots of new friends or traveling to more interesting destinations if you join gardening clubs and associations as a result of your new passion for greenhouse gardening.

8)Develop a New, Healthy Hobby

If you haven’t started gardening yet, take it up as a new hobby. Even if you don’t think you have a green thumb or have never done any gardening at all before, you may find that once you have a greenhouse, this all changes.

Here’s another benefit: being active bending, digging, and otherwise moving about in your garden throughout the year will help you stay fit and get you out of your chair or off the couch.

Plus, it’s really fun to watch a seed turn into a tomato or a big head of lettuce!

9)Create a Soothing Place to Relax

You can get a home greenhouse kit that’s small and devoted only to plants. Or, get one that’s a little bigger so you can set aside a corner as a place to relax and de-stress. Put in a comfortable chair, some of your favorite gardening books, a journal and an electric kettle so you can make yourself a cup of tea. Ahhhh…

Ready to Get Started? 

You can probably find the home greenhouse kit that’s perfect for you at Emerald Greenhouse Kingdom. Let me know if you decide to put one up. Send pictures!

NOTE: Partners enable us to bring you the expert content you need to live the greener life you want. All editorial opinions remain our own. Thanks!

The post 9 Good Reasons to Put a Home Greenhouse Kit on Your Christmas List appeared first on Big Green Purse.

On the pocket book side, according to this nifty info graphic from elocal.com, “if the people of an average American
city were to shift just 10% of their spending from chains to local businesses, it
would bring an additional $235 million per year to the community’s economy.” How? By keeping profits at home rather than sending them abroad. Plus, favoring local stores keeps neighborhoods vibrant. I see this in my own town, where our mainstreet bustles with boutique shops that offer one-of-a-kind treasures, the post office and hardware store provide the basics, and the restaurants support shoppers and shop keepers alike. If we didn’t have local stores, our downtown would be a dead end: bleak, dreary, and drab.

On the environmental side, it turns out that buying products made locally helps reduce the climate change impact associated with shipping goods made in China or India half way around the world. We’ve gotten used to the idea of buying food produced locally – it tastes better, is fresher, and is often treated with fewer chemicals and preservatives because it goes from farm to farmers market to table in short order. Buying locally made clothes, crafts, and housewares may have the same benefits: better quality, more unique characteristics, and plus, it’s fun to know who made the items you buy.

Wondering where you can find items on your shopping list that are sold by local stores or made locally? Plug your zip code into this cool “finder” at American Express, grab your reusable shopping bags, and go!

The post Shop Local on Small Business Saturday…and Every Day appeared first on Big Green Purse.

In honor of national Food Day, I’d like to suggest 10 ways we can revamp our food system to make it healthier for people and the planet, and more delicious, too! What do YOU think we should do?

1) Help more farmers grow organic food. Right now, U.S. agriculture policy provides price supports and subsidies to farmers who use pesticides and insecticides – and penalizes those who don’t.  Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

2) Charge more for food that’s grown using pesticides and herbicides. Organic food can cost as much as 30% more than food that’s been raised using all kinds of chemicals that pollute our air and water and make us sick. Organic food is more expensive because there’s less of it, and it’s more labor intensive to grow because (see 1 above) organic farmers don’t get paid not to use pesticides and herbicides. Given the cost to society of cleaning up the environmental and human health problems created by pesticide use, shouldn’t there be a “HEP” (health/environment penalty) imposed on conventional food that would help bring its price more inline with the price of organics? 

3) Require all restaurants to compost food. In fact, not just restaurants, but hospitals, government buildings, school cafeterias – any institutions that throw away massive amounts of food — should be required to compost food waste rather than throw it away, turning it into organic fertilizer for use locally. FYI, you could be composting your own kitchen waste, too!

4) Define “natural.” A lot of food is marketed as natural, even though it’s been highly processed, is overpackaged, and doesn’t bear one iota of resemblance to the food it originally came from. Working with biologists and botanists, let’s define what “natural” really means – and prohibit flagrant misuse of the word by marketers who know we want to eat natural food, even if that’s not what they’re selling.

5) Stop wrapping food in plastic. Plastic wrap, plastic boxes, plastic clam shells, plastic bags, plastic bottles: these days, it’s hard to find food that’s NOT wrapped in plastic. What’s the big deal? Plastic doesn’t biodegrade, and there’s some research indicating that chemicals in the plastic can leach into the food itself. How can you avoid the plastic? Buy fresh food, fill your own safe containers from bulk food bins, and choose food packaged in glass jars or wrapped in paper.

6) Get rid of BPA in the lining of canned foods. Bisphenyl-A has been linked to a variety of health disorders. This new study suggests that pregnant women exposed to BPA could give birth to girls with behavior disorders. It’s time to ban the use of BPA in any food container, including soda cans, baby bottles, and plastic food containers.

7) Make cooking a required class for all high school students. When I was growing up, girls in middle school were required to take “home economics” (the boys got away with “shop”). These days, both of those classes are optional – which means many kids opt out. Yet I’d argue that one of the reasons why fast food is so popular is because so many people don’t actually know how to cook. Why not make cooking class a requirement in senior year of high school, regardless of whether kids are heading off to college or to live on their own? The semester-long curriculum would focus on nutrition, locally grown food, organic agriculture, and composting, along with how to make a decent omelette or a delicious salad.

8) Prepare more of your own food. If you don’t know how, here are a few good cookbooks to get you started.

 9) Grow your own. If you have a pot, a patch of sun, and a patio, you can grow cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and herbs. With a 10×10 plot of land and some good compost, you can grow plenty more. These 10 tips will get you going.

10) Sit down at the table when you eat. Preferably, with friends or family. One of the reasons we may not mind eating junky food so much is that we don’t give ourselves enough time to enjoy our meals. If you get up a few minutes earlier, can you actually eat a nice breakfast instead of snarfing down some kind of McMuffin on the run? If you get your kids and spouse or partner involved in the cooking, can you all pull together a meal of what Food Day sponsor the Center for Science in the Public Interest calls “real” food? Yes, time is of the essence. But delicious food is the very essence of life!

Surely you must have other ideas for ways we can make our food system better for us and healthier for the planet. Please share, and Happy Food Day!

RELATED POSTS:

Take the “Buy Local” Challenge

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Salmonella-Poisoned Eggs Make a Strong Argument for Local, Organic, Family Farms

The post In honor of Food Day, 10 Radical Ways to Make Food Better appeared first on Big Green Purse.

Yes, you can eat it!

You can also take the “Buy Local” challenge, a campaign to get shoppers to eat locally grown food every day from July 23-31.

Here are a few reasons why buying and eating locally grown food is so important.

Here’s where you can find organic, locally grown food in your community.

Here are a week’s worth of menus for meals made with locally grown ingredients. Or get an entire cookbook of delicious recipes inspired by locally raised fruits and vegetables.

And here’s where you can take the challenge.

RELATED POSTS

Join a CSA for Delicious, Locally-Grown Food

NEED MORE RECIPES?

Check out the terrific cookbooks.

And if you haven’t done so yet, now’s the perfect time to read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver’s inspiring story about the year her family spent growing their own food and buying everything they couldn’t grow from nearby farms.

The post Have you taken the “Buy Local” challenge? appeared first on Big Green Purse.

I love eggs, but I hate food poisoning more.

I’m betting so do the more than 2,000 people who have been sickened by eating tainted eggs produced by factory chicken farms in Iowa. After all, no one I know enjoys the impact salmonella has on their digestive tract, since it induces vomiting, dizziness, diahrrea, fever, abdominal cramps, blood infections and even death.

Investigators are still trying to understand how this potentially lethal bacterium was able to infect so many eggs in such a short period of time. One possible cause is getting a lot of attention: the way the laying hens were raised. Conventional poultry operations raise millions of chickens at a time, often in confined spaces and under filthy and inhumane conditions that reduce the ability of the animals to fight off germs. When disease hits, it spreads like wildfire. But with a fire you can see the flames coming. With salmonella, you don’t know it’s got you until you’re doubled over in pain or on your way to the emergency room.

For now, eggs in 14 states in the midwest have been recalled. The good news is that this amounts to less than 1 percent of all eggs produced in the U.S. Still, disease outbreaks like these remind all of us to be vigilant about the food we eat. The following precautions will help you stay healthy:

* Check for tainted eggs. Eggs being recalled are packaged under the following brand names: Albertsons, Farm Fresh, James Farms, Glenview, Mountain Dairy, Ralphs, Boomsma, Lund, Kemps and Pacific Coast. Eggs are packed in varying sizes of cartons (6-egg cartons, dozen egg cartons, 18-egg cartons, and loose eggs for institutional use and repackaging) with Julian dates ranging from 136 to 229 and plant numbers 1720 and 1942. If you find any eggs that contain these dates or plant numbers, return them to the store immediately.

* Throwaway cracked or discolored eggs. Even if they’re not tainted with salmonella, they could be harboring other “bugs” that could make you sick. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

* Buy eggs produced locally on small family farms. Small farms generally produce safer food because farmers have fewer animals to police. If an animal does get sick, chances are the farmer will find it and treat it before an entire flock becomes a threat. If the farms are certified organic, so much the better. You can find the nearest family farm here. If you’re interested, take a look at Smith Meadows Farm. I buy their eggs (see their chickens in the picture below) at my local farmers market on Sundays.

* Follow the same steps for preparing raw eggs that you would for raw chicken: handle carefully, cook thoroughly, and wash your hands with hot, soapy water when you’re finished.

* Avoid eating raw eggs in any form. Yes, that means skip the raw cookie dough, the raw cake batter, the raw muffin mix. If making scrambled eggs or french toast, you can tell the egg is cooked through because it won’t look shiny and wet.

* Keep eggs refrigerated until you use them. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommends that eggs be kept in a refrigerator cooled to 45 degrees F.

* Raise your own chickens. Believe it or not, raising backyard chickens has become increasingly popular, and not just in rural communities. Many municipalities are re-considering zoning laws to allow people to keep chickens in their backyards; this is even true in dense urban areas like Seattle, Washington and Boston, Massachusetts.

For more information on salmonella, here’s our recap of the salmonella that infected peanut butter last year.

The post Salmonella-poisoned eggs make a strong argument for local, organic, family farms. appeared first on Big Green Purse.

1) Read the label. Look for meaningful claims, not words like “natural” or “planet friendly” that aren’t  backed up by standards or third-party verification (see below). When it comes to cleansers and other household goods, avoid products labeled “caution,” “warning,” “danger,” and “poison,” all of which indicate the item is hazardous to you and the environment. Ignore products that are inherently contradictory, like “organic cigarettes,” or “most energy-efficient Hummer.” Leave goods boasting irrelevant claims – like something is “CFC-free,” true but misleading since CFCs have been banned since the 1980s.

 2) Look for third-party verification. In the absence of universal sustainable standards, if a company says its product is good for the earth, your first question should be, “Who else says so?” Reliable eco claims are backed up by an independent institution or nonprofit organization that has investigated the manufacturer’s claim so you don’t have to. Look for labels from groups like Forest Stewardship Council, Energy Star and the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Organic.

3) Choose fewer ingredients. A long list of ingredients often indicates the presence of questionable chemicals that may be harmful to you or the environment. This is especially true for personal care products, food, and cleansers. Simplify what you buy. Needless to say, buying less is the greenest option of all.

4) Pick less packaging. Choose goods that come wrapped as simply as possible. For starters, buy in bulk, favor concentrates, and pick products in containers you can easily recycle (hint: glass, cans, paper and cardboard are more easily recycled than plastic). Carting home your packages in your own bags helps reduce packaging, too.

5) Buy local. Avoid the higher energy costs involved in transporting goods long distances. Supporting local farmers and businesses also increases the likelihood that U.S. environmental and health laws and regulations will be followed.

Bottom Line: Ignore boasts that a product is eco-chic, earth-safe, or planet-neutral. Follow the steps above to ensure that when you buy green it is green.

Want more greenwashing tips? Visit Green Home Huddle.

The post How to Separate “Green” from “Greenwashing” When You Shop appeared first on Big Green Purse.