By Mary Lowther
At last it’s planting season! My second batch of peas went in last week and I’m sowing more radish seeds outside. Inside, on my spanking new seed table that David made, I’m sowing flats of a few herbs, greens, mustard, spinach, cabbage and pac choi.
Aphids and cabbage moth love pac choi (a Chinese cabbage) as much as they do regular cabbage, so I’m careful to cover both with Remay as soon as they leave the protection of the seed table. The first batch of radishes, sown two weeks ago. has sprouted and we’re looking forward to eating them mid-April and the peas around mid June.
I’m chitting half the crop of potatoes this week because potatoes get off to a better start that way; chitting means leaving the potatoes in a warm place until they start sprouting roots. I’ve always bought fresh seed potatoes before but I read of someone who successfully regrows her own potatoes year after year so I’m doing the same myself, choosing the best ones from storage. A friend of ours gave us a few small purple ones from Peru to start and I’m quite excited because I understand that they are even more nutritious than white potatoes, but I’ll have to take care when planting them because their roots are long and fragile.
Some nutritionists warn against eating potatoes, carrots or corn because, they say, they raise the blood sugars too quickly, but I recently read that this isn’t the case when potato skins are included in the potato assessment. I suspect the same with carrots and I bet the fibre in corn slows down sugar absorption in the body, so I just eat everything I grow. Most nutrients are just under the skin in root crops so I’ve always included their skins, even beet skins because when picked small enough, their skins are soft and easy to eat.
Eggs too – I’ve never taken any notice about how badly they raise our cholesterol because my mother told me eggs are good for me and ye canna argue with yer mother. Besides, avoiding processed foods should allow me a significant margin for error, or at least self indulgence.
Please contact mary_lowther@yahoo.ca with questions and suggestions since I need all the help I can get.