Gardening by Cuisine: An Organic-Food Lover's Guide to Sustainable Living PDF
Preview Gardening by Cuisine: An Organic-Food Lover's Guide to Sustainable Living
GARDENING BY CUISINE An Organic-Food Lover’s Guide to Sustainable Living GARDENING BY CUISINE Patti Moreno THE GARDEN GIRL STERLING and the distinctive Sterling logo are registered trademarks of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. © 2013 by Patti Moreno Images: Sydney Janey/SJ Design; Dover Publications, Inc.; iStockphoto; Pepin Press; Shutterstock All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. ISBN 978-1-4027-9643-2 For information about custom editions, special sales, and premium and corporate purchases, please contact Sterling Special Sales at 800-805-5489 or This book is dedicated to my family for their love and support, and for eating all their veggies. CONTENTS Introduction How to Use This Book PART I Cuisine Gardening Basics One How Does Your Garden Grow? Two Controlling Common Garden Pests & Diseases Three Starting Your Cuisine Garden From Seed Four Measure Twice, Cut Once: Building Your Cuisine Garden PART II Cuisine Garden Plans Five Herb Pesto Garden Six Asian Stir-Fry & Salad Garden Seven Shaker Medicinal Herb Garden Eight Vegan Raw Garden Nine Mediterranean Vegetable Garden Ten One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato Garden Eleven Berry, Berry Good Garden Twelve Three Sisters Native American Garden Thirteen Mama Mia Best-Ever Marinara Sauce Garden Fourteen Latin-Caribbean Sofrito Garden About the Author & Companion Videos Acknowledgements Metric Conversion Chart Index INTRODUCTION It all began in a garden … How did I get into growing my own food? It started 70 pounds ago. That’s how much I gained during my pregnancy in the 1990s. I was desperate to feel like myself again, and that’s what led me into the garden. I am probably the least likely person to become a gardening and sustainable- living expert. I was raised in the concrete jungle of New York City in the 1970s and 1980s. I was clueless about plants and nature—I’d never even owned a pet. Unlike the generations before me—the baby boomers whose parents and grandparents had planted Victory Gardens to win the war—I had no tangible connection to food. As a Generation Xer, my memories of childhood meals go back to eateries like Mickey D’s and classic, packaged comfort food like Stouffer’s Mac and Cheese. After graduating, I married my college sweetheart, and we soon moved into our first house, a humble multi-level brownstone in Roxbury, Massachusetts. I remember telling my husband, after we saw the “for sale” sign, “If it has floors, let’s buy it!” Well, it did have floors, and so we bought it. The house also came with a 4,000-square-foot lot. I remember looking at it, with its five-foot-tall city weeds, and feeling proud that we were landowners! I didn’t know anything about gardening, but I knew I’d need a shovel and started digging. Before long I discovered what many urban gardeners soon find out: the stuff I thought was soil in my city lot was really bricks, stones, and broken glass. I could shovel only an inch down before a jarring shock blocked my way. I began to sort everything I found, including stacks of whole bricks and partial bricks, brownstone, pudding stone, and all manner of urban rubble. At that point, my gardening experience consisted of learning how to use a pickax and digging, which also gave me a great full-body workout. Slowly, the pounds began to disappear. My horticultural breakthrough came about when I managed not to kill a set of dwarf apple trees. They survived the winter and suddenly started blossoming early the following spring. Low and behold, that summer I had fruit! The trees produced wonderful apples and plums, which I shared eagerly with everyone— and they were a big hit. It was a complete eureka moment for me: “I can take this tiny urban lot and grow my own delicious, organic food?!” From then on I was hooked. For the next decade, I continued to evolve as a gardener, as I built on each success and began experimenting with different gardening techniques. In a new home, in the same neighborhood, but with much more land, I was able to take my vegetable gardening experiments to the next level and put everything I’d learned to the ultimate test: feeding my family produce that came only from the backyard for an entire growing season. I videotaped the whole process, made the videos available online, and produced a DVD series to share what I’d learned and to inspire people to live more sustainably. Since 70 percent of the world’s population will be living in cities within the next twenty years, according to the Population Reference Bureau, it is crucial that we all make it a priority to live sustainably in our everyday lives. Anyone can get started on the road to sustainable living by using organic methods to manage waste control and other natural processes, by conserving energy, recycling, planting trees, and creating more natural landscapes. Last but not least, living sustainably means eating locally grown food. One of the best ways to do that is to “garden by cuisine.” If enough of us can grow a portion of our own food (including the ingredients to enjoy the cuisines we love best), this effort will have a real effect, not only on the health and well-being of our families, but also on our neighborhoods, communities, and the world.
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