Hi All,
Of some mind interest: the Environmental Working Group's
2019 top dozen pesticide contaminated vegi's:Kale rejoins the 'Dirty Dozen' list as one of the most contaminated with pesticides:
Is kale actually edible, even without the pesticides?
:-)
-T
mild stinkin' typos
Of course! Do a search on "kale salad" and you'll get a ton of options. We generally have a kale salad once a week. Tip: don't skip the massage step when working the dressing in; it tenderizes the kale. The springy curly kale seems to taste best.
we don't eat it. i like most veggies but not that one much enough to grow it. there are so many other things i'd rather grow and eat (strawberries, peas, beans, tomatoes, onions, red peppers, dill and cucumbers being the top fruits/veggies).
as far as i know all the above can be grown without
*cides if you have a competent labor force and use decent soil community support/building practices. i grow tomatoes and strawberries without any *cides at all.T, think of where you were 5yrs ago with your gardens and where you are at today? how is it going? :) are you seeing improvements in green cover for your gardens and growing spaces? is production improving are your costs for water decreasing? etc. tell me how it's going and what you'll be growing this year.
i'm still planning on putting up more fence but that has mostly been paid for. we may have some plumbing expenses coming up but other things have a higher priority for now (after 22+yrs things are starting to wear out).
songbird
My wife plants kale every year for the decorative effect but we never eat it. One year, we had about three feet of snow. As it melted, the kale plant out in the garden emerged and continued growing.
Paul
I wonder about pronouncements from this activist group. This is first opinion of what others think:
As a long retired chemist I am amazed at improvements in analytic chemistry to now find materials down to parts per trillion. Also as a chemist I know that toxicity is dose related and presence of a contaminant does not necessarily mean it can harm you.
As for kale, I knew nothing about it but noted today it was part of a store mixed salad I had for lunch. By itself it would not be a good salad but the mix was very tasty. I read that kale is loaded with vitamins but when I was on Coumadin I would have avoided it for high vitamin K content.
How do you cover up the penicillin taste?
It can cut both ways; employed scientists are by definition in service of the establishment; there are many historical examples of scientists both parroting the message of their masters and self-censoring so as to not rock the boat, appear too radical and thus jeopardize their career prospects. Lastly, there is definitely a degree of arrogance in many of the Sciences when it comes to what they think they know. In other words, scientists are only human.
Upton Sinclair made a solid observation of this bias:
?It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.?
I'm not sure I've ever had it, but it has probably shown up in a salad at some point. I assume it follows my general rule for all cabbage relatives -- eat as close to raw as possible.
Unfortunately, my garden is plagued by tomato leaf spot, so I am dependant on copper sulfate. That's about all I use, aside from RoundUp on the creaping thistle.
To me, Kale tastes like penicillin flavored oak leaves. YUK!
It is indeed loaded with vitamins and stuff, but leaf lettuce is 1/2 as much and I eat 4 times as much, so ...
Off Topic: Retired Chemist. I have to sit in other peoples chairs to work on their computers. As a result, my cloths get coated in perfume, with give my wife scary asthma.
We use to be able to get perfume out by soaking it in vinegar. But, now Tide and Dawn have come up with perfumes that deliberately are meant to NOT wash out and to persist for over a month. Here are some of them:
Whilst we all wait for the massive class action suit to stop this practice, do you know how to remove these toxins? Vinegar, baking soda, washing soda, sodium percarbonate (h2o2, Oxi), borate do not work. Enviro Cleanse sort of kind of works, but not really.
That would make sense. Kale spent a lot of time in outer space between galaxies, exposed to cosmic radiation, after being banished by treaty as a genetically modified bio-weapon, to the outer reaches of space as a failed attempt to subtly destroy an opposing aggressors will to live by ruining their digestion and love of life by masking a food like substance as a health food whilst concurrently disposing of expired vats of penicillin. Had lots of time to adapt to all sorts of extremes and the absolute colds of space. After all that, it should be able to withstand a little snow.
What???
For those with chemical sensitivities, the EWG is a source of information not available elsewhere.
Well stated.
Most studies now a days are pay for results. When you read them, you go to the funding source first.
I remember a while back when a study showed an increased survival rate for bypass patients when using foliates and B vitamins. Then a year or so later, another study came out that debunked it. Upon peer review of the second study, it transpired that they used 1/20th the effective dose of B vitamins. Hmmmmmm ...
Hi Songbird,
Well, when I look back on how dismal my results were, I am a bit shocked that I have gotten to successful now that I have had to cut back by 1/2 this next year on what I plant because I can't physically keep up with it. My freezer is still packed with frozen vegis that I wonder if I will have eaten before my new crop comes it.
Last year what the first year I gave away produce. It was a proud moment and a rite of passage of sorts.
Water cost was never really an issue as I use a watering wand and only spot water.
As far a ground cover goes, I have yet to get purslane to cover the open spaces. Right now, my whole back yard is green with weeds, mostly the grass that would not grow when it was a lawn and some wild carrot. I have a bunch of vinegar waiting to spray everything, but it keeps raining and snowing and vinegar won't work until the ground dries out.
My list for the garden this year:
2019 proposed: Row 1, 10 Holes: 6 anaheim peppers (1 per hole). Note: Blossom Rot !!!!! 4 tomantillosRow 2, 12 holes 5 ron-d-nice 3 golden zukes 4 tomantillos
Row 3, 7 holes: ichibon eggplant
Elipse: bogatyr garlic Scallions (green onions) 3 cherries x - x - x (sweet 100's only)
Basket: 4x cherries (sweet 100's only)
Small Bed: Walmart onions
Large Bed: onion-transplants-merlin-yellow
Also may try "a" traditional pumpkin
Add to that, I am still trying to get billberries, Arapaho black berries, and choke berries (not cherries) to grow. My Goji's are loving all the attention and if last year is any indications, I am going to be inundated with them.
I think the biggest lesson I had to learn was that I had to grow/nurture the soil first before expecting to get any results from things growing in it. Soil is actually alive.
You do realize you had a lot to do with this? Thank you!
-T
You do realize these plants have made slaves out of us!
...
the tomatoes here get some kind of blight each season but they still bear fruit and we get enough so i've never treated for it. i have tried various things recommended to eliminate it or reduce it from happening, but each year it returns no matter what. so since it doesn't cause us to lose the crops i just continue to ignore it. the plants look pretty sad by the end of the summer but by then we've put up what we need so it's ok.
i would not use copper sulfate for long as the copper can build up in the soil.
have you tried finding more resistant plants? i have here but Mom is very fixated on what she wants to grow so i gave up.
the troublesome weeds here are horsetail and sow-thistle, but i've found out they can be removed by manual methods and smothering once you've got the worst of them cleared. you just have to be sure to keep after any new ones that may show up before they get going again.
songbird
Very true. Scientists are not immune to these things.
T wrote: ...
good to hear! :) i am contemplating not planting red peppers this year because i have so many jars still in the freezer from last year. i need to start eating them more often, but my problem is that i just forget they are up there to begin with. i'm not usually someone who eats from the freezer that often. i hardly ever even open it.
:)
i hope you never get invaded by some of the troublesome weeds that have shown up here. the only consolation i get from them is that they end up being free worm food eventually.
hard to keep up with some plants watering them when it gets so hot outside. the only thing i can think of that may help there is making a much larger hole and putting the plant roots down deeper. of course balancing the pH will help some too, but it's not an easy thing to do when you have tough alkaline soils to begin with.
i could never eat enough from a single plant let alone three of them!
i tried to read up on Goji's and i wasn't sure i would like them from the description so i haven't pressed it further.
you have to start somewhere. any free organic materials are better than nothing.
y.w.! :) i'm glad things are going well for you and you keep on learning more. that's about all you can do - always interesting to try new things and to see what might happen.
we're all in this together. life supports life.
songbird
Untreated, the varieties I grow just keep losing leaves until they die.
It is a pretty light usage. A pound of powder lasts me a couple years.
I doubt that modern hybrids would have any problem with it, but I'm hooked on my Black Plum tomatoes. And my wife fully endorses the resulting pasta sauce.
I am a magnet for invasive weeds that spread beneath the surface. I used to believe that mulch could cure everything, but bermuda grass and creeping thistle have convinced me otherwise. Still, mulch makes it easier.
...
that's what happens here too, but it is usually late enough by the time the plants are done anyways. perhaps planting more would work where you could get the earliest crop and then just be done with them before they get worse? the reason why we don't go for other varieties is that we get between 20-40lbs of fruit per plant so we get enough even with the blight. it doesn't look pretty but i'm good with how it goes.
i tried babying the grape vine one season with it to see if it made any difference. decided that once i found a major flaw in the plant to just remove the vine instead of continuing the spraying. i still have the copper sulphate granules on the shelf with the few tablespoons removed from the package. being someone who has a hard time throwing things away i should get rid of it but haven't yet.
yeah, i understand that...
we have pretty hard clay soil for subsoil so when the sow thistle gets going it can take quite an effort to track it down to remove it. the larger thistles aren't much fun either but at least their roots are larger and easier to find all the pieces.
mulch makes a lot of things easier. :) i like how when the wood chips we use finally break down they turn into the dark humus that goes well in the veggie gardens. if i'm lucky enough i can get enough to use in the worm buckets as they'll recharge that and i also mix in some garden soil to help give the clay something more to bind to along with all that organic matter. it makes for some really nice fertilizer at the end of a year.
songbird
Guy that sold tomatoes nearby said that you'd have to replace soil in the garden by maybe 5 ft deep to get rid of the blight.
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