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Tip of The Week
Don't Waste Food
When I hear “don’t waste food”, I think of my grandma Ellen saying “clean your plate, there are children starving somewhere in the world”- I don’t know about you but as a kid this never made sense to me- it was like, “okay, granny, send this green bean casserole to Afrikastan”- no disrepect intended to the real suffering due to lack of food.
Seriously, as an example, think about how many times you’ve tossed a bunch of brown bananas. Now take a look back over your shoulder. This wasted food has a huge shadow- it takes a lot of energy to produce it , to grow it, to ship it, to distribute it, and to dispose of it. And what about water? Blue is the new green, right? There’s a a global fresh water shortage looming- and agriculture is the number one user of water on the planet. Wasted food has a huge water footprint- the water it took to grow those bananas is a complete, um... wash....now. Finally, most food waste goes straight to a landfill- where is it’s trapped between other waste, and is forced to decompose without air- thereby producing the most concentrated greenhouse gas- methane. Some 30% of the garbage in landfills is food waste.
It’s definitely a problem of abundance- and it’s an easy one to adjust. And, it's a direct cost savings for you, from the minute you decide to watch it. Look for waste reduction in fresh goods, restaurant orders, take out, and thrown out leftovers. Repeat after me: I won’t waste food. I won’t waste food. And if you DO buy something that's going to waste.... We have to insert the plug here: please please compost.
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Different schools of thought exist regarding how many years a cultivar must have been in existence to be considered heirloom -- at least 50 or 100 years, for example. Most gardeners will agree that 1951 is the latest that a cultivated variety can be considered an heirloom, as that year marked the introduction of commercial hybrid plants. Hybrid plants are those that have been hand-pollinated by humans. In this process, the genes of several different plants with desirable traits are cross-bred to create an optimal new plant variety for the marketplace. These plants, while uniform in taste, size, shape, and texture, are sterile and cannot reproduce in the wild. Consider cross-breeding a donkey and a horse: the result is a healthy, fully-functioning mule that is infertile and cannot reproduce. The same happens to the seeds of cross-bred fruits and vegetables -- they are store-bought varieties that can grow for one season, but try to save a seed and plant it the next year, and nothing will happen. The hybrid seed came into popular commercial production in the 1950s, when large-scale agriculture began to boom. Just some 50 years later, most of the fruits and vegetables found at any market are hybrid, first-generation seeds that come from genetically identical varieties now popularized by seed companies. For example, there exist over 10,000 varieties of heirloom apples, yet only about 100 hybrid varieties available to modern day consumers.
WHY DO HEIRLOOMS MATTER?
Heritage.
For many gardeners and home cooks, heirlooms are a connection to their heritage. It is not all that uncommon for seeds of a garden crop to be handed down from generation to generation within the same family. These homegrown plants are literally a taste of the past for such gardeners, and it represents a very special method of preserving tradition over the years. Flavor. Heirloom fruits and vegetables taste better, plain and simple. While hybrid plants offer uniformity in size and shape, the variety of an heirloom’s characteristics also represents its vast flavor palate. Each heirloom variety offers a different hue, texture, and flavor profile than the others. It’s possible to remake the exact same tomato salsa recipe three times with three different varieties of heirloom tomatoes, and each time the recipe will taste and look completely different. Cook with heirloom plants at home and you will be rediscovering old recipes in a new light each time.
Better-adapted plants.
When the seeds of a plant are saved year after year from the same garden, eventually that plant gets accustomed to the soil, temperature, and pests of that growing area, and it adapts to grow better in that area over time. Heirloom plants are thus more resilient to growing conditions when planted consistently in a garden, and they will result in a more productive garden. Save money. By removing the need to buy commercially-produced hybrid seed year after year, gardeners save money on their food costs. Growing food in a home garden is cost-effective as it is, but not having to buy any seed from the market only increases the season’s savings.
Support biodiversity.
According to the United Nations, the genetic diversity of the world’s crops is decreasing at the rate of 1 to 2% per year. How is this happening? Many crops, such as tomatoes, corn, and squash, reproduce through open pollination. In this process, birds, insects, wind, and other natural forces transfer a plant’s pollen (which contains the male’s sperm) to another plant’s stigma (the female ovary), where pollination will take place and a seed will form. When open pollination occurs among heirloom species, the genetic makeup of such plants is wide and varied, since the source of the parent is rarely the same. This larger genetic makeup of heirloom varieties results in stronger food security, as there are more plants to muddle through adversities like pests, diseases, and storms. It is when the genetic pool of a species becomes too homogenous that there is a great risk of it collapsing when unforeseen epidemics hit.
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