Another good reason to plant a garden
I’ve found lettuce and greens to be one of the best crops for beginning gardeners. It has a quick growing cycle, is not too fussy and its easy to know what to do with it once it comes in. We’ve been enjoying daily salads even though much of the rest of our garden is still getting established. Even our kids can recognize that fresh young lettuce from the garden tastes great.
This Sunday in the paper I was reminded of another reason why its great to grow your own greens – food poisoning. The recent outbreak of e coli in Europe is just scary – people are dying because they ate a salad. This article reminded me that every bite of raw food I eat is an act of confidence in the whole food system that brought it to my plate. But I don’t trust the system. I know that contamination happens. Sprouts were mentioned in the article as particularly worrisome and I was happily reminded that my sprouts are safe from this kind of contamination as is my lettuce. Certainly the food systems that create these kind of issues needs to be fixed (although don’t ask me how – I am just a humble urban gardener) it is nice to know there is a way to avoid this to some extent at least. Its great to enjoy fresh produce from our garden for many, many reasons but this one was a new reason why I am happy to have a garden.
