Your Garden: Not Just For You

Picture this: orange chunks of sweet, juicy cantaloupe; crisp, dew-dropped lettuce; warm, fresh-roasted sweet bell peppers; firm, juice-gushing vine-ripened tomatoes.

Is your mouth watering yet?

It’s gardening season. For years pallets of bagged soil and six-pack starts in store parking lots made me cringe with guilt. Everyone always said that you need to plant a garden. I have never had my own home. I have never had enough space for a garden. To top it all, for a long time I had zero desire to garden.

My positive thoughts on gardening came on gradually until a major life change—becoming a stay-at-home mom—opened up enough home-focused time in my life to give me a chance to embrace gardening. But I don’t think I would have ever had the desire to plant a garden for myself if it were not for years of examples of wonderful gardeners from my past.

First: my parents. We tried to plant a garden every year of my childhood that I could remember. We most often failed. Our soil, climate, yard orientation relative to the sun, and infiltration of gophers just didn’t make for much success. Then we had a dog that ate our green vegetables before we had a chance to let them ripen and harvest them. That didn’t help things either.

More recently, even though the nest is mostly empty, my parents keep plowing ahead with their gardening efforts. Over the years, they’ve acquired citrus trees, which have been their best success, and now my mom’s homegrown lemonade is becoming the envy of summer wedding receptions in the area. My parents, even after decades, are still working and learning to make the best of their home and bit of earth.

But our struggles were not universal to our area. I could list a good handful of ward members whose thumbs were completely green. My wedding reception was held in the fairyland-like yard of one of those ward members. When I was a kid, we used to pick apples for a widow in the ward who didn’t have the energy to can anymore. Although I never pictured myself as a gardener for a long time, the success of these beautiful yards still filled me with an awe that I could not deny.

Finally, there are my in-laws. They are amazing gardeners. They have a huge backyard. They buy fancy seeds from a catalogue. Their produce looks better than what you can buy from the store. They have so much experience that they generally rotate from a fruit garden to a vegetable garden every other year just to keep themselves interested because they are such experts. And they are probably the ones who impacted me the most with regards to gardening. Why? Because they have shared.

A fall hasn’t gone by since I have been part of their family when my in-laws haven’t given us several laden baskets of beans, grapes, squash, berries, tomatoes—you name it. At first I felt bad about these generous gifts. I hadn’t done any of the work, and here I was basking in the riches of their labors. I felt even guiltier when I realized that their generosity was also saving me a lot on my grocery bill. But in time I realized that their garden produced more and to spare. They loved sharing the joy of their harvest, and they had so much that they needed to give a lot of it away.
It was this sense of generosity and bounty that really attracted me to gardening. My in-laws’ home-grown gifts brought me a lot of health and happiness, but I could tell that the health and happiness that the givers felt was many times more than what they gave away to me.

I have heard it said that the greatest joy of wealth is the ability to give it away. I have learned that the same is true with planting a garden. It is wonderful to grow your own produce, but even more joyful to have so much that you can give it away. Even our first tomato plant produced much more than we could dream of consuming. I loved giving tomatoes away to everyone that I loved!

I dragged my feet for years and years about planting a garden. Even now, I don’t own my own home; I live in a small apartment and garden out of a small, homemade garden box. Maybe you only have room for a small pot. Whatever it is, I hope you choose to garden at least to give. I aspire to being a neighbor or in-law who can’t help but give baskets of gorgeous tomatoes away every year. I want to be the older ward member who invites the younger families to pick and can from my fruit trees. I want to garden so I can give; how about you?

Your Garden: Setting Up for Success

So, you’ve decided to start a garden. Whether that’s in a small pot on your windowsill, a makeshift box on the balcony, a tiny plot in the side yard, or a full-sized gardening-dedicated backyard, here are a few ideas from a gardener who was in your novice little galoshes not too long ago on how to set yourself up for success.

1. Get Advice
Why reinvent the wheel? People have been gardening since the Garden of Eden—why start from scratch? Look around for some good advice—people in your area who are good at gardening, the bestselling books at your local bookstore, or even an internet search on gardening in your area. One of those pros in your ward might even be willing to come take a look at your gardening space and give you some helpful suggestions and tips. Anyone who loves gardening would love to help you get started!

For myself, my mom and sister recommended the Square Foot Gardening method by Mel Bartholomew. Having a handy guide that was geared for beginners was extremely helpful to me in getting started. Plus, I originally borrowed the book from my mom for the first year until I decided I wanted my own copy. You could probably do the same and borrow a book from someone you know loves to garden as well.

2. Start Small
You don’t need to plan on eliminating your produce grocery budget in your first year of gardening. Make sure that you feel like baby steps are okay. When my husband and I decided to build a garden box outside of our apartment, at first I thought we should use three times the space that we finally settled on. I changed my mind when I realized that it would be okay to add a second box later on. It was really helpful to start small and learn how to maintain a small area before adding more space.

3. Start Easy
Some of the advice you’ll want to ask for from the gardeners you know is what is easy to grow in your area. Gardening books will tell you a list of crops that are easy to grow almost anywhere, such as zucchini or tomatoes. Although we all laugh about providing zucchini for the whole neighborhood from one plant, easy-to-grow crops will give you a lot of encouragement and sense of success. Why not set yourself up for that?

4. Get a Head Start
I decided to plant my first garden late in the year and didn’t get it all planted until the very end of June. Because of this, one of my mentors suggested that I use plant starts instead of seeds. That was incredibly wonderful advice.

By that time of year, all the plant starts were on clearance, and I bought whatever was left for really cheap. I don’t think waiting that long to get started is worth it unless you have to, but it was really nice to have an “instant garden.” If this is your first time gardening, consider buying mostly started plants instead of seeds to help set yourself up for success and give your garden a little head start. You can take on the challenge of seedlings when you have a little more experience under your belt.

 5. Learn and Grow
Some of those starts I bought for my first garden were cabbage, which I learned my family didn’t like to eat and I should never grow it again. I also planted onion seeds late enough in the season that the onions did not have time to develop all the way before the fall frost. Despite these setbacks, my zucchini, tomatoes, and carrots were sterling successes.

Be willing to learn and grow with your garden. Don’t expect everything to turn out perfectly, but be all the more grateful for your successes. Live and learn and grow.

The Church teaches that “planting a garden, even a small one, allows for a greater degree of self-reliance” (“Growing a Garden,” http://providentliving.org/content/display/0,11666,6637-1-3427-1,00.html). Make the decision to feel the blessings of earth, soil, and sunshine by setting yourself up for success.

Eating Vegetables Never Tasted So Good!

A Book Review of Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld.

I first heard of Deceptively Delicious a little over a year ago at a bridal shower where this book had been given as a gift. As the bride unveiled the charmingly classic cover, the room filled with shrieks of delight. “I hear that book is amazing,” one girl said. The bride obviously had heard the same and was very excited about the gift. I had not heard of the book at all, so when the unwrapping was all over I asked to take a look.

At first glance, vegetable purees, the “secret” method in Deceptively Delicious, looked like excessive work. But several months later, when I had some extra time on my hands, I remembered the book from the bridal shower and grew curious. Luckily, I found a copy from my library.

Before trying a single recipe, I leafed through Deceptively Delicious and read it nearly cover to cover. I was immediately impressed by Jessica’s upbeat approach to cooking and parenting. Overall, the abundant instruction and tips throughout the book are as encouraging and inventive as the recipes themselves are inviting. At the front of the book are basics in stocking and organizing a kitchen and instruction on making the vegetable purees. Although I was turned off by the idea of purees and how much prep-work they would involve, Jessica’s instructions were simple and easy to follow, and soon making purees became a fun game for both my husband and me.

All-in-all, my experience with Deceptively Delicious was a sincere success. I had to buy my own copy even before it was due at the library so I would not have to go a day without it! I have tried most of the recipes already and have not found a bad one yet. Surprisingly, the simplest ones have been the best. For myself, I have always been a big experimenter in the kitchen. Trying Jessica’s recipes has been a lot of fun, but I’ve found that mainly I take her puree suggestions and add them to the recipes I normally use for the things I usually eat, like my own French toast, muffins, scrambled eggs, banana bread, pancakes, coffee cake, oatmeal, meatballs, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, beef stew, pizza, macaroni and cheese, pasta, burgers, quesadillas, potato soup, grilled cheese sandwiches, baked potatoes, sloppy joes, tacos, and chili recipes (and she has even more suggestions than that!).

As far as the extra work involved with purees, making purees, following Jessica’s instructions, has taught me how to cook with many vegetables that I normally don’t use, like butternut squash and sweet potatoes. I loved Jessica’s idea of freezing purees. This allowed me to stock my freezer all at once. She recommends freezing portions in plastic bags according to what you need in your favorite recipes. I bypassed the guesswork by instead freezing purees in ice-trays. The average ice-tray section holds about 2 Tablespoons, or 1/8 Cup. I freeze the purees in ice trays, and then dump the frozen puree cubes into a labeled freezer bag. For me, it’s a lot easier to grab as many cubes as I need rather than fretting that I have to defrost a ½ Cup bag of puree when I only need ¼ Cup. Additionally, if you need it, making vegetable purees to cook with will also make you homemade baby food at the same time!

The one thing that I felt like the book was lacking was nutrition facts for the recipes, but the only recipe book I have that does that is Better Homes and Garden. There are pictures for most of the recipes, which I found very inviting and helpful.

Another author who uses vegetable purees in her recipes is Missy Lapine, the Sneaky Chef. I have looked over the Sneaky Chef books, and I really like them too. They are full of more great ideas about cooking healthy food. The design and enthusiastically optimistic tone of Deceptively Delicious were what appealed to me over the Sneaky Chef, but both authors have great contributions. Seinfeld’s book is more geared towards parenting, and Lapine has books for cooking for your husbands and cooking for kids. Seinfeld mostly uses vegetable purees, with a few other suggestions of healthier ingredients, while Lapine encourages the use of wheat flour, flax seed, and other healthy ingredients in addition to vegetables. The Sneaky Chef’s program involves make-ahead puree mixes of several vegetables a time. Deceptively Delicious’ puree suggestions are simpler, but Lapine has a much more helpful website and blog.

I get so excited about any new cooking technique that makes my meal healthier. Deceptively Delicious and the Sneaky Chef’s books have a big success for me and my family. Eating a Deceptively Delicious or Sneaky meal, or just adding one of its puree suggestions to a recipe I already regularly use, gives me a satisfied feeling. In the back of my mind, I’m saying to myself, “This tastes so good, and is way better for me than I think!”