Planting your own food

Food gardening will jump 19 percent this year over last year, according to a new survey by the National Gardening Association (NGA). The reason why shold be fairly obvious the recession and rising prices have people looking to their yard to save money on food.

But the big question is, does planting a vegetable patch really save you money? After all, you have to prepare the soil with special mulches or fertilizers, rent or buy either hand tools you may not have had to power tools like a rotary tiller to break the ground and plants along with plant foods and fertilizers. So with the output of funds at the front end, do you save int he long run?

Government agencies and gardening organizations say yes.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture every $100 spent on vegetable gardening yields $1,000 to $1,700 worth of produce.

Not only can this produce feet your own family but friends and other relatives or you can take extra produce to the Faulkner County Farmer's Market market and sell items there. The farmer's market normally opens late May or early June if memory serves me right.

Gardening these days may be new to some families who have never felt the need to grow their own produce and now find they need to in order to keep food costs down.

It isn't a new practice to my family though I have not grown my own vegetables since I moved into our new home a few years ago. I may be changing that fact this year but I will container gardening because the soil where I live will be too difficult to deal with. I live on a hill where the ground is mostly red clay and very rocky.

Container gardening is very easy to do, simply plant your plants in containers large enough for them to grow in and water. Water. Water. Water.

Container plants tend to dry out faster than plants set in the ground. Potting soil is not best to plant a tomato plant in either. Check with your local garden supply store, we have several in Conway, and they should be able to tell you everything you need to start a container garden or small planting bed in your yard.

I recommend growing from nursery plants over seeds. Some nursery's even guarantee their plants.

I plan to grow bell peppers, zucchini, yellow squash and tomatoes, along with a few herbs like basil, cilantro and thyme.

Fresh salsa, tomato sauce, and fried squash or zucchini bread may be on our menu a lot this summer and if I find myself with a bit too much squash, zucchini and peppers I may even make my grandmother's chow chow recipe.

Squash Chow Chow

4 cups minced zucchini or yellow squash

1 1/2 cups chopped onion

1 1/2 cup minced green bell pepper

1 1/2 Tablespoons pickling salt

Pickling solution:

2 cups apple cider vinegar

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon celery seed

1 teaspoon mustard seed

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon turmeric

Combine all chopped vegetables in a bowl with the salt and allow the salt to draw the moisture from them. Squeeze out the excess moisture and drain. Combine all pickling solution ingredients in a saucepan and simmer over low heat for a few minutes, then add your chopped vegetables to the pickling solution and simmer for about 20 minutes. Remove your vegetables to sterile canning jars and once sealed place in the fridge for up to 3 months.

You can also make green tomato chow chow if your tomato plants really take off. Sometimes they do and you are left going what do I do with all these tomatoes?

If chow chow isn't to your tastes you could also make fresh salsa to can or spaghetti sauce to freeze or even try your hand at homemade ketchup.

My mother canned a batch of homemade ketchup once when I was a child and it was the best ketchup and resulting barbecue sauce I've ever had.

(Sources: ARA Content and U.S.D.A. )