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Gardening in small spaces.

 If you have spent as many hours as I have standing in front of the fruit and veg section in a supermarket, trying to find food which looks and smells like the food from your childhood, then you’ll know why I choose to go organic whenever possible. I dream of my own garden, filled with vegetables bursting with nutrients, glowing with life-energy, butterflies flitting through and ladybirds paying a royal visit. Alas, I lack space, living in a flatlet does not exactly allow one the scope for gardening!

Not true, thanks to a gentleman called Mel Bartholomew, the author of a wonderful book called ‘Square Foot Gardening’, growing your own food is within reach of even the most seasoned city dweller.

Top 15 fruits and vegetables to buy organic!

In late 2011, the Environmental Working Group in the US released a list of fruits and vegetables which were most likely to have high levels of pesticide residues. They analyzed pesticide residue testing data from the US department of Food and Drug administration as well as the US department of Agriculture to come up with a concise list.

According to their list the top 15 fruits and vegetables to buy organic, so as to avoid exposure to high pesticide residues are:

1 – Apples, according to their data, 98% of conventional apples in the studies had pesticide residues.

2 – Celery, apparently, traces of 57 pesticides were found on the celery samples used in the tests.

3 – Strawberries, some of the strawberries had up to 13 kinds of pesticide residues!

By Lela Rabie

Whether we are aware of it or not, most of us probably eat seasonally to a certain degree by choosing the fruit and vegetables which are most available, and most reasonably priced, at different times of the year. However, consciously choosing to eat seasonally, has many benefits and takes surprisingly little effort!

Organic and Eco-friendly living

In recent years organic and eco-friendly living has really become much more mainstream in South Africa. More and more people are opting to support local farmers and co-ops and are asking questions about where the products they buy come from. Living a lifestyle which is focussed on being as environmentally and personally healthy as possible is becoming easier by the day but much of the time, one still has to ferret out your 'local' by yourself.