It’s about that time of the year when the heat of the day makes me want to hole up inside and scrounge my lunch out of whatever is available. This generally includes a trip or two to the fridge and then a glance out the window to see if there is anything growing in the garden that might be worth eating.
Today I was lucky in finding a small group of onions that never got very large. I brought these inside and added them to some carrots and a small leftover wedge of cabbage. After peeling the carrots and cutting them into equal sized chunks, I tossed everything into my steamer. After about fifteen minutes, I had the making of a pretty good meal. In the back of the cupboard I also found a can of cut green beans that got nuked in the microwave and voila! Lunch vegetarian style! This filling meal totaled just over a hundred calories including two pats of butter!
According to everything I’ve ever read, beans are supposed to be difficult to transplant. However, that has not been the case here in my raised beds located in southwestern Missouri...
Note that I’m also pushing the season for these guys, a bit, when we are still not past the last average frost date of April the 15th. But, since I was experimenting with Great Northern Beans (purchased at a local grocery), I figured what the heck. My recent experiment involved using a wet paper towel, onto which I had placed ten beans, to see if they would germinate. After just 48 hours they all did and rather than throw them out, I elected to plant them out into one of my small raised beds. Well, as you can see, they are actually growing. Encouraged by this, now I hope to raise them to maturity to see if they are a pole or bush variety. If they turn out to be bush beans, I then plan to sow more later this spring directly into a four foot square area. I should be able to produce about 36 plants spaced equally about six inches apart. I want to get a feel for how many dried beans I can produce and what they would weigh. From that information, I could formulate how many bean plants would need to be grown to meet the needs of one person for one year. That is assuming that this hypothetical person also has a supply of rice or other foods to combine with the beans.
Great northern Beans are a nutrient dense food that, I feel, belongs in any Survival Garden plan. When combined with rice, a person could easily survive on eating just these two foods (along with a supply of water of course). That’s because, between the two of them, they supply the nine essential amino acids that the body cannot make it self out of the twenty one it needs to be able to survive.
For some time now, I’ve made beans (both the green variety and dried) a part of my regular diet. I’ve grown Kentucky Pole Beans every year for the past twenty years in my home garden. They’re and easy plant and raise and since the pole version can go vertical they don’t take up a lot of space in my small garden. The dried versions like the Great Northern Bean are cheap to buy and store for just about forever. I love to eat them in recipes like Bean and Ham Soup.
Other than the taste, which I love, beans have a lot going for them. They belong to the Fabaceae family which are legumes and have had a very long history of human consumption. As far back as six thousand years ago they were grown regularly and eaten when meat was in short supply. When you combine beans with rice you are getting all the essential amino acids (see my article on this) that are needed to sustain life. The protein is considered a great substitute for meat.
Beans also supply a large dose of dietary fiber. A cup of cooked navy beans provides 46.6% of the recommended daily intake for fiber. Soluble fiber forms a gel-like substance in the digestive tract that combines with bile (which contains cholesterol) and ferries it out of the body. Beans are also able to help moderate blood glucose levels which can be important for anyone with this concern.
In a very interesting study that examined food intake patterns and risk of death from coronary heart disease, researchers followed more than 16,000 middle-aged men in the U.S., Finland, The Netherlands, Italy, former Yugoslavia, Greece and Japan for 25 years. Typical food patterns were: higher consumption of dairy products in Northern Europe; higher consumption of meat in the U.S.; higher consumption of vegetables, legumes, fish, and wine in Southern Europe; and higher consumption of cereals, soy products, and fish in Japan. When researchers analyzed this data in relation to the risk of death from heart disease, they found that higher legume consumption was associated with a whopping 82% reduction in heart attack risk!
This year I will be planting Great Northern Beans for the first time in my garden as part of an experiment to see just how productive they are. I plan to include them in my book concerning SurvivalGardens that will be coming out next year. This book will be dedicated to things the average person can do to grow their own food and survive in times of global collapse.
I though it might be interesting to take a look at the actual cost of certain vegetables I pay for at the grocery store. I was amazed to find that no one seems to be tracking this sort of stuff. At least I couldn’t find very much on the internet.
So, I’ve elected to try and track what I’m paying at a local chain store for select items. The list will include the following; Broccoli, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, peppers, green beans and Bell peppers. I think this list is representative of some of the stuff I like to grow in the garden each year.
My purpose in doing this is to provide a record of produce costs and to see where I want to concentrate my growing efforts. I’d like to grow veggies that cost a lot and perhaps save a few bucks in the process. I’ll try and append monthly updates to this blog over the course of a few months to get a feel for the average cost of each item in the list.
All costs will be expressed both in the unit in which they were purchased (a bag of potatoes) and in a cost per pound. So, a head of lettuce that might go for $1.39 per head will be also expressed in its true weight. This will allow an ‘Apples to Apples’ comparison as it were. Finally, wherever possible, I plan to buy the produce that is packaged in the cheapest manner. This means buying a 5 pound bag of potatoes rather than each one individually. The only cravat is that I will keep the proportions consistent with what an average family would purchase. In other words, I’ll confine myself to buying a head of lettuce as opposed to a crate of lettuce just to try and save some money. (Anyways that much lettuce would just rot away before I could eat it all).
So, for the beginning of the month of March, 2010, this is what I paid for vegetables at a chain store in southwest Missouri. If, anyone in another part of the country wants to post their costs in the comment section please feel free.
