Food for thought

We are fast approaching the time of year when most of us will eat and drink too much on at least one occasion over the season of goodwill. This is nothing new and comes as no great surprise but what fascinates me is the amount written about magic cures for hangovers, advice on the “right” foods to eat, how to start/maintain a healthy diet and how to reduce the effects of over indulgence at Christmas.

We have become obsessed with food and for all of the wrong reasons. Very few people in this country go hungry these days and hardly anyone starves. We probably have the opportunity to eat more food than at any other time in history and enjoy a much more varied diet than many other nations, so why the fascination with food?

Researchers seem to be undertaking a constant search for ‘Super foods’ that will provide the elixir of life, with so numerous foods now rated on their anti-oxidants, vitamin content, fibre content….the list goes on. Just this week I was sent a communication telling me that eating just one 70g bar of a certain brand of chocolate will provide me with the same amount of antioxidants as a whole 7lb of Brussels sprouts! This interested me on two counts: one, there is no mention the particular ingredients in either the chocolate (which I like) or the sprouts (which I also like, but not enough to eat 7 lbs in one go); and two, the mixture of metric and imperial measurements. I’m not really bothered if we go metric or stay Imperial, but I am getting fed up with having to convert from one to the other and back again. We have been messing about with this since the 1970’s.

Super foods
At the moment, Blueberries are very fashionable as they have been found to contain a range of micronutrients, anthocyanins, other antioxidant pigments and various phytochemicals, as well as (possibly) helping alleviate some of the effects of ageing. But then there are Goji berries. Originating from China and Tibet, these little red berries are nutritionally rich, containing beta-carotene, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and amino acids. Apparently they are good for the liver, aid digestion and circulation, improve eyesight and boost the immune system. They are also nicknamed “happy berries” because of the sense of well-being they are said to induce. The trouble is, they taste awful.
Personally, I think “all things in moderation” works – it might not be trendy or “super”, but it is practical. I also think we gardeners have had it right all along. Growing your own fruit and veg is part of a healthy life style, because it makes you get outside for fresh air and exercise as well as providing fresh food that is chock-full of nutrients rather than being cold-stored and shipped half way across the globe. If I grow a mixture of these new fruits with my existing black currants, red currants and apples, it’s because I like the flavour!
See you next time.

A Tree for Life

1. 

   Its Christmas Already

   

   
   
   Well, here we are in December, with about three weeks to go before the festivities really get under way – which brings me onto the subject of Christmas trees.

   Last Saturday, we advertised an offer on the Sun Gardening page in conjunction with Homebase to give our readers a discount of 20% off any live Christmas tree (as long as you presented the coupon we printed in the newspaper). The emphasis was on buying ‘live’ trees, particularly those grown in pots, with the aim of encouraging our readers to keep the tree from one year to the next.

   I’ve seen this go full circle now, because for many years there has been a movement away from real trees towards artificial ones. These can be packed away in the loft for eleven months of the year and brought out for three weeks or so in December and January. The advantage to going artificial was that real Christmas trees always seem to be the wrong shape or size, and within days they began to suffer the dreaded ‘needle drop’, meaning that you were still picking them out of the carpet in July.

   Apparently, the very first artificial Christmas trees were made by the manufacturers of toilet brushes, and there are those who believe that most artificial trees are still no better than green-coloured loo brushes. From an environmental standpoint, the materials used to make artificial trees take as long as an estimated 1000 years to break down.

   A live Christmas tree, on the other hand, can be either grown in a pot for many years on a patio or plunged in a border in the garden. When it becomes too large for placing indoors, it can be shredded and re-cycled or planted in a corner of the garden. If you buy a tree that has been cut at ground level (no roots), these are best kept in a pot of damp sand or compost while they are indoors over Christmas, to help to keep the needles on for longer, (a photographer friend of ours used to spray his tree with spray glue to keep the needles on the tree for longer).

   The trees to avoid are those that have been dug up and placed in pots recently. These are often bought with the intention of keeping them and growing them on afterwards (like the pot-grown trees), but their after-Christmas survival rate is usually poor and there’s often a very good reason for this. Many years ago as a horticultural student, I had a holiday job working on a Christmas tree plantation, and one of my jobs during the period leading up to the holidays was to collect up all of the trees that had been dug up with roots that day and bundle them into 5’s. The roots of these trees were all dipped in boiling water for a couple of minutes before they were potted and sold as “lifted potted trees”. Fairly obviously, they had almost no chance of ever growing afterwards, which was exactly what the supplier wanted so that his customers had to come back next year.  

   If you want a nice-looking, healthy live Christmas tree that will last for more than one year (and the way the finances are going, it makes sense), then look for a British pot-grown tree from somewhere reputable, like Homebase.

   Support our British Growers!

   Until next week.