Growing Your Own Fresh Produce Just Got Easier

This guest article is written by Tom Corson-Knowles, founder of Authentic Health Coaching. Tom blogs regularly about whole food nutrition, vertical gardening, and other health topics.

I love eating raw foods and fresh produce. The problem is it can be hard to get! And it can be expensive. Growing your own fresh produce is an awesome way to save money and get higher quality, fresher produce that is organic and vine-ripened. The only problem is, over 70% of people live in cities. So how do you grow your own food in a city? Or if you don’t have enough land or space for a garden?

Well, for those of you who can’t grow a typical garden, now you can grow a vertical garden!

Vertical Gardening

Many people credit Patrick Blanc as the inventor of vertical gardening, but the truth is that vertical gardens have been around at least since the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in 600 B.C. It’s quite likely that it dates back even further than that, but either way, vertical gardens have been few and far between. They’ve mostly been reserved for royalty, tourist attractions or novelties… until now.

Just in the last 5 years, vertical farming projects have popped up all over the world. More than 20 countries either now have a large vertical farm project completed or it’s in progress. So what does a vertical farm look like?

What a vertical farm looks like!

Here’s a graphic of a vertical farm project from Dickson Despommier’s landmark book The Vertical Farm.

When you look at it, you’re probably thinking, “I’m never going to build something like that!” Well, you don’t have too!

Home Vertical Gardening Kits

With recent advancements in aeroponics (a form of hydroponics where the plant roots sit in air instead of in water), there are now home growing vertical garden kits available for $500-$600. The kits generally have spots for 20-30 plants, depending on how big a unit you get.

With aeroponic growing, the crops generally grow 2-3 times faster than in soil because the roots can absorb nutrition much more quickly in an aeroponic environment and the plants don’t have to compete with pests or fungus or other organisms like they would in soil. This means that you can grow a tomato plant, for example, from seedling to hundreds of ripe tomatoes in just 4-6 weeks instead of 12-18 weeks in soil. So you can plant and harvest several times a year instead of just once!

Rooftop aeroponic tower garden in NYC!

On the right, you can see a chef from New York City harvesting squash from his vertical garden that he placed on the rooftop. Those squash plants are just 5 weeks old!

With a vertical garden kit, you can grow on rooftops, indoors, outdoors, just about anywhere! There’s even a large commercial vertical farm project being build in the Netherlands that is completely underground! The farm will be using grow lights instead of sunlight.

These commercial farms aren’t just environmentally motivated. Even though aeroponic vertical farms use 10% as much land and 90% less water than conventional growing in soil, these farms are mostly commercial ventures – and they are profitable. Likewise, as a homeowner with just one vertical gardening kit, for your $600 investment, you’ll probably be saving at least $50 a month in grocery bills, meaning your investment would “pay off” in a year or so.

Many of my friends who have been growing aeroponically have had such an abundance of food that they had to give away the extra to their neighbors and friends! For those of you who are entrepreneurial minded,  you could also start a small side business selling the extra produce from your vertical garden.

So if you’ve been looking for a way to get more fresh produce, vertical gardening just might be your ticket to a healthier lifestyle – and a whole lot of tomatoes!

Calling All Food Revolutionaries

Exciting news! Bestselling author John Robbins is personally interviewing 21 people who are leaders in movements for healthy, sustainable, humane and delicious food. From April 28 – May 6, there will be 3 interviews broadcast daily, and you can listen in – for free. You’ll get cutting edge disease-beating, health-activating, age-reversing information. These tools can help you and your family to thrive and to make a difference in the world.

After seeing John Robbins speak LIVE at the LongevityNOW Conference in 2010, I am interested in hearing all that he has to say. His presentation was so genuine, heart-felt, and profound that I, and much of the conference room, was tearing up at the powerful stories he shared. WOW. I was deeply moved with how open he was and the sincere message he brings forth. I’m even more of a fan now than I was when I initially read his books, Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution several years ago – which I highly recommend. They are the catalyst for many people on their health journey!

In case you want to see part of his presentation from that conference, you can catch quite a bit of it here on YouTube (there’s a part 1, 2, and 3).

This summit that he and his son, Ocean Robbins, have put together offers up-to-date, highly useful information from an amazing array of inspiring voices including expert doctors and acclaimed researchers such as Dean Ornish, MD (Preventive Medicine Research Institute) and T. Colin Cambell, Ph.D (The China Study); NY Times best-selling authors Marianne Williamson (Spiritual Principles for Weight Loss) and Kathy Freston (Quantum Wellness); Culture-changers and icons such as Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me) and Rory Freedman (Skinny Bitch); Natural health pioneers such as Joseph Mercola (Mercola.com) and David Wolfe (Radiant Health Now); Food system innovators such as Vandana Shiva (How to Stop Big Ag) and Ronnie Cummins (Organic Consumers Association), and many more inspiring visionaries. This will be EPIC!

The Summit offers training, inspiration and practical know-how from modern day heroes of health and sustainability. Participants are promised answers to burning questions, tools for dealing with family and peers, and practically useful insights, ideas, motivation and tips, all from the comfort and convenience of your phone and computer. Stay at home… listen in… and learn how to make an extremely positive impact.

The summit will include focus on the latest thinking on preventing and reversing heart disease, cancer and diabetes; the truth about GMOs, soy, raw foods, and grass-fed beef; the social, ethical and environmental impact of what you eat; and how to inspire your family to join you in making healthy choices.

Learn more and register for free, here: The Food Revolution Summit. I’ll be listening to the calls with you. This is something we all need to hear!

Homemade Raw Superfood Granola

Homemade raw superfood granola

For those that love a nice crunchy texture bursting with multiple flavors, you’ll adore this homemade granola recipe. Granola used to be one of my favorite snack foods when I ate more processed, packaged organic foods and wasn’t as clean with my food choices. This is a very flexible recipe that can be adapted based upon what ingredients you currently have in your conscious kitchen and I advise making more than you expect you’ll want to since it’s a pretty addictive healthy snack for your entire family.

The Raw Superfood Granola makes a wonderful travel food and is ideal for people who are super busy with crazy schedules (or many kids) who typically grab whatever is easy when they’re out grabbing a bite to eat on their lunch break.

The base of the recipe is buckwheat, nuts and seeds of choice, raw honey, and organic superfood and/or tonic herbal powders of choice. I used multiple sweeteners (raw honey, lucuma and stevia extract), and many of the superfoods I have in my superwoman stash. It doesn’t have to be as many ingredients as I list; I just wanted to load it up with as much as I could as an experiment to see if it would still be tasty – and, it was! I love simple foods too, yet I do enjoy loading up recipes like this with as much goodness as possible so each bite is packed with nutrition.

The amounts you use aren’t really that important, but I’ve given you a general sense of the amounts I used below. I didn’t measure anything and used my intuition; the base is soaked and rinsed buckwheat and nuts + seeds (so it wasn’t just buckwheat granola) with small amounts of everything else.  If you want a lighter granola, use more buckwheat and if you want a more dense, heavy, and nutty granola, use more nuts and seeds. Play around and make a different version each time!

Buckwheat directions: soak a few cups of organic buckwheat (bought in the bulk food section at natural health food stores) in spring water overnight. Rinse thoroughly the next morning – the gooey-ness will go away if rinsed well enough. Let it drip in the sink for a while and then sit on the counter to dry (same process as making sprouts). You can use the buckwheat right away or sprout them for a several more hours or again, overnight.

In making the recipe this way (with a diverse selection of ingredients and choices), I took a chance that it would turn out better than the raw food granola at natural health food stores. This recipe is WAY beyond anything that can be purchased in the raw food section of stores and is incredibly more nutritious and cost-effective.

Pre-dehydrated granola mixture spread evenly on tray

Ingredients (100% raw + organic)

Your Granola Base (approximate measurements):
1+ cup sprouted buckwheat
1/2-1 cup soaked pumpkin seeds
1/2 -1 cup soaked sunflower seeds
1/2 cup cashews or macadamia nuts (truly raw, please!)
1 T homemade almond butter (really nice delicious addition to bind ingredients if you want that)

OR – do primarily buckwheat with just a couple small handfuls of nuts and/or seeds. I did this in my 2nd batch & it’s awesome.

* nuts and seeds do not need to be dehydrated, but they certainly can be – I took them right out of the bowl they were soaking in

Dried Fruit:
- goji berries (I only use the Dragon Herbs Heaven Mountain or Bija brands)
- dried cherries
- raisins (not nearly as nutritious as goji berries, but an good option especially for kids)

Superfoods of Choice (possibilities are endless – I’ve just listed here what I made in the batch that’s pictured; use select ingredients in amounts desired; make a different batch each time and experiment!):
- maca (energy, stamina and hormone balancing)
- cacao (powder and/or sweetened or plain nibs)
- mucuna (natural mood-booster)
- noni powder (super immunity)
- wild blue green algae, spirulina, and/or chlorella (by HealthForce)*
- marine phytoplankton (another epic algae)*
- hand-harvested local pine pollen (or bought online)
- Chocolate or Vanilla Phycocyanin Warrior Food (raw vegan protein powder)

* I consider algae to be very important in a nutritional program and put it in everything.

Sweeteners:
- approx 1 T vanilla or cinnamon infused raw honey (or your favorite raw honey!)
- 1 teaspoon lucuma
- pinches of stevia extract powder (Kal brand), (optional)

* If you’d rather not use raw honey and prefer to keep it super low-glycemic, add more lucuma and stevia to taste. It can be done and really taste dee-lish! You can always add other sweeteners, but the ones I list are my personal favorites.

Flavor Enhancers:
- 1 teaspoon wildcrafted vanilla bean
- pinches of sea salt

Directions: Mix your ingredients all together in the food processor. Pulse until mixed well – do not over pulse (unless you want to turn this into granola bars which I’ll share a recipe for in another post)! Spread mixture onto teflex dehydrator sheets and dehydrate for several hours or overnight. Check on your granola and flip once the one side is dry and crunchy, and dehydrate for another few hours until it’s the way you want it.

Package some up and feed it to your kids, keep it around as a healthy snack to nibble on, and bring it with you on road trips so there’s something nutrient-dense that you can eat in lieu of pre-packaged products made with less love than this chewy granola recipe I’ve shared here!