Dirty Dozen & Clean Fifteen!

 This weekend my sweet husband spent hours upon hours working in the scorching hot sun to create our GARDEN AREA!

Last year my dad built us a small garden box to experiment with and we had SO MUCH FUN growing our own food!

But this year we are going FULL out!

Jess started by killing the grass on the side of the yard, then dug it all up by hand. Next he leveled all the dirt, dug out a tree trunk, had curbing put in, built 2 boxes out of redwood, laid down landscaping cloth, and shoveled in 1 and a 1/2 TONS of rock! 

It was a pain in the neck (literally) but we are so pumped now that it is all done. Can't wait to start planting! Thanks JESS!

So why is it so beneficial to grow your own food or buy ORGANIC food at the grocery store?

***PESTICIDES*** 

Read below to find out WHAT foods you should ALWAYS buy organic and which ones aren't such a big deal

The Dirty Dozen

Of the 12 most contaminated foods, 6 are fruits: apples, strawberries, peaches, domestic nectarines, imported grapes and domestic blueberries. Notable findings:

• Every sample of imported nectarines tested positive for pesticides, followed by apples (97.8 percent) and imported plums (97.2 percent).
• 92 percent of apples contained 2 or more pesticide residues‚ followed by imported nectarines (90.8 percent) and peaches (85.6 percent).
• Imported grapes had 14 pesticides detected on a single sample. Strawberries, domestic grapes both had 13 different pesticides detected on a single sample.
• As a category. peaches have been treated with more pesticides than any other produce, registering combinations of up to 57 different chemicals. Apples were next, with 56 pesticides and raspberries with 51.

Celery, spinach, sweet bell peppers, potatoes, lettuce and greens (kale and collards) are the vegetables most likely to retain pesticide contamination:

• Some 96 percent all celery samples tested positive for pesticides, followed by cilantro (92.9 percent) and potatoes (91.4 percent).
• Nearly 90 percent of celery samples contained multiple pesticides, followed by cilantro (70.1 percent) and sweet bell peppers (69.4 percent).
• A single celery sample was contaminated with 13 different chemicals, followed by a single sample of sweet bell peppers (11), and greens (10).
• Hot peppers had been treated with as many as 97 pesticides, followed by cucumbers (68) and greens (66).

The Clean Fifteen

The vegetables least likely to test positive for pesticides are onions, sweet corn, asparagus, sweet peas, eggplant, cabbage, sweet potatoes and mushrooms.

• Asparagus, sweet corn and onions had no detectable pesticide residues on 90 percent or more of samples.
• More than four-fifths of cabbage samples (81.8 percent)  had no detectible pesticides, followed by sweet peas (77.1 percent) and eggplant (75.4 percent).
• Multiple pesticide residues are extremely rare on vegetables low in overall contamination. No samples of onions and corn had more than one pesticide. Less than 6 percent of sweet potato samples had multiple pesticides.
• Of the low-pesticide vegetables, no single sample had more than 5 different chemicals.

The fruits least likely to test positive for pesticide residues are pineapples, avocados, mangoes, domestic cantaloupe, kiwi, watermelon and grapefruit.

• Fewer than 10 percent of pineapple, mango, and avocado samples showed detectable pesticides, and fewer than one percent of samples had more than one pesticide residue.
• Nearly 55 percent of grapefruit had detectable pesticides but only 17.5 percent of samples contained more than one residue. Watermelon had residues on 28.1 percent of samples, and 9.6 percent had multiple pesticide residues.