“It doesn’t matter if you are cooking for your friends, spouse, or children, this course is designed to help you prepare a meal that will be delicious and adaptable to satisfy everyone you are serving in order to free up time to spend together around the table – not in the kitchen,” says Sharon McCormick, CEO of Poppy Innovations. 

Cooking a decent healthy meal takes time and energy, mix in fussy eaters and different taste preferences and it’s no wonder family meal time is being ditched for “grab whatever you want” dinners. But with obesity rates in adults doubling over the past 25 years and tripling in children, it has never been more important to develop healthy eating habits. The key to reversing this trend is through improved food literacy, which is the skills, behaviour and knowledge to choose and prepare nutritious food.

One meal, one family is a great example of how Poppy Innovations is dedicated to improving the food literacy of Calgarians through hands-on education programs. “Participants will learn new recipes to adapt one meal for household members at various stages of eating (babies, toddlers, teenagers and adults with different food tastes and requirements) to ensure all family members consume their nutritional requirements in a tasty meal, regain time to spend connecting with their family and reduce costs associated with preparing multiple meals for one dinner” says McCormick.

  For the full media release, click on the link   One Meal One Family media release FINAL Jan 2016

Healthy eating is so much easier when the veggies are right in your garden. Being in control of what, if any chemicals or pesticides are used, satisfaction of watching your plants grow and of course seeing your harvest on your family’s dinner plate are just some of the reasons that make gardening worthwhile. Are you a cucumber enthusiast? This article from Bonnie Plants is full of great advice.

A tropical vegetable, cucumbers thrive when the weather is hot and water is plentiful. Plants are so frost-tender that they shouldn’t be set into the garden until soil temperatures are reliably in the 70-degree range (no less than 2 weeks after the last frost date).

Cucumber plants grow in two forms: vining and bush. Vines scramble along the ground or clamber up trellises, while bush types, such as Burpless Bush Hybrid, form a more compact plant. Generally, vining cucumbers yield more fruit throughout the growing season. Bush selections are especially suited to containers and small gardens. You can increase the season’s yield of bush varieties by planting several crops in succession 2 weeks apart.

Whether you want a cucumber for slicing or pickling, there’s a variety to suit your taste. Lemon cucumber offers smaller fruits perfect for a single serving, while Boston Pickling boasts classic heirloom taste. The long Armenian cucumber is a specialty ethnic cucumber prized for taste and the fact that a single cucumber yields so many slices.

Soil, Planting, And Care

Set cucumber plants at the base of your trellis and mulch after planting unless the soil could use a little more warming.

Cucumbers need warm, fertile soil with a pH of 6.0 to 6.8, although they will tolerate a bit more alkaline soil to 7.6. Work compost or composted manure into soil. Plant seedlings 36 to 60 inches apart, depending on variety (check the stick tag). For vines trained on a trellis, space plants 1 foot apart.

In areas where spring is long and cool, you can warm the soil 3 to 4 degrees by covering the hill or row with black plastic.If you do not plant in black plastic, then mulch with pine straw, wheat straw, chopped leaves, or your favorite organic mulch shortly after planting. If the weather is unseasonably cool, you can wait a while to mulch until the ground is warmed by the sun. Mulch is especially important to keep the fruit clean for bush types and vines not growing on a trellis. Straw mulch is also thought to be uncomfortable for slugs and creates an uneasy footing for cucumber beetles, helping to keep them at bay.

If you can, trellis your vines. This keeps the fruit clean and saves space. A 12- to 18-inch diameter cage made from 4- or 5-foot welded wire fencing or hog wire will support 2 or 3 vines. Wire is easy for the tendrils of climbing cucumbers to grab as the plant grows.

Cucumbers grow fast and don’t demand a lot of care. Just keep the soil consistently moist with an inch of water per week (more if temperatures sizzle and rain is scarce). Inadequate or inconsistent moisture causes oddly shaped or poor-tasting fruit. If possible, water your cucumbers with a soaker hose or drip irrigation to keep the foliage dry. This helps prevent leaf diseases that can ruin the plant.

You can fertilize with a liquid food, such as Bonnie Herb & Vegetable Plant Food, every 2 weeks, applying it directly to soil around plant stems. Or you can use a granular, slow-release fertilizer worked into the soil when you plant or sprinkled around the plants later.

Troubleshooting

Cucumbers bear male and female flowers. Female blooms have a small swelling at the base, the makings of a fruit.

If vines bloom but don’t fruit, something is probably interfering with pollination. First, make sure that you see both male and female blooms. Male blooms usually appear first and then drop off, so don’t be alarmed if this happens. Within a week or two, female flowers will also appear; each one has a small cucumber-shaped swelling at the base that will become a cucumber.

Several pests bother cucumbers. Squash bugs may attack seedlings. Slugs like ripening fruit. Aphids can colonize leaves and buds. Straw mulch helps keep slugs at bay, as can trellising vines to get the fruit off the ground. Vines are also bothered by cucumber beetles, which chew holes in leaves and flowers and scar stems and fruits, but worse than that, they spread a disease that causes the plants to wilt and die. Powdery mildew is a disease that leaves white, mildew-like patches on the leaves. Apply fungicides at the first sign of its presence. To minimize disease spread, avoid harvesting or handling vines when leaves are wet.

Harvest And Storage

You can pick cucumbers whenever they’re big enough to use. Check vines daily as the fruit starts to appear because they enlarge quickly. Vines produce more fruit the more you harvest. To remove the fruit, use a knife or clippers, cutting the stem above the fruit. Pulling them may damage the vine. Don’t let the cucumbers get oversized or they will be bitter, and will also keep the vine from producing more. Yellowing at the bottom (blossom end) of a cucumber signals overripeness; remove the fruit immediately. Harvest lemon cucumbers just before they begin turning yellow. Although they are called lemon cucumber because the little oblong or round fruits turn yellow and look like a lemon, by the time the fruit turns yellow it may be a little too seedy for most tastes.

You can keep harvested cucumbers in the refrigerator for 7 to 10 days, but use them as soon as possible after picking for best flaor. If you don’t eat a slicing cucumber all at once, cover the unused portion in plastic wrap to prevent dehydration in the refrigerator. In fact, it’s a good idea to wrap your whole cucumbers in plastic or store them in a zipper bag in the fridge to keep them crisp.

Here is an interesting article by Rick D., Founder of Eat Local Grown, one of the organizations leading the charge to bring about awareness and make it easy for consumers to buy local food.

Here is his story. Prior to 2007, my only interest in local food was a couple of tomato plants in my backyard. I considered myself an average, pretty healthy guy that exercised regularly and for the most part ate a healthy diet. And then I read a book – The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. That book changed the entire game for me. I bought 12 copies to give to family and friends. I became incredibly passionate about supporting local food in my community. To say that I was a bit crazy with the whole idea was an understatement. And I’m sure my ranting and raving was a bit tiresome to those within earshot. But I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. I read everything I could get my hands on, watched dozens of documentaries. Basically just soaked up as much information as I could find. In hindsight, I was ANGRY… In hindsight, I was ANGRY! That doesn’t quite say it. I was really ________ angry! You can probably think of a few key words to put in front of angry and you’ll get a bit closer to my true state of mind.

The more I learned, the more I felt that I had been lied to. And manipulated. I really thought my family had been eating a healthy diet. I had no clue. We’d go and fill our cart at Costco with food that was ‘supposed’ to be good for us. And then I’d feed it to my kids. It said it was good! Yep, right there on the label, the food told me it was healthy. And like an idiot, I believed it… So I was pissed off. Very pissed! The more I learned, the worse the situation seemed. And all the while these questions were spinning around in my head- How could these big companies make these health claims on the labels of their food? Did they make a mistake? Or did they really believe that the crap they were packaging is truly healthy? Could they just actually lie and get away with it? Would these companies really put their profits ahead of the health of their customers? I dug deeper. I learned more. I started to understand the amazingly large magnitudes of money that were on the line.

Think about it, most of us buy 100% of the food we eat. And most of us eat an average of 3 meals a day. Every day. In the USA alone, that’s upwards of 300 million people buying 3 meals a day. We spend a lot of money on food! And the big food processors are making a killing. Literally. The ubiquity, convenience and habit-forming appeal of hyperprocessed foods have largely drowned out the alternatives: There are five fast-food restaurants for every supermarket in the United States; in recent decades the adjusted for inflation price of fresh produce has increased by 40 percent while the price of soda and processed food has decreased by as much as 30 percent; and nearly inconceivable resources go into encouraging consumption in restaurants: fast-food companies spent $4.2 billion on marketing in 2009.” –Mark Bittman, Is Junk Food Really Cheaper? These big companies don’t have to lie… Like most people, I knew those basic facts; lots of people buy lots of food. But I never really thought about it. I began to understand how incredibly powerful food lobbyists could be. These big companies don’t have to lie. They just take a big sliver of those fat profits and buy some new laws. Years and years of big food company lobbyists pounding our politicians with billions of dollars in funds have successfully changed the rules of the game. A former VP of Monsanto is one of the powerful heads of the US FDA! That’s insanity! The term “organic” has become so watered down that a lot small growers just stopped using it! Okay- I’m ranting. Told you I was pissed. But why eatLocalGrown?

We’ve been shopping at the local farmers market for the last few years. I have really been amazed how great the food tastes. I now know the farmers I buy from. We talk! Many of them feel the same way that I do and it’s a big reason they are doing what they do. It’s so refreshing to go talk to the growers, buy their goods, bring them home and eat them that day. Great, healthy fruits and vegetables that were just picked. And they were grown with great care and love. Also, these farmers are building the soil on their land, unlike the big corporations that are poisoning our communities with pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Recently, we bought a freezer. We purchased a 1/4 of a cow that was 100% grass fed. And a 1/2 of a lamb from the same farm. The meat is delicious! It feels so right to support local food that was raised on a healthy farm and know that these animals ate the food that nature intended them to eat. There’s just not enough awareness… I want the farms that I buy from, and the thousands of others like them, to thrive. But many of them aren’t. They are working very hard and barely breaking even. Many of the farmers that I speak with tell me that they need to have other jobs to make ends meet.

There’s just not enough awareness. EatLocalgrown is our way of helping to change that. It’s a big job. It will take many people and a lot of time. We are one of many that are fighting this fight. We’re outnumbered, we have less resources, and less time. But we’ll fight because we know we need to. And every day we get a few more on our side. We spread the word and educate each other about local food. Knowledge is power! That’s why we’re doing this. Here’s HOW. Our goal is to list as many farms, ranches, restaurants, artisans, and farmer’s markets as possible that grow or sell local food in your communities. Our tool is here so you can Find, Rate, and Share these businesses. We’ll also provide lots of great articles with shopping tips, health and nutrition information and environmental news that impacts all of us. This site is meant to be interactive. It only works with your help!

What You Can Do to Get Involved (Right Now)!

Search our directory for local food businesses in your community and RATE or REVIEW them. Click here to learn how EatLocalGrown works.

Like EatLocalGrown, your local farmers’ markets, farms, growers & producers and organizations with a mandate to bring awareness and resources to change the way we eat like Poppy Innovations, on FACEBOOK, TWITTER and PINTEREST!

Use the Share Buttons on articles. Creating awareness is key to getting our food system back on track.