Your Own Kitchen Garden

Have you been thinking about planting a kitchen garden this spring with vegetables and fruits you love to eat?

Food grown in your own garden will be fresher than anything you can buy -- even from a farmer's market. In many cases, it will be tastier, too. My favorites are just-picked, sun-warmed tomatoes and sweet peas straight from the pod.

Home-grown food is also cheap. If you start from seed rather than starter plants, it's practically free. Growing from seed also gives you the option of many more plant varieties. It's not that hard either, as this video from retrovore.com shows:



If you do go with starter plants, get yours from a local nursery that grows their own, rather than a big box store. Superstores don't tend to have good controls in place for monitoring plants for disease. If you unwittingly buy diseased plants, you can not only ruin your own harvest but spread the disease to other gardeners and nearby farms. Just last year, diseased tomato plants bought by home gardeners at big chains ended up destroying tomato crops across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states.

Also, keep chemicals out of your garden. They're not something you want on your food, seeping into groundwater or running off into rivers and streams.

Read my February column for NRDC, Kitchen Gardening -- Not Just about the Food, to learn more and subscribe to This Green Life to get the column by email every month.

BPA Linked to Heart Disease, Study Confirms

Heer's another reason to steer clear of food and drink packaging containing BPA -- it's been linked to higher rates of heart disease.

In a sampling of U.S. adults, those with the highest levels of BPA in their urine were almost twice as likely to suffer from coronary heart disease than those with the lowest concentrations of BPA.

Read more: BPA Linked to Heart Disease, Study Confirms

The original reason to avoid BPA? Hormonal changes in fetuses, babies and children that might affect their brain development and cause reproductive abnormalities.

Unscented Products -- Why and How

Air freshener, laundry detergent, soap, shampoo, moisturizer, lip balm -- these and other common household and personal care products are scented with fragrances that can be dangerous to your health. Dozens if not hundreds of synthetic chemicals go into these fragrances, including:

• Phthalates -- endocrine disruptors that cause hormonal abnormalities, birth defects and reproductive problems;
• Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that affect the neurological and respiratory systems and are carcinogenic;
• Synthetic musks, which may also be endocrine disruptors and additionally, are persistent chemicals that remain in the environment and are contaminating marine mammals.

If you think bah, that can't be -- surely, some government agency vets the products before allowing the public to be exposed to them -- think again. Advance safety testing is not required before the products go to market.

If you think you can find what chemicals are used in fragrances by checking product labels, rethink again. The composition of fragrances is considered a trade secret and may be kept confidential.

And if you think the word "unscented" on a package means what it says, well, you know what to do. That just means the product doesn't have a smell that seems scented. It could very well contain a "masking" fragrance used to neutralize the natural smell of other ingredients.

Here's how to avoid toxic fragrances:

• Avoid air fresheners. Open the windows instead.
• Use water, white vinegar and baking soda for routine cleaning jobs. If soap is needed, try castile soap.
• Look up fragrance-free products and homemade alternatives in the Guide to Less Toxic Products.
• Check Skin Deep, the Environmental Working Group's cosmetic safety database, to see if your favorite personal care products are safe and to find safer alternatives.
• Make sure the words "fragrance" or "parfum" do not appear in the ingredient list of cosmetics.
• Use fewer cosmetics and reduce or eliminate your use of perfume.

Read my January column for NRDC, Scented Products -- Intoxicating and Toxic, to learn more and subscribe to This Green Life to get the column by email every month.

Green Holiday Entertaining -- and a Recipe for Vegan Latkes

When you throw a dinner or party for the holidays -- whether for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or New Year's -- you use a lot more of the earth's resources than you do in day-to-day life. How can you reduce the ecological footprint of your feast without compromising on hospitality? Follow the game plan in Holiday Entertaining for a Small Planet, the December issue of This Green Life.

One of many recommendations is reducing the amount of animal products you serve -- not just meat, but dairy and eggs. If you celebrate Hanukkah, try this recipe for vegan latkes (potato pancakes):



Here's a printable version of the whole article:



Please share your own green holiday tips and recipes.