"Sharing Gardens": Kale joins the "Dirty-Dozen' list: and How to Grow Your Own Kale

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Kale joins the "Dirty-Dozen' list: and How to Grow Your Own Kale

Kale - a generous plant!

In recent weeks we've seen several headlines announcing that kale has made it onto the "Dirty Dozen" list for the first time in ten years. The "Dirty Dozen" list is compiled each year by testing thousands of samples of fruits and vegetables from different sources to see which have highest concentrations of herbicides and pesticides LINK. And the farm chemicals are not just showing up on the vegetables themselves, studies have shown that, people being tested have increasingly been found to have these chemicals show up in fluid samples such as blood and urine (see links below). It is unfortunate that kale has returned to the "Dirty Dozen" list as, in the past few years, it has shown a surge in popularity. Its recent following is not surprising as it tastes similar to broccoli (a favorite on American plates) and it is at the top of another, more favorable list - The Aggregate Nutrient Density Index (ANDI), that rates foods by their nutrient density. Kale has the densest concentration of nutrients, per calorie, of a wide range of foods tested. (PDF of 72 tested foods) (explanation of chart). On the positive side of things, people who have switched to an all-organic diet have been able to reduce these chemical residues in their bodies by as much as 90% in as little as two weeks LINK.

Kale is the most nutrient-dense plant tested! (PDF of 72 tested foods)(explanation of chart)

So, if you'd like to incorporate more organically grown kale into your diet and you're on a budget (we've noticed that prices for organic kale have really risen in the past few years...) perhaps you'd like to try and grow your own!

Kale is very easy to grow! Here's our POST on growing kale.

Grow your own kale: Kale is super-easy to grow and 2-4 plants will easily keep a family fed over the course of the summer. If your climate isn't too harsh you can grow a second crop that will produce food through the fall and winter too (though at a much slower rate). Here's our POST on growing kale.

Our CSA provides delicious, nutritious food May to November.

Or, if you live in our area, you can join our CSA and receive a large box of delicious organic produce on a weekly basis - including copious amounts of green-leafy vegetables. We still have some CSA "shares" to offer. Over six-months of vegetables and fruits for $700. More info HERE.

How we grow our food at the Sharing Gardens: Because we are not a commercial farm, all our labor is provided by volunteers and we are under no pressure to produce food on a forced timeline to get it to market ahead of the other farmers in our area, our food is slow-grown, with less water-weight and hence more nutrient-dense. We fertilize primarily with compost derived from leaves, grass, weeds and food scraps, wood-ash from our wood-burning stove and with worm castings we harvest from the paths of our greenhouses LINK. We do not use commercial fertilizers. The wood-ash and the composted tree-leaves both provide re-mineralization of our soils because the tree-roots pull up minerals from deep within the soil. Without forcing our plants to grow fast with high-nitrogen fertilizers, or animal manures, they are more resistant to diseases and insect infestations that are caused, in part, by the thinner cell-walls of plants forced to grow unnaturally quickly.

Or, if you live in our area and would like to eat the kale we donate to Monroe's Food Pantry, you can shop weekly for free at the South Benton Food Pantry (some income-criteria required).