Eat Your Greens: The Surprising Power of Homegrown Leaf Crops

After purchasing this book, it sat forgotten on my nightstand for nearly a year as I read several other items on my list. Every time I picked it up, I thought, "not now, I already know about eating and growing my greens." As a nutritionist and permaculturist, I'm already eating a wide array of leaves from my edible landscape and didn't realize how much this book would add to my repertoire. David Kennedy's book is not about kale, broccoli, chard, spinach, lettuce, and the other greens you're already familiar with. Perhaps the subtitle should've been "21 Surprising Greens You Didn't Even Know About"! It covers little known leafy veggies with superior nutrition, and edible leaves on plants you might already be growing but didn't know you could eat. There are chapters on how to grow greens in healthy living soil, year round production, and harvesting and storing. An appendix offers high quality sources for seeds. The approach is strongly rooted in permaculture, sustainability, organic gardening. Then there's recipes, including my fav molokhia soup, and a carrot & wolfberry-greens stir fry I'm eager to try. The book is basic enough to serve as a guide for a gardening newbie, but also broad enough to offer many juicy tidbits for green thumbs.

This book has a lot of useful and informative information about growing greens. It explains what greens to grow on a some plot of land.

Great info, accessibly written - lots of unusual varieties of greens represented. Just what I, as an avid and nutrition conscious gardener, hoped for.

I purchased the book looking forward to diversifying what I grow in the garden. The first chapter that starts to discuss alternatives to grow doesn't begin until page 97, and includes some common crops. There are some summary listings for several plants that were of interest, with details on a few more. If you are looking for horticultural information on growing green leafy vegetables, a web search and your local extension office are good resources. The author's foundation sounds like a great cause, but it's not why I purchased the book. Recipes start on page 215, and there are sections on setting up a garden, vertical gardening and preservation also in the book (before the recipes).

Excellent.

Excellent written book with pictures and illustrations of well known greens as well as a whole new world of lesser known greens and leaves that are edible and nutritious. This book is packed with a wide array of greens/leaves and how to grow them in your garden or yard. From soil, compost, hotbeds, small greenhouses to recipes. This is a must have book for new gardeners as well as experienced gardeners. “eat your greens”

Eat your greens: The surprising power of home grown leaf crops by David Kennedy ISBN 978-0-86571-751-0 Published by New Society Publishers, www.newsociety.com --Reviewed by Craig Soderberg With 277 pages of helpful information, this book is a great resource for agricultural tips. There are 16 chapters: (1) the power of the industrial food system, (2) the promise of the local food system, (3) raising food, not money, (4) matching the parts of the food system to what they do best, (5) the potential of home grown greens, (6) creating healthy food gardens, (7) dynamic new leaf crops for the home garden, (8) growing multi-purpose leaf crops, (9) growing fresh greens year-round, (10) growing vertical greens, (11) growing edible cover crops, (12) preserving the leaf harvest, (13) concentrating the nutrition of green leaves, (14) recipes, (15) a new way to share information about food, (16) held in light. There are also two appendices, one for seeds and supplies and one for useful websites. In the introduction, the author states that leaf crops produce more nutrients per square foot of growing space and per day of growing season than any other crop and they also have more nutrient per calorie than any other food. The last page of the introduction provides a chart that shows that home grown leafy vegetables provide significantly more vitamin A and iron than factory produced crops like lettuce and cabbage. In chapter one, the author discusses some of the problems with the industrial food system. For example nearly 90 percent of all corn and soy in the US is now grown from genetically modified (GM) seed and corn and soy yields are fed to many different types of livestock in confined areas where their movement is limited. Also, the food produced by the industrial food system may be more uniform but generally has much less flavor, less variety, and less nutritional value. Ultimately the most damming judgment against the industrial food system is that it cannot be sustained. Critics state the obvious: complete dependence on non-renewable energy sources and topsoil is being eroded much faster than it can be rebuilt. And up to 98% of vegetable varieties in the US have been permanently lost in the past 100 years and the industrial diet has been blamed for sharp increases in the rates of obestiy and diabetes. In chapter two, the author discusses the advantages of the local food movement. There is nearly unanimous agreement within the local food movement that fresh, minimally processed food is healthier than highly processed food shipped from afar. There is also widespread support within the local food movement that organically grown food is more nutritious than its conventionally grown counterpart. After comparing the industrial food system (mass produced factory food) with the local food movement, in chapter three, the author discusses a third option - raising your own food with a humble home kitchen garden. The three out of the top four reasons for kitchen gardening are to grow food that tastes better, has better quality, and is safer. Safer gardening means we can grow and eat organic food that does not have the residue of herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides. In chapter four, the author compared the global food production scale, industrial scale, local scale and home scale in terms of ecology, efficiency, and diversity. The home scale definitely has the highest diversity potential. Diversity is an important component of a mature ecosystem. In chapter five, the author explains why we should grow and eat our own leafy vegetables: they are low in calories and full of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. He explains that the rate of diabetes is about 20% higher in countries where high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is readily available than in countries where is was difficult to find. But the British Medical Journal found that an increase in 1.15 servings of leafy vegetables a day was associated with a 14% decrease in the incidence of type 2 diabetes (p.51). In chapter six, the author discusses how to create healthy food gardens. An interesting observation from this chapter is that many weeds have edible leaves and they are often more nutritious than the vegetable crops that they threaten. Examples of edible leaves include: dandelion, lambsquarters, pigweed, purslane, dock, chickweed, plantain, and stinging nettles. Chapters seven and eight provide indepth discussions of 21 spectacular leafy crops, how to extend their harvest, and how to preserve them for year-round use. These include: (1) Chaya, tree spinach, (Cnidoscolus aconitifolius, C. chayamansa) (2) Cranberry hibiscus (Hibiscus acetosella), (3) Garlic chives, chinese chives (Allium tuberosum), (4) Jute, molkhia (Corchorus olitorius), (5) Moringa, Horseradish tree, Drumstick tree, Malungay (Moringa oleifera, M. stenopetala), (6) Okinawa Spinach, Gunura (Gynura bicolor, Gynura crepiodes), (7) Taioba, Tannia, Malanga, Yautia (Xanthosoma sagittifolum), Belembe, Tannier Spinach (Xanthosoma brasiliense); Taro (Colocasia esculenta), (8) Tampala, Leaf Amaranth, Joseph's Coat (Amaranthus tricolor), (9) Toon, Chinese Mahogany, Fragrant Spring Tree, Red Toon, Chinese Cedar (Toona sinensis), (10) Vine Spinach, Malabar Spinach (Basella alba, B. rubra), (11) Walking Stick Kale (Brassica oleracea var. longata). The following additional species are discussed in chapter eight: (1) Grain Amaranth, (2) Quail Grass, (3) Roselle, (4) Sweet Potatoes, (5) Wolfberry. Another five species are discussed in chapter eleven as edible cover crops: (1) Alfalfa, (2) Austrian Winter Peas, (3) Barley, (4) Cowpeas, (5) Wheat. Eight full color pages with several example photographs of various plants are included at the end of chapter seven. Chapter nine discusses how to grow fresh greens year-round with greenhouses. Chapter ten discusses growning greens vertically. Chapter eleven discusses how we can grow and eat edible cover crops. Chapter twelve and thirteen discuss how to make leaf concentrate - perhaps the most nutritious food on the planet - from his own garden. Chapter fourteen includes several recipes which use leafy greens as a primary ingredient. I highly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in the 'how to' and 'why' of backyard gardening. This ideas from this book may also help those of us who support organic gardening to know how to respond to those who think 'organic' doesn't really matter.

WOW everything I didn't know about growing and incorporating leafy greens in our lives. I was shocked at the nutritional value of greens, specially the protein of dried leaf concentrate. This book goes from the cellular level of plants along to some nice recipes. Thorough explanations and alternatives and data. All questions were answered including how to hide greens in foods for picky eaters and grow year round in colder climates. Big garden changer for me.

I'm disappointed in this book