Start an organic community garden
submitted
Pumpkin and squash blossoms are delicious
stuffed with cheese, floured and fried.
When Walmart starts moving to organic, it's probably time to start listening up.
The trend is unmistakable! Are you ready to get started? Do you want to make a quantum leap into the sustainable local food movement? What? You don't have a green thumb, and you wouldn't know where to start. Take a walk down the native pathways along Pine Avenue in the city of Anna Maria and check out the raised bed, organic community gardens.
After completing our last building in the Pine Avenue Restoration project we looked for ways to further enhance the green aspect of what we now like to call the “Greenest Little Main Street in America”. The landscaping is really important to the look and feel of the street. We are saving money and negating the environmental cost that would be incurred fertilizing, watering, and spraying the insecticides necessary to propagate the exotic landscape.
Many of our readers may know or have heard of Mike Miller. Mike has done more to promote native landscaping than anybody since Johnny Appleseed.
The organic community gardens were Mike’s idea. Why not have multiple gardens that our community could benefit from and serve as a model for what you and I can do in our own backyards? Remember the days of going out back and picking your greens for dinner? Today Mike's first eight gardens, that began with the shop owners on Pine Avenue and integrated into their landscaping, have grown to 30 gardens throughout our community.
The 31st garden could be yours. Seven of the plants are perennials that grow throughout the year. Seasonal, conventional vegetables surround them. We have really enjoyed our Okinawa spinach, arugula, and Seminole pumpkins which by the way produce the most incredible, edible blossoms.
We roast the pumpkin in a 350 degree oven or enjoy them raw with a little EVO, sea salt and a dash of Myers Lemon. We stuff the pumpkin blossoms with ricotta and goat cheese and dust them in almond flour and sauté them in EVO. The Katuk and Moringa are some of the most nutritious plants on the planet. They are great in our morning super smoothies.
So, if you are ready to join the most important food and health movement of our lifetime and you want to eat some of the freshest, healthiest and most tasty food you have ever put in your mouth, then call Mike Miller at 779-6097. He would like to show you the vegetables in the Pine Avenue edible community gardens and how to harvest and prepare samplings from them for a tasting, as well as the cost for a garden of your own if you want one. You can also visit his Web page at www.perfectisland.us/Edibles for extensive information on the gardens and the vegetables complete with recipes. We look forward to hearing your stories and sharing your recipes.