Kennedy - Eat Your Greens The Surprising Power Of Homegrown Leaf Crops

Praise for Eat Your Greens

Leaf crops produce the most nutrition from the least space while requiring the fewest inputs. The trouble is...many valuable leafy vegetables are unknown to gardeners. Nor do we know how to prepare or preserve them. Dave Kennedys Eat Your Greens provides all this information. The book should be on the shelf of every serious gardener.

Steve Solomon, Author The Intelligent Gardener and Gardening When It Counts

Kennedys new book is a practical instructional manual on how to grow and prepare leafy edible plants, many of which are unavailable at grocery stores and farmers markets, overlooked by gardeners and rarely considered in the kitchen. It offers a simple, grassroots solution to help counter the immense public-health burden that has arisen from our high-calorie, nutrient-poor diet. Reading this book could change lives, communities and society for the better.

Sean Clark, Professor and Farm Director, Berea College

David Kennedy makes a compelling case for home gardens as a vital element of our food system and for expanding our food and garden horizons by growing super-nutritious greens, including some novel leaf crops and traditional crops used in new ways. A great resource for those wishing to increase their food security, Eat Your Greens offers detailed information on growing, eating, and preserving greens that both novice and experienced gardeners will welcome.

Susan Littlefield, Horticultural Editor, National Gardening Association

Low-fat or low-carb? Vegan or paleo? Whole grain or gluten-free? Nutrition has become complicated by competing diets and health claims. The worlds biggest food corporations add to this confusion and profit from it at the same time. In Eat Your Greens, David Kennedy cuts through the fog and shows us that the journey to optimum health can begin with a single, simple step into the backyard vegetable garden. The message of why and how we can eat more fresh, nutrient-rich greens isnt a marketing ploy designed to bolster some companys bottom line. Its a timeless, universal truth and one that Kennedy tells convincingly.

Roger Doiron, Founding Director, Kitchen Gardeners International

Eat Your Greens is a refreshingly thoughtful and practical book for the new wave of savvy gardeners interested in exploring the full potential of home gardens. One of the worlds experts on leafy green crops opens his garden gate to show us an amazing array of 21 beautiful and some little-known greens that will make you wonder where theyve been all your life. In addition to the directive Eat Your Greens we can now add Read Eat Your Greens as excellent advice that will make us healthier and happier.

Anita Courtney, M.S.,R.D., Chairperson / Tweens Nutrition and Fitness Coalition

Our work is with the poorest of the poor in developing countries and Davids training resources have made the greatest impact on what we do but at the same time I have painfully watched the effects of nutritional poverty in the west for years. Everything that I wished could be said to my western friends is in this new book. There is now no excuse to be destined to a life of mediocre health.

It may be hard to believe but a couple of small four by eight foot kitchen gardens, that take minutes a day to maintain can turn the tide of deteriorating old age for so many reasons. Read the book more than once.

Dale Bolton, Founder and Director of Organics4Orphans.org

Increase the biodiversity of your diet and your garden by expanding the variety of leaves you eat; often from the plants you are already growing for other uses even cover crops! If you have heard of eating leaves of some plants, but are hesitant to try them because you have also heard they may contain irritants if not properly prepared, let David Kennedy show you the way. Kennedys expertise and passion for creating a healthy population with the help of leafy greens are evident in this book. In this ever-changing world we need to stay open to the possibilities of all our gardens have to offer. Great book!

Cindy Conner, Homeplace Earth, author Grow a Sustainable Diet and Seed Libraries.

Copyright 2014 by David Kennedy.

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Diane McIntosh.

Italian Chicory Basket iStock (Torquetum)

First printing September 2014.

New Society Publishers acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities.

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-86571-751-0 eISBN: 978-1-55092-567-8

Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of Eat Your Greens should be addressed to New Society Publishers at the address below.

To order directly from the publishers, please call toll-free (North America) 1-800-567-6772, or order online at www.newsociety.com

Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to:

New Society Publishers

P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0, Canada

(250) 247-9737

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Kennedy, David, 1947, author

Eat your greens : the surprising power of homegrown leaf crops / David Kennedy.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-0-86571-751-0 (pbk.). ISBN 978-1-55092-567-8 (ebook)

1. Edible greens. 2. Edible greens Preservation. 3. Vegetable gardening. 4. Organic gardening. 5. Cooking (Greens). I. Title.

New Society Publishers mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the least possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision. We are committed to doing this not just through education, but through action. The interior pages of our bound books are printed on Forest Stewardship Council-registered acid-free paper that is 100% post-consumer recycled (100% old growth forest-free), processed chlorine-free, and printed with vegetable-based, low-VOC inks, with covers produced using FSC-registered stock. New Society also works to reduce its carbon footprint, and purchases carbon offsets based on an annual audit to ensure a carbon neutral footprint. For further information, or to browse our full list of books and purchase securely, visit our website at: www.newsociety.com

Contents

Special thanks to three people for their help with this book:

to Keith Wilde for the illustrations

to Dan Feather for help with photographs and other graphical aspects

and to my dear partner Therese Hildebrand, who worked hard on every part of the book.

We have become deeply confused about food. Cooking shows are now more popular than cable news shows even though we now spend less time actually cooking than ever before. The average supermarket has doubled in size over the past 15 years and now carries over 38,000 items. Americans eat roughly 20 percent of their meals in cars. On average, we eat about 200 pounds more food per year, including 56 pounds more meat, than we did in the 1950s. Two thirds of American adults are overweight, as are nearly one third of the children. Half of the overweight population is clinically obese, despite the $40 billion a year we spend on weight-loss programs and products.