Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show: Produce and flooding, late starts and zucchini
The waning days of July, a month that brought a lot of moisture to many areas in the Upper Midwest. I talked about water conservation and got a flood of emails regarding soaked gardens.
The University of Minnesota noted that floodwaters can be contaminated with all kinds of things, including raw sewage from septic systems or municipalities, manure from farms or fields, and chemicals or other contaminants.
So, when it comes to your produce, it’s essential that gardeners understand floodwaters can contain harmful microbes such as E. coli or salmonella. If any edible portions of produce were touched by floodwater, it may be contaminated and should not be considered safe to eat. Not even washing them off with clean water will work. Part of that is the surface of your produce, such as rough skins like strawberries and cantaloupe, others include leafy folds of greens.
Contaminants can enter through cuts, stem scars, or other points of entry. It’s ALWAYS a good idea to err on the side of caution. Toss your veggies in the garbage, NOT in a salad, if you think there may be contamination.
As for next year, well, who knows, except that, if you had flooding issues, consider building a raised vegetable bed,
move your fruit to higher ground and install a raingarden!
As for my vegetable garden, well, it was a late start and, if you’ll recall, I got tomato seeds from All America Selections to try and had a fiasco with them getting blown over and now I have no idea YET, which tomato variety I have where!!
And frankly, the tomatoes are not looking that great except for my cherry tomatoes!
What I DO have are zucchini! Gotta love them. I did find out that I could wean my husband off pasta all the time! He likes zoodles. Although he did mention that he doesn’t want them to be a replacement for ALL pasta!
I stir fried these with some olive oil mixed in some cooked hot Italian Sausage and spaghetti sauce with a little extra fresh oregano! Really simple and really good and cut out some of that heavy feeling of pasta!
My recipe for Chinese 5-Spice zucchini bread is in the recipes tab. I substitute flax seed for the sesame. It works great. I also don’t always buy pine nuts. They taste good but you don’t need them!