King James Version

The Book of Genesis

• Use 3% hydrogen peroxide in chilled water for washing chicken or
  other poultry and beef or pork.
  
  
• Cleansing for vegetables and salad greens: Add 1/4 cup 3% hydrogen
  peroxide to a sink full of cold water. Wash vegetables thoroughly,
  rinse with cold water and drain. This process prolongs freshness.
  
  
• In the dishwasher or dishwater: Add 2 ounces of 3% hydrogen peroxide
  to the regular washing formula. Your glasses will sparkle!
  
  
• Marinade: Place meat, fish or poultry in a casserole (avoid using
  aluminum pans). Cover with a diluted solution of 3% hydrogen peroxide.
  Place in a loosely covered container in refrigerator for 1/2 hour.
  Rinse and cook.
  
  
• Leftover tossed salad: Spray with a solution of 1/2 cup water and
  1 tablespoon of hydrogen peroxide. Drain, cover and refrigerate.
  Eliminates use of chemical preservatives.
  
  
• To freshen kitchen: Keep a spray bottle of 3% solution of hydrogen
  peroxide in the kitchen. Use to wipe off counter tops and appliances.
  It will disinfect and give the kitchen a clean, fresh small. Works
  great in the refrigerator and lunch boxes.
  
  
• Humidifiers & steamers: Use 1 pint of 3% hydrogen peroxide to a gallon
  of water. This helps keep them clean too.
  
  
• Laundry: Add 8 ounces of 3% hydrogen peroxide to your wash in place
  of bleaches.
  
  
• Shower: Keep a spray bottle of 3% hydrogen peroxide in the shower.
  Spray your body after washing to replace the acid mantel on your
  skin that soap removes.
  
  
• Rejuvenating Detoxifying Bath: Add 6 ounces of 35% hydrogen peroxide
  to a tub of water. You may increase up to 2 cups. Soak at least 1/2 hour.
  
  
• Alternate Bath: Add 1/2 cup 35% hydrogen peroxide, 1/2 cup sea salt,
  1/2 cup baking soda or Epson salts to water and soak.
• 
  
• Foot soak: Add 1 & 1/2 ounces 35% hydrogen peroxide to 1 gallon water
  and soak.
  
  
• Pour a capful of 3% hydrogen peroxide in each of your ears after swimming
  to prevent ear infections.
  
  
• Use 3% grade as an astringent on your face, neck and full body after bathing.
  Gets rid of acne FAST.
  
  
• Use it in 3% grade in a spray bottle for cuts and soars. Spray on frequently
  and watch them disappear.
  
  
• Use it as a douche in 3% grade.
  
  
• Athlete's Foot: Soak feet nightly in 3% hydrogen peroxide until condition
  is improved.
  
  
• Mouthwash: Use 3% hydrogen peroxide. Add a dash of liquid chlorophyll
  for flavor if desired. Swish it around in your mouth for 1-2 minutes before
  brushing. Watch how white your teeth become!
  
  
• Toothpaste: Use baking soda and add enough 3% hydrogen peroxide to make a
  paste. Or, just dip your brush in 3% hydrogen peroxide and brush.
  
  
• Toothbrush: Soak your toothbrush in 3% hydrogen peroxide between brushings.
  
  
• Pets: For small animals (dogs and cats) use 1 ounce 3% hydrogen peroxide to
  1 quart water for their drinking water and bath.
  
  
• House & Garden Plants: Put 1 ounce 3% hydrogen peroxide in 1-quart water.
  Water or mist plants with this solution.
  
  
• Sprouting needs: Add 1 ounce 3% hydrogen peroxide to one pint of water
  and soak the seeds overnight. Add the same amount of hydrogen peroxide each
  time you rinse the seeds.
  

Thus I set about devising a cold frame from which we could harvest all winter. I wasn't interested in highly technological modifications. Buried foam insulation, awkward reflective covers and space-age materials are not my style. I have a prejudice that simpler is better, especially when simpler has been time-tested. I knew that comparative investigations of different cold frame designs back in the 1970s showed the standard old-time model--a bottomless box made of two-inch thick planks, 12 inches high at the back and 8 inches high at the front and covered with glass panels--was still the best. So I copied the classic Dutch cold frame design I had seen many years before and that took care of technology. The next step was biology, the selection of the crops. The vegetables that we canned at the school, mostly pickles and tomato paste, and those we froze--beans, broccoli, cauliflower, corn, eggplant, peas, peppers, zucchini--were principally the crops of summer. Most are "chilling sensitive," which is to say they do not appreciate temperatures below 50 [degrees] F. For winter harvesting we had to focus on their less popular "chilling resistant" compatriots. Many of these can survive winter's freezes as long as they have some protection. Spinach was an obvious choice. So was the Asian crop, tatsoi. These are both highly nutritious greens that thrive in cold weather. I had often seen scallions and Swiss chard last well into the winter even in an unprotected outdoor garden. They were a great success in the cold frames, as were baby carrots planted on August 1 and covered in the fall. The carrots could be pulled all winter, and the cold soil storage made them as sweet as sugar. Vitamin-rich dandelions and turnip greens also made the cut. That took care of some main crops; salad was next. Two salad crops I had seen in the European cold frames were claytonia, which farmers there called winter purslane, and mache, also called corn salad. Longtime staples of continental winter salads, these are two of the hardiest crops I know. Other strong choices are endive and escarole, as well as a cultivated Italian weed called minutina, known in English as buckhorn plantain. Heads of lettuce turned to mush after the weather got really cold, but we noticed that the leaves of young lettuce were very hardy. So we started harvesting lettuce and a number of other greens--including arugula, mustard greens and sorrel--as baby leaves on a cut-and-come-again basis to make a mixed-leaf or mesclun salad. Cutting salad leaves young worked so well that we soon used that style of harvest for all of our winter salads. Our simple cold frame garden gave all these plants quite a lot of protection against the cold. On average, growing plants in a cold frame is equivalent to moving them to a climate one and a half USDA zones warmer, or about 500 miles to the south here on the east coast. A cold frame will usually protect the crops inside from freezing until the outdoor temperature goes below 25 [degrees] E As our fall went on and temperatures got well below freezing, we noticed a little frost damage on the leaves of some of the crops but nothing major. As long as we postponed the daily harvest until the sun warmed the temperature inside, the cold frame to above freezing (even the weak sun of a cloudy day worked well enough), the plants would thaw naturally with their roots in the ground and all was well. Still, there was much colder weather yet to come and we wondered how far into the Vermont winter we could continue the harvest. Moreover, would we be able to dig out the frames when the heavy snows arrived?

Dressing in Layers At this point I remembered an interesting fact I had observed earlier. If the same crop was growing both inside and outside the cold frame, the outside crop suffered greatly from the dry, cold, late fall winds, even when temperatures were not below freezing. It seemed as if one major virtue of the cold frame was that it provided a windbreak. Well, I thought, when the weather outside gets too cold for us to be comfortable in just a windbreaker, we put a sweater on underneath. What if we added a second layer of protection for our plants? I had noticed a few years earlier, when I had stored an empty cold frame in an unheated, plastic-covered tunnel greenhouse, that the soil inside the frame hardly froze, even in the depths of winter. So we built a simple plastic-covered hoophouse over the cold frames and bingo! The great leap forward! Our plants moved another 500 miles to the south and had a snow-shedding roof over them to boot. It is fascinating how one step forward will suddenly help focus your thinking about a new project. This was one of those steps. First, the simplicity of adding a second layer made us understand better what we were achieving. We were not doing battle With the cold of winter, as one thinks of doing in a heated greenhouse while trying to grow hot-weather crops, but rather we were creating a simple protected microclimate, sufficient for the needs of our hardy plants. It was like the difference between sitting inside by the fire on a cold day or being outside with enough layers of clothes on to keep you comfortable. Second, we began to pay attention to the fact that once past the middle of November most of the crops were not growing much anymore. They were just sort of hibernating and waiting for us to come and harvest them. In other words, we were not actually extending the growing season as you would with a heated greenhouse, we were extending the harvest season. Those realizations really helped turn the comer on developing this concept. It was obvious that some of our crops were too small to be harvestable and some were too large to be as hardy as they might be for the winter days yet to come. I had guessed at the planting dates and I hadn't done too badly for a first try, but a lot more experimentation would be necessary in future-years to come up with the ideal September and October planting schedule for a really productive winter harvest. Over time, we would also find that some of the crops did well with two, three and even more successive planting dates. This allowed us to better spread out the harvest and take advantage of what slow growth did take place between mid-November and early February, ensuring us plenty to reap later in the year. From that early beginning, the winter harvest concept blossomed. A few years' experience gave me more precise knowledge about planting dates and improved timing for adding the layers of protection. I devised a number of basic systems for moving small, plastic-covered tunnel greenhouses between two alternate sites. One design had wooden skids sliding on wooden mils, another had runners on the ground like a sled and a third had mils on the bottom of the structure and rolled on ball casters set in support posts. With a movable greenhouse, the crops could be planted out of doors starting in the early fall and then progressively covered with cold frames and finally the greenhouse. This helped avoid the pest, disease and soil nutrient problems often associated with permanent greenhouses. Plus, the uncovered area grew a soil-improving green manure, which we turned under before moving everything back to the original site the next fall.

Lessons in Latitudes By 1990, when I left the job at the school to move back to my farm in Maine, enough people had heard about this "new" idea to bring out the naysayers. "You can't do that," they would say. "You may be able to give protection from cold but there isn't enough winter light for plants in New England. You need to be somewhere like the south of France if you plan to garden all winter." Well, I've long been aware of the importance of light for plants. The key role of the sun for winter gardening was emphasized in an article I had read in a British gardening magazine. We associate Britain with the mild temperatures that make it in most respects a gardener's dream. But the author noted with a sense of resignation that despite the moist, temperate British winter climate, the short winter day length was an enormous obstacle to winter vegetable growing. Britain, he noted, is located "up there with the polar bears." Polar bears? What does Great Britain have in common with polar bear country? As it turns out, quite a lot. Take a quick look at a world atlas. You'll notice the southern tip of Great Britain sits just above the 50th parallel of latitude: If you follow that parallel across Europe to Asia and then to North America, you'll see it runs through cities we would consider the far north: Kiev, ukraine; Ulaan Goom, Mongolia; Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan; Seal Cove, Newfoundland. All of those places are some 70 miles farther north than the U.S./Canadian border, which follows the 49th parallel of latitude. If you go a few hundred miles even farther north to the heartland of Britain, you will be on the 54th parallel, which is the same latitude as Great Whale River, Quebec, on the shores of the icy Hudson Bay. Thus, an English vegetable gardener tilling a plot near Leeds or Manchester would experience the exact same winter day length as would a polar bear fishing in Hudson Bay. They are on the same "sun line," so to speak. But the school in Vermont and my farm in Maine are not on a polar bear latitude. We are on the 44th parallel, the same latitude as Eugene, Oregon, and Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Across the Atlantic Ocean, believe it or not, the 44th parallel passes through the south of France and the Ligurian coast of Italy on the sunny Mediterranean. In other words, by being on the same latitude, we have the same day length and the same amount of winter sun as those solar paradises. I visited growers in southern France one January and none of the home or market gardeners I interviewed complained about inadequate sun. They all complained about the cold. What was cold to those French gardeners, a January average temperature of 40 [degrees] F to 45 [degrees] F, seems mild to us here, where the January average temperature is 20 [degrees] F. Our colder temperatures probably explain why U.S. gardeners have never taken advantage of the adequate sun. Well, the double coverage of unheated greenhouse and an inner layer, combined with hardy crops, had solved the cold problem. And since we have as much sun as the south of France I wanted to see if I, could use these resources to do what the French market gardeners had been doing for years: I wanted to grow commercial vegetable crops all winter long.

The Commercial Winter Garden If I was going to grow winter crops commercially, I had to find a less expensive and more efficient inner layer than the cold frames Of the prototype system. Cold frames are labor intensive to build and need to be manually vented so they won't overheat on sunny days, I ran trials using as inner layers various floating row cover materials held a foot above the soil on wire wickets. Although they did not provide quite as much climatic protection as the cold frames, they were self-venting, lighter in weight, easier to place over or take off the crops and much less expensive. My wife, Barbara, and I now use row covers rather than cold frames in our home garden system as well. Similarly, I knew I wanted to grow in larger greenhouses and decided upon 30-foot wide by 100-foot long houses as the most efficient choice. I had never moved greenhouses that large before, but by using my earlier galvanized runner design, we were able to devise greenhouses that can be moved quite easily with a tractor (we pull them as if they were large sleds) and can be bolted securely to ground anchors when they are in place. We have also built one stationary greenhouse with a concrete floor at one end, where we wash and pack the winter-grown produce. That way we get to work in the warm, bright sun on any pleasant winter day and can take the edge off the chill with a small heater on days when it's cloudy. Mondays and Thursdays are harvest days. We carefully wash all produce in tested deep-well water before sorting and packing carefully into our homemade native cedar boxes with our trademark "Seasonal Salads" branded into both ends. The stores and restaurants return the empty boxes to us when we arrive with the next order. We wash them in hot water and they are ready to use again. Our major crops are our baby leaf salad mix, freshly pulled winter carrots, spinach, turnips and turnip greens, leeks, radishes, scallions, tatsoi and extra early baby new potatoes in spring. We also grow storage crops like beets and celeriac in outdoor fields over the summer for storage in our root cellar and delivery over winter along with the fresh produce. At the start of our foray into commercial winter vegetable production in unheated greenhouses, we boldly declared that we wanted to be the "backwards farm." We would produce salads and main course vegetables from October 1 to May 31 and then take a long summer vacation. It's amazing how close to that prediction we came. We do have an eight month, October to May, harvest season but our vacation time is limited to half of June and half of July before we have to get back to work preparing everything for the season to come. Still, we have no complaints. We're having a ball and the response from our customers is the most gratifying in all my years as a professional grower. People love the idea of having really fresh winter food harvested either that day or the day before on a local farm, instead of the usual week-old winter produce from faraway places.

Back to the Home Garden In all of our fascination with the commercial potential of this idea, we haven't forgotten our home greenhouse. However, since we have easy access to our commercial crops, we now follow a simplified cropping program at home. We plant mostly the crops that we want to have on hand for a quick meal, especially if we get home after the sun is down and everything is frozen up. Both mache and tatsoi can be harvested when frozen solid and look perfectly normal after they thaw. So can scallions and leeks and, of course, our sweet baby carrots, which are hiding in the soil. Spinach and parsley will also recover adequately from being harvested frozen. At whatever level you get involved in the winter harvest, you will discover some of the best food and easiest gardening you have ever experienced. Remember, the winter work is mostly harvesting. All our winter crops were planted during what we now call the "second spring," September and October. Furthermore, there are almost no weeds, the pests have all left for warmer climes, and there is no watering because evaporation is low and the soil groundwater table is high. As crops are harvested and empty spaces appear in our home greenhouse, we sow more seeds whenever the spirit moves us. This gives a wonderful sense of the home garden as an ongoing process or cycle, not the start-and-stop operation it was when we were just summer gardeners. We are forever released from the madness of canning and freezing that once overtook us each fall. And remember, we are doing this in Maine. Over 85% of the United States is farther south than we are and has more sun and warmer winter weather. From fall through spring the amount of variety available from the winter harvest depends on where you live and the severity of your winter weather. Row covers, hardy vegetables and a succession of fall planting dates is probably all zone 9 and 10 gardeners need. In zones 7 and 8, a cold frame alone will guarantee bounteous harvests, but a simple two-layer system will be even better. For zone 5 and 6 gardeners, the double coverage of inner and outer layers will bring daily harvests that will both amaze and delight. In the frigid mountains of Vermont (zone 3) even the double-covered crops may get beat up a bit during the coldest weather, but will bounce back vigorously as winter recedes. So give it a try next winter. Start planting during the "second spring" and enjoy the freshest winter food you have ever eaten. SOURCES The Cook's Garden, P.O. Box 5010 Hodges, SC 29653-5010 (800) 457-9703 st6.yahoo.com/cooksgarden/ Johnny's Selected Seeds, Foss Hill Road Albion, ME 04910 (207) 437-4301 www.johnnyseeds.com Shepherd's Garden Seeds, 30 Irene Street Torrington, CT 06790-6658 (860) 482-3638 www.shepherdseeds.com RELATED ARTICLE: WINTER HARVEST CROPS In Order of Cold Tolerance and/or Winter Dependability CROP CULTIVAR SOURCE PLANTING DATES(*) 1. Mache Vit J 9/15-10/10 2. Scallion White Spear J 7/15 3. Spinach Space C, J 9/15 4. Tatsoi (a) J, S 9/15-10/1 5. Carrot Napoli J 8/1 6. Claytonia (a) C, J 9/15-10/1 7. Sorrel De Belleville C (**) 8. Chard Argentata S 7/15 9. Minutina (a) C, J 9/1-9/25 10. Lettuce Samantha J 9/15-10/1 11. Beet Leaves Red Ace J 9/1-9/10 12. Arugula Selvatica C, J, S 9/7-9/21 13. Escarole Coral J 7/15-8/1 14. Endive Salad King J 7/15-8/1 15. Radicchio Augusto J 7/15-8/1 16. Chicory Bianca Riccia J 8/15-8/21 17. Parsley Forest Green J 7/15 18. Mizuna (a) C, J, S 9/1-9/21 19. Dandelion Ameliore C 7/15 20. Turnip Hakurei J 9/1-9/15 21. Mustard Red Giant C, J, S 8/21-9/1

(*) Planting dates are for zone 5. (**) Sorrel is a perennial. Plant seeds in spring. In late August divide the plants and transplant to the frame. (a) No named cultivars. C = Cook's Garden; J = Johnny's Selected Seeds; S = Shepherd's Garden Seeds (For contact information, see Sources.) RELATED ARTICLE: BEST CROPS for Replanting in Empty Spots Spaces in the frames open up when whole crops are harvested (ie., mache, endive, escarole, radicchio) or when experiments you may try don't pan out. At almost any opportunity I sow seeds for new crops and if they fail I try again. OCTOBER, NOVEMBER, DECEMBER: arugula (use the standard variety; it's very hardy when young and will germinate quickly and grow at low temperatures), mache JANUARY: arugula, carrot, spinach FEBRUARY: arugula, carrot, mizuna, spinach, claytonia, lettuce, chicory, radish MARCH: arugula, spinach, lettuce, radish, carrot, claytonia, minutina For more information and greater detail, consult Eliot Coleman's book for home gardeners, Four-Season Harvest, available through Mother's Bookshelf, (800) 888-9098 (MEB#140, $24.95). Commercial growers will want a copy of The Winter Harvest Manual, available for $15 postpaid from: Four Season Farm, 587 Weir Cove Road, Harborside, ME 04642.

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Based in Rosemead, Calif., Edison International is the parent company of Southern California Edison, Edison Mission Energy, Edison Capital, and Edison Enterprises.

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* Do Not Undercut Your Partner. Sometimes one parent feels so strongly about doing things a certain way that he or she inadvertently undercuts the other parent. Give each other room to experiment, learn, and grow. Validate and encourage one another. * Divide Up Chores in Advance. Map out responsibilities. Make lists outlining chores, who's performing them, and deadlines. Share tasks whenever possible. * Make Time for Couple Time. This is the relationship that is the foundation of your family. Set aside at least two hours a week to nurture one another as partners. Pay attention to each other, listen closely, and find time for your sexual relationship. Go at Your Child's Pace * Let Your Kid Be a Kid. Many parents misperceive what kids can do at particular developmental stages. Don't push too hard, and don't rely too much on what others are doing - you know your child better than any manual or developmental grid ever will. * Set Limits. Letting your kid be a kid does not mean that you avoid setting appropriate limits; on the contrary, limit-setting is crucial. Gentle discipline and guidance will help your child grow into a responsible adult. * Make Time for Play. Too often adults see play as frivolous activity, but this is how children learn, relate to others, discharge stress, and explore the world. * Celebrate the "Mundane." Emphasize the importance of everyday activities. Rather than signing your child up for lessons and special activities, just spend more time together. MAKE YOUR HOME A HAVEN Try to create a peaceful, relaxed environment at home, a calm place where children can unwind, disengage from their own demanding lives, and enjoy themselves and their family members without a lot of distraction. * Downplay Structures and Schedules. Let your children take more substantial control of what they want to do. Playing alone, hanging out with friends, reading, or even staring out the window are all important. * Expect the Unexpected. One of the things children teach parents is to be "in the moment." You can never truly predict what they'll need, or when. Go ahead and make plans, but be prepared to reschedule. * Engage in Spiritual Practices. If your family is part of a religious tradition, take time to participate in its family-oriented or community activities. If you have no ties to organized religion, consider practicing some kind of independent spiritual activity - doing yoga, meditating, creating art, practicing or listening to music, or contemplating nature. * Disengage from Compulsive Consumerism. The constant pursuit of material well-being tends to intensify stress within most families. Your family does not need more gadgets, goodies, and belongings. Make do with what you already have. Focus on being rather than buying. Above all, savor what you have. As an old saying puts it, "The days are long, but the years are short." The child who so recently learned to walk will be off to college sooner than you can imagine. Watch your children closely; listen carefully; open your heart to who she is and what she feels. There is nothing more challenging, exhilarating, and fulfilling than to look after your children with love, laughter, and wonder as you watch them - and yourself - grow.

Aleta Koman is a child and family therapist and the on-air expert for family and parenting issues for CBS-TV in Boston. She is also the parent educator for Families First and Workplace Connections. Edward Myers is the author of several books, including When Parents Die: A Guide for Adults. Together Koman and Myers have co-authored the book How to Mend a Broken Heart: Letting Go and Moving On. Adapted from The Parenting Survival Kit: How to Make It Through the Parenting Years with Your Family, Sanity, and Wallet Intact. Used with permission of Perigee Books, a member of Penguin Putnam, Inc. Copyright 2000 by Aleta Koman, M Ed, and Edward Myers.

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COPYRIGHT 2000 Mothering Magazine in association with The Gale Group and LookSmart. COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group

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Teenagers in the US now drink twice as much soda as milk, a reverse of figures noted 20 years ago, according to a report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the nonprofit consumer advocacy group based in Washington, DC. According to the new report -- called "Liquid Candy"-- the average soda consumption among teenage males between ages 13 and 18 who drink soda is three or more cans a day, and 10% drink seven or more cans a day. Of 13- to 18-year-old girls who drink the beverages, the average intake is more than two cans a day, and 10% of those teenagers drink more than five cans a day. CSPI officials are calling for reforms to lower soda consumption, "including more water fountains, sodafree schools, and health-education campaigns funded by state taxes on soda," according to a statement. Soda has been linked to... * broken bones * osteoporosis * obesity Soda may... * Increase diabetes rates * Worsen the severity of kidney stones Soda can lead to... * nervousness * insomnia * attention-deficit disorder * addiction

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