“Prescribing” fruits and vegetables to adults and children is associated with increased consumption of these foods and multiple health benefits, according to a new study.
The analysis, published in the American Heart Association’s peer-reviewed journal Circulation, looked at people at increased risk for cardiovascular disease who participated in produce prescription programs for an average of six months, and found they increased their consumption of fruits and vegetables. This shift was associated with improved body mass index, blood sugar and blood pressure levels, researchers found, as well as a decrease in food insecurity.
“Poor nutrition and nutrition insecurity are major drivers of chronic disease globally, including cardiometabolic conditions like Type 2 diabetes and their cardiovascular consequences, including heart failure, heart attack and stroke,” Dr. Mitchell Elkind, chief clinical science officer of the American Heart Association and a tenured professor of neurology and epidemiology at Columbia University, said in a news release. “This analysis of produce prescription programs illustrates the potential of subsidized produce prescriptions to increase consumption of nutritious fruits and vegetables, reduce food insecurity and, hopefully, improve subjective and objective health measures.”
In produce prescription programs, patients receive electronic cards or vouchers to access free or discounted produce at grocery stores or farmers’ markets, the authors explain.
The analysis, which is thought to be the largest study of the impact of produce prescriptions, encompassed more than 3,800 participants across nine programs around the country. Almost half (1,817) were children with the average age of 9, while 2,064 were adults with an average age of 54. More than half of households in the study reported experiencing food insecurity.
Participants received a median of $63 per month to buy produce and completed questionnaires about fruit and vegetable consumption, food insecurity and health status. Routine testing was also performed to check health status, but there was no control group to compare results, a limitation of the study.
Still, the results suggest produce prescriptions could be an important tool for improved health. For example, adults reported their fruits and vegetables intake increased by nearly one cup per day, and children’s intake increased by about a quarter cup per day. The odds of being food insecure also dropped by one-third.
“Future research will need to include randomized controlled trials to offset any potential bias and prove more rigorously the benefits of produce prescription programs,” Elkind added. “The American Heart Association’s new Food Is Medicine Initiative will be focused on supporting such trials.”
Tending to your own veggie garden is a fun and budget-friendly way to get some fresh produce on the table come summer. To benefit from a longer growing season and increase your chances of a healthier crop, consider starting your seeds indoors this spring. Here, a step-by-step guide to thriving seedlings.
(Illustration: Sumit Gill)
Consider your space
“Pay attention to how much light you’re getting throughout the day as that will determine what type of seeds you can grow,” says Ohemaa Boateng, the program manager at Green Thumbs, a food growing education organization in Toronto. For beginners, she recommends starting with no more than three varieties of seeds. To narrow it down, consider what you like to eat, or opt for plants that are easy to grow, like tomatoes, beans and leafy greens. Buy your seeds from a local supplier, as they likely carry varieties better suited to the growing conditions in your area. Timing varies based on what you’re growing and where you live, but late February to early March is a good time to start thinking about planting seedlings in most parts of Canada.
Sow your seeds
Poke holes in the bottoms of your pots to ensure proper drainage, then fill them with a seed-starting mix: a fine, soilless mixture of coco coir, perlite and vermiculite that allows seedlings to grow roots easily. A good guideline is to plant seeds at a depth equal to three times their width (consult the packaging, as instructions can vary, and some tougher seeds may need to be soaked overnight prior to sowing). Boateng suggests planting a few seeds per pot in case one doesn’t sprout.
Label them as you go
Keep track of your soon-to-sprout seedlings by labelling them right away with the name of the plant and the sowing date.
Get the temperature right
Some seeds need warmth to germinate, while others, like leafy greens, fare better in cooler soil. Keep fruiting plants—like tomatoes, peppers and eggplants—somewhere warm, such as on top of the refrigerator or near a radiator. To help retain heat and moisture, cover the pots with plastic wrap; remove once any shoots start poking through.
A rotisserie chicken container makes a great DIY greenhouse. Simply poke holes into the lid for ventilation and transfer your seedling pots to their new home. (Illustration: Sumit Gill)
Manage water levels
The seed-starting mix should be moist but not saturated. To ensure your seedlings are watered properly, Boateng suggests setting up a self-watering system by placing one end of a string into an elevated water-filled container and the other in the soil. The water will travel down the string and nourish the plant’s roots.
Move seedlings into the sun
Once seedlings sprout, move your plants to a cool, sunny location, such as an indoor windowsill. Rotate the containers every so often to keep seedlings growing evenly. (Some herbs and leafy greens will grow better in shadier areas out of direct sunlight.) The temperatures needed depend on the type of vegetables you’re growing, but Boateng says room temperature works for most plants at this stage.
Fertilize your plants
Once seedlings grow their true leaves—not the first leaves to sprout, but the next round—it’s time to fertilize. Boateng says organic and natural fertilizers will give your plants the best nutrients.
(Illustration: Sumit Gill)
Thin your seedlings
To ensure your plants have room to grow, keep just one seedling per pot. Save the healthiest, strongest-looking seedling of the bunch and snip the others off at the soil line with scissors.
Harden them off
Outside, pampered seedlings can be exposed to fluctuating temperatures, rain and wind, which can cause stress and lead to stunted growth or death. To prevent transplant shock, slowly acclimate your plants to the elements (a process called “hardening off”) by bringing them outside once daytime temperatures start hovering around 10 degrees Celsius. Start with one hour a day, Boateng says, and gradually increasing their time outdoors over the course of one to two weeks.
(Illustration: Sumit Gill)
Transplant them outdoors
The best time to move seedlings to their permanent home is after the last frost in your area. Wait until the plant’s root system is strong and starts to poke through drainage holes. If possible, plant them early in the morning to avoid immediately exposing them to the sun. Boateng suggests spreading mulch around the base of the plant to help keep the soil damp.
For people with smaller outdoor spaces, like balconies, Boateng recommends veggies that grow upward, like beans, cucumbers or tomatoes. “It’s maximizing the space you have by growing up instead of growing out,” she says, noting that you can use any sort of vertical support, such as a fence, cage, stake or trellis.
No seedling pots? Reuse these household items instead.
(Illustration: Sumit Gill)
Toilet paper rolls
Make a few slits around one end of each roll and fold the sections in toward the centre to form the bottom of the pot. Planted along with the seedlings, the cardboard will decompose in the soil.
(Illustration: Sumit Gill)
Plastic bottles
Cut bottles in half, poking drainage holes in the bottoms. Or use up the top halves by poking holes in the cap and filling the bodies with seed-starting mix, and then setting them inside the bottom halves to collect excess water.
(Illustration: Sumit Gill)
Eggshells
An inexpensive and all-natural option, eggshells make excellent seedling pots. When crushed, they break down and enrich the soil with calcium, providing extra nutrients to the growing plants.
(Illustration: Sumit Gill)
Egg cartons
Cardboard egg cartons are compostable, so they’re perfect for seedlings. Poke holes in the bottom of each compartment and cut the lid off the carton to use as a drainage tray.
(Illustration: Sumit Gill)
Food containers
Give plastic tubs and containers—like yogurt cups—a new purpose by rinsing them out and adding drainage holes. When seedlings are ready to be transplanted, wash and recycle (or reuse) the pots.
If you are any kind of gardener, I bet you have a drawer filled with half-empty packets of vegetable and herb seeds. It is easy to get stuck in a cycle of buying new seeds each growing season because you have forgotten you already had some, or you are not sure what is out of date. We all do it, but it is possible to break the habit – and now is the time.
Collecting your own seeds makes sense in many ways. You save money. You avoid all the embodied energy in bought seeds: the transportation, the colour printing, those silver foil packs that can’t be recycled. As long as you dry your seeds properly, so they will store well, you might also find you get much better germination because they are fresh. You will also have something to barter with. If you didn’t get the hang of saving chilli seeds, say, but have plenty of lettuce (and a single lettuce can produce more than 10,000 seeds), there will be a gardener somewhere who is willing to swap. Look out for local Seedy Sunday events, where seed savers come together in late winter or spring to do just that.
Perhaps the greatest joy of saving your own seeds is that you can select for plants that thrive in your garden. Don’t bother collecting any from plants that didn’t do well or went to seed early – that would be selecting for early bolting or weak genes. But every time you save seeds from a plant that excelled, you are slowly creating plants ever more perfectly suited to you, your soil and your gardening style. If a certain tomato does well under your haphazard watering regimen, or a bean thrives in your poor soil, that is something to celebrate and perpetuate. This is called “landrace gardening” and allows seeds to adapt to place.
When you save those seeds time and again, you are making an investment for future gardeners, too. Think of it like this: you got here because your ancestor saved you some seeds – now, it’s your turn.
You will need to collect your seeds on a dry day: have a container handy, as seedheads can be brittle and all your bounty may be lost if you don’t collect the seeds over something. You might then need to spread them out, so they can continue to dry indoors. Once bone dry, label and store somewhere dry and cool – not the windowsill or anywhere near the kettle. Moisture is the enemy.
Will everything give you usable seeds? Not quite, especially when you are just starting out. If collected and stored properly, any seed will germinate, but look out for “F1 hybrid” on the original seed packets, usually after the variety name. These plants were created by crossing two different parent varieties in strictly controlled conditions, which means their offspring will not have the same characteristics as the original plant you grew. It doesn’t really make sense to save seeds from F1 hybrids, as you have no idea what you will get.
Instead, you want to save from “open-pollinated” varieties – where pollination is handled by insects or the wind. Ideally, you should take seeds from several plants of the same variety, because each one will vary slightly in appearance, harvest time, hardiness, slug resistance and other characteristics. You want all this variation because it boosts the potential for the plants to adapt to a range of conditions.
However, many vegetables are so promiscuous that if, for example, you save the seed of your delicious, sweet courgette and Sid down the road is growing mammoth marrows with which to storm the horticulture show, your lovely courgettes may get Sid’s bound-to-be-flavourless but ginormous genes in the mix. This may make for something brilliant, but it is more likely to make for something watery and less flavoursome.
In order to keep varieties true, you might need to learn how to isolate plants from the pollinators. Sometimes, that is about distance, or even hand-pollinating the plants. Alternatively, let the pollination dice roll and start the journey of creating a new variety, but understand that there may be many flavour failures ahead before you land on the perfect mix.
Thankfully, there are plants that won’t cross-pollinate; they are all good starting points to learn the ropes and entice you to start breeding your own vegetables and herbs. Here are some of the easiest seeds to save.
Tomatoes
Tomatoes are a doddle to save seeds from, because they tend to stay true to type (ie the offspring will have the same characteristics as the parent) and they self-fertilise, meaning if you grow 10 varieties it is very unlikely they will cross with one another.
Collect fully ripe tomatoes, cut the fruit in half and scoop out the seed and surrounding gel; eat the rest of the tomato. Put the seed and gel into a glass or jam jar and label it. If there is not enough gel, add a little bit of water – just enough to swirl it around; a teaspoon or so. Cover the glass with kitchen paper or cloth and leave on a warm windowsill. It will start to ferment and probably smell quite bad. When white mould starts to appear, the gel has broken down enough – leave it too long and the seeds will start to germinate. At about 20C, this will take three days.
Remove the mould and pour the remaining mixture into a sieve. Wash off any remaining debris. Place the seeds on a plate (not on kitchen paper, to which they will stick). The seed tends to clump together, so break them up during drying, so you have individual seeds. Once fully dry, store your seeds somewhere dark, cool and dry.
French beans
Saving seeds from French beans is very easy. It doesn’t matter if you have grown different varieties, too, as they don’t readily hybridise with each other; just a few metres between plants is enough to make sure varieties stay true.
Wait till the pods are yellow, then, if necessary, bring them indoors to dry further. Once they rattle, remove the seed. The seed is dry enough if you can’t leave an indentation on the skin with your thumbnail. If the seeds need to dry more, spread over a plate and leave until ready.
Runner beans
Runners are much more promiscuous than French beans and will readily cross with anything you or your neighbours are growing nearby – you need to separate varieties by at least 100 metres. Either accept that you will get a hybrid or, if there are no other gardeners nearby, grow a single variety and collect from that. I grow greek gigantes one year and black coat the next; each year gives me enough seed to make this system work. French and runner beans are different species, so they won’t cross from natural pollination.
Peas are the easiest of the lot – you need only a few plants and there is little chance of cross-pollination. Those pods that you missed when harvesting, and are now browning and turning parchment-like, are your free seed for next year. If the weather is dry, leave them on the plant to dry completely; if not, bring the pods in. Shelling is easy enough; if you have loads, put them in an old pillow case and whack it against the wall. You can dry the seeds further if they need it.
Throw out any that are damaged, discoloured or have small holes in them. These have been beset by pea moths, which are now pupating in the soil somewhere; the seed damage usually makes for bad germination.
Lettuce
Lettuce is an old favourite of mine. Just one or two plants can give you more than enough for several years and, as they self-pollinate, you don’t have to worry too much about hybridisation. But you are dependent on a good summer, as the seedheads can go mouldy in wet weather.
The flowers don’t come out all at once, so you have to go out every few days and collect the seeds from white plumes of thistle-like seedheads. I find its easiest to go out with a container and shake the seedheads to further sort and clean indoors. If the weather is wet, you are better off uprooting the whole plant and hanging it upside down inside to dry; put a paper bag over the seedheads and save what you can. Gently rub the seedhead into a sieve and shake it; the seeds will fall to the bottom and the fluff will rise on top, making it easy to pick off.
Parsley, dill and herb fennel
Parsley, dill and herb fennel are in the carrot family, Apiaceae, and give you a huge abundance of seeds from just a few plants. It’s one family where fresh seeds make a huge difference, so if you have ever found any of these herbs hard to germinate from bought seed, you will be surprised to see your own seeds germinate quickly and readily.
Dill, being annual, will give you plenty of seeds by the end of the summer; collect it on a warm day when it is brown and bring it indoors to dry further. Fennel plants are perennial, but the seeds appear at the same time as dill, towards the end of the summer. The seedhead tends to shatter easily, so you have to keep your eye out – the minute it is buff-coloured, collect the seeds and dry off further inside. Dill and fennel will readily self-seed about the garden, so if you don’t have time to collect seeds, let the garden take care of it.
Parsley will hybridise with other parsley plants, so if you are growing flat-leaf and curly you will get something in between. Parsley is biennial, its two-year lifecycle meaning it will need to overwinter to set seeds the next summer. I think it is a very pretty flowerhead and I love to leave it to live out its full life in the garden.
Flat-leaf parsley is not always winter-hardy, though, so if you are anywhere less than sheltered, it makes sense to dig and pot up plants to overwinter in a greenhouse, if you can.
Basil comes in many varieties. If you have grown different types and they are already flowering, the insects will have cross-pollinated them and thus anything saved will now be a mix. There might be something wonderful in there, there might not. It’s a gamble, but one worth taking.
If you want to keep the varieties true and they have not yet flowered, choose one you want to keep seeds from, let it flower and pick the flower spikes off all the other varieties. Once the flowers have withered on your seed-saving plants, you can let the others flower (they are beloved by pollinators). When your target flower spikes have gone completely brown, snip them off and bring them indoors to process the seeds. They rather cling to the seedhead, but are easy enough to rub off on to a plate.
I love Ina Garten (aka The Barefoot Contessa) and her beautiful gifts of cooking and hospitality. I’ve adapted one of her roasted vegetable recipes (Orzo With Roasted Vegetables) to make it my own. All you need is red (purple) onions, sweet peppers, garlic, orzo or quinoa, lemon juice, basil, olive oil, feta or goat cheese, green onions and a nut of your choice!
The main dish or side dish salad ingredients are healthy and wholesome: eggplant, red bell pepper, yellow bell pepper, garlic, red onions, olive oil and quinoa or orzo. The vegetables are roasted in the oven until tender. Be sure to flip them as they cook.
The salad dressing for this roasted vegetable and orzo salad is a refreshing combination of lemon juice (fresh is best), olive oil and salt and black pepper. Simple, right? That’s all you need to bring out the flavor of the eggplant, peppers and onion.
Once the salad is assembled, you will need some tasty toppings. Our favorite are chopped green onions, diced feta cheese, slivered almonds and fresh basil leaves.
This roasted, lemony salad can be a vegetarian main dish for dinner or a side dish. I hope you love it as much as my family does!
Cuisine: American Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 40 minutes Total Time: 1 hour and 10 minutes Servings: 4 as a main dish and 6 as a side dish
Ingredients
Dressing
Toppings
Here’s how to make it:
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CHICAGO — Following the latest “Pokémon Presents” online presentation, Pokémon fanatic Andrew Sanchez proclaimed on Twitter that Pokémon fans are eating good right now, despite not consuming a single fruit or vegetable in six months.
“Yooooooo!” began Sanchez’s post. “New DLC for Scarlet and Violet, Pokémon Cafe Remix, AND an update to Pokémon Sleep?? Pokémon fans eating good RN! Metaphorically speaking, of course. I haven’t had anything to eat besides Taco Bell and Top Ramen in 6 months.”
Other Pokémon fans responded to the viral Twitter post to express similar sentiments.
“Same here FRFR, no cap,” read a reply from Twitter user @im_getting_chariz_hard. “I am SO psyched to explore Area Zero in Scarlet and Violet, and to play the highly anticipated follow-up to Detective Pikachu. I’m also scared to go to the doctor because my body is withering away due to a similar lack of nutritious sustenance. Still though– hype!!”
After witnessing the reactions to their latest string of announcements, CEO of the Pokémon Company Tsunekazu Ishihara issued a special statement just for fans.
“We are very pleased to see that people are excited for our latest games, mobile apps, and merchandise,” explained Ishihara. “However, we have noticed that many of you are not eating square meals and taking care of your bodies properly. Video games are fun, but it’s almost just as important to make sure you are eating foods from every section of the food pyramid. I can announce today that we will be releasing a special Pokémon-themed bento box later this year, which includes a caesar salad, an apple, and a juice box. There will be a Pikachu sticker on it.”
At press time, several Pokémon fans were hospitalized after eating nothing but McDonald’s in an attempt to collect each and every Pokémon Happy Meal toy.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday hosted a vegetable vendor who had gone viral on social media at his residence for lunch. Gandhi also shared a photo with him on X (formerly known as Twitter), saying that Rameshwar, the vendor, is a “lively person” and reflected the “calm nature” of crores of Indians in the face of adversity.
A video of Rameshwar had gone viral in July over his interview with The Lallantop, India Today’s sister channel, on the soaring prices of tomatoes. In a follow-up video, Rameshwar said he wanted to meet Rahul Gandhi.
Rahul Gandhi invited Rameshwar, a vegetable vendor from Delhi, to his residence for lunch on Monday. (Photo: India Today)
Now, Rahul Gandhi has shared a photo with Rameshwar with the caption, “Rameshwar ji is a lively person! One can see the innate nature of crores of Indians in them. Those who move ahead with a smile even in adverse circumstances are truly ‘Bharat Bhagya Vidhaata’.”
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi with vegetable vendor, Rameshwar (Photo: X/@RahulGandhi)
RAHUL GANDHI’S REACTION TO VIRAL VIDEO
In July, Rahul Gandhi had shared a video on his official Twitter handle, showing a vegetable vendor in tears at the Azadpur market in Delhi.
In the video, Rameshwar, the vegetable vendor, with teary eyes said, “The tomatoes are too expensive. I do not have enough money to buy it.”
“We are not even sure at what price we will be able to sell it. If they get damp in the rain or something happens to the stock, we end up making a loss,” the distressed farmer had said.
The vendor added that inflation had put him in a desperate situation and he couldn’t even earn Rs 100-200 a day.
While sharing the video, Rahul Gandhi said that the country was being “divided into two classes”.
“On one hand, there are powerful people who have protected power, on whose instructions the policies of the country are being made. And on the other hand is the common Indian, from whose reach even basic things like vegetables are going away,” Gandhi said.
“We have to fill this widening gap between the rich and the poor and wipe away these tears,” he added.
Tucked away on school grounds south of Brisbane, food is being grown in vegetable patches for not only the students, but needy families in surrounding suburbs.
Rows and rows of fruit and vegetables at Loganlea State High School are waiting to be picked by volunteers and delivered to charities in the community.
The gardens share the grounds with 16 chooks, eight ducks, a couple of cheeky geese, and 30 head of cattle which roam over 28 hectares.
The school is one of a handful of locations that are linking up with the Mini-Farm Project, which aims to “grow your own, feed your own” to help families in need.
Project founder Nick Steiner came up with the idea after watching farming and cooking shows such as River Cottage and Gardening Australia.
The farm sits in the grounds of Loganlea State High School.(Supplied: Nick Steiner)
“I wanted to do something gardening-wise, and something different from my hospitality job, and I knew I wanted to create a charity that actually grew vegetables and got it straight to the community,” Mr Steiner said.
He said nearly one in five Australian homes were going hungry due to food shortages.
Farmer Liam has been training volunteers Tyler and Kirsty at Loganlea.(Facebook: The Mini Farm Project)
“Our proposition is to grow all the food from fruit, vegetables, eggs, bush food and honey then give it every week to a charity partner for free,” he said.
Feeding families
Each acre of the farm can produce up to about 40,000 meals for the community each year.
The group works with charities that turn fresh farm produce into meals.
It aims to keep produce fresh and high quality, with everything harvested on the day that the charity needs it.
Nick Steiner and volunteers help get the produce to charities.(Supplied: Nick Steiner)
“We have our weekly harvest day and the students and volunteers pick and pack the produce and the charity arrives by 11:30 and picks everything up and distributes it,” Mr Steiner said.
The community spirit on the mini farm extends further than the volunteers too, with locals also sponsoring their very own garden bed.
The local community can adopt a vegetable patch of its own.(Facebook: The Mini Farm Project)
“We put a plaque on the garden bed and share updates on the patch on social media so they can share the progress and show others that they’re actually growing food for people in their own community that need it,” Mr Steiner said.
“We have 40 beds at the moment and 38 of them are sponsored by the Logan community.”
From little things, big things grow
Being able to use grounds at Loganlea State High School has taught the students how to feed their own community and give back.
“Having this link with the school enables us to create strong ties with the community and provide learning programs as part of their curriculum as well — it’s a win, win,” Mr Steiner said.
Students help out with the farm as part of their curriculum. (Facebook: The Mini Farm Project)
Loganlea State High School agricultural manager James Lye said students were flocking to help.
“The kids realise how lucky they are to have what they have here,” Mr Lye said.
“This land … allows us to have such a variety of produce and animals that many other schools don’t, and the kids definitely enjoy it.”
The former industrial designer and electrician said he hadn’t looked back since making a career change to run the farm.
“I guess the world works in strange ways and I’m so happy to be here,” he said.
“It’s a lovely place to spend my time and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t learn something new.”
My mind raced, cycling through a rogue’s gallery of suspects. It wasn’t a deer, a squirrel, or raccoon. And no rabbit systematically works its way down row after row, leaving only nubs in its wake. No, it had to be a groundhog.
The groundhog, as New England gardeners have known for time immemorial, is a formidable adversary. One ravaged Henry David Thoreau’s bean patch at Walden Pond. “My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks,” he lamented. “The last have nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean.”
The Algonquin people are thought to have called the critter “wuchak,” for “digger,” which English settlers rendered as “woodchuck.” He’s had other names — whistle pig, land beaver — but as for me, I just call him a glutton who grows fat on the fruits of my labor.
This rodent of unusual size is both intelligent and social, able to alert their fellows to danger with a high-pitched whistle (hence: whistle pig). When cornered, they can be quite fierce, defending themselves with their incisors and front claws.
But I was angry and ready to fight, too. I wasn’t about to be bullied by an overgrown squirrel. I needed to stop him, whatever it took.
My ground war with the groundhog took place more than 25 years ago, and yet I still remember it like it was yesterday. Every year at this time, I think back to what I did wrong and what I might have done right, and what I’ve learned along the way.
A whole variety of folklore exists on ways to rid yourself of a groundhog. Some say you should gather hair from your barber and spread it around the perimeter of the garden. But I’m suspicious. Animals quickly adapt to human scents, and I’m betting the hair makes the woodchuck briefly pause and ponder, then proceed straight to your peas and lettuce. Others swear by dumping used cat litter in the groundhog’s hole. Please. The burrows can stretch some 50 feet and I had only one cat, a scrappy stray my wife and I had adopted named Casper.
So my first strategy was to finally finish the chicken-wire fence I had partially erected. It cost me about $80 in materials, and a few hours in labor, and that felt like a small price to pay. And it worked — for all of two days. The groundhog simply tunneled under the fence and sheared off what was left of the radish stems, emerging bean sprouts, and parsnip greens.
I called a fellow gardener for advice. She suggested I buy a humane “live” trap. “I guess woodchucks need to eat like the rest of us: after all, they are as much God’s creatures as we are.”
Then she added, “If you do catch him, make sure you kill him — I don’t want him coming over here.”
I bought the trap, shelling out $65, and I promptly caught a skunk. It was such a job getting the skunk out without being sprayed that I decided to retire the trap to my garden shed for the time being.
My next idea was to keep a handful of small rocks by the back door. I figured if I saw the portly pig and pelted him, the harassment might make him think twice about returning. I’d only seen the groundhog once but figured he’d be easy to hit because he seemed a slow, waddling sort.
I was becoming obsessed, like the groundskeeper in Caddyshack. First thing every morning, I found myself scanning my garden from my bedroom window on the second floor of our home. Sure enough, one morning I saw him. I raced downstairs, still in my underwear, quietly opened the back door, grabbed some stones and charged.
The groundhog heard me coming and raised himself on his haunches. I threw the stones. I’m not sure if I hit him but he did flee at a surprisingly fast gallop. The next morning, he was back again.
He seemed bigger than Casper — grown rotund, no doubt, on my greens and sugar peas. Casper never attempted to intervene, choosing instead to ignore the groundhog and go about his life.
I wondered what Casper knew that I didn’t.
It was time to escalate this battle. It didn’t take me long to find a hole in the woods behind my house. While I examined it, the groundhog himself came barreling down the hill and disappeared into a second hole, no more than 15 feet away from me. Groundhogs make their burrows with multiple entrances, getting them close to food and so they have an escape route should a fox or another predator enter their home. These burrows are works of art, with cozy chambers lined with grass and leaves. The underground nests are higher than the main tunnel so water will not reach them and, being a fastidious sort, they actually dig a dedicated bathroom chamber. I imagine they also design in all sorts of antechambers for the purpose of lounging and gloating about the spoils they’ve stolen from above.
Finding all the woodchuck entrances and exits to their burrows is no easy task. While you might find the “main entrance” by seeing freshly dug earth mounded up, there are hard to detect “plunge holes” at certain times of year for quick access. These plunge holes have no telltale mound because woodchucks dig the opening from within the established tunnel. In short, the woodchuck is smarter than many gardeners, myself included.
Now that I’d found his base of operations, I made my move. I tried sealing the openings with rocks. He pushed the small ones aside like petty worries, the big ones he dug around. And always he was eating.
Over the summer, my well-fed enemy grew larger — and bolder. One day, I sat under our maple and gazed over the pitiful remains of my vegetable garden — a few lonely squash plants, trampled peppers, and a half-eaten eggplant. There were also several healthy tomato plants that he seemed to thumb his nose at, as if not worthy of his smorgasbord.
Once, I saw the groundhog emerge from the woods, sniff the air, and bound toward the garden. I chased him to his hole, grabbed the biggest rock I could find, and pushed it into the entrance. I’ve got you now, I thought.
And then I stepped on a hornets’ nest and went running back to my house.
María Jesús Contreras for the Boston Globe
By this point, it was psychological warfare, and the short furry guy was winning. My mental outlook was as desolate as my garden. I thought about the groundhog constantly. At work, I glumly envisioned him back in my garden, deciding which of my plants he was in the mood to nibble. My friends began to ask me for a daily “groundhog report,” which I didn’t find as amusing as they did. When I got home every evening, I greeted my wife with the same terse question: “Did you see him?”
A half-mile from my home was a small farm-stand run by an elderly man of Russian descent. Whenever I stopped to buy his peaches, apples, and plums, he was always brusque. But on one visit I asked him what I should do about a groundhog, and a hint of a smile emerged. “You must shoot it.”
“But I don’t have a gun.”
“Buy one. I shoot them in my asparagus, early spring.”
Shooting the critter was out of the question — even if I had a gun, which I didn’t, my suburban neighbors wouldn’t look kindly on me discharging firearms while they mowed their lawns and barbecued their burgers.
Still, the farmer and I became friendly, and I remember him telling me he and his brother immigrated to America in 1912, after traveling from Russia to England. He said they tried to stowaway on a ship, but were caught and kicked off. The ship was named Titanic. “I am a lucky man,” he said.
He was lucky, but I was not, because by now my garden looked like the Sahara, and I’d been pushed to my limit. I didn’t care anymore about a kinder, gentler garden with a picturesque fence separating the groundhog’s territory from mine in a microcosm of peaceful coexistence. That approach would never work, I figured, so I turned to another weapon in my arsenal — bombs. Yes, bombs.
My local garden store carried rodent smoke bombs, also known euphemistically as fumigation cartridges, that came with fuses and detailed instructions. The trick was to drop the bomb into the hole and then cover the opening with dirt so the noxious fumes would asphyxiate the groundhog. It’s a grim thought, but I was in a war. (Should you go with the bomb method, and you’re like me and don’t always think things through, here is a tip from an animal control officer: Don’t use the bomb on entrance holes near your home unless you intend to perhaps poison a family member, or burn down your house, or both.)
On my first try, I forgot to seal the exit hole and the fumes escaped. On my second, I sealed the hole, but extinguished the bomb with the dirt. But the third time … ah, success. Three days passed, and not a groundhog in sight.
On day four, I sat under my maple tree, lord of my acre once more. A movement caught my eye. And there he was, my nemesis, perched like a squirrel with lunch from my garden in his paws. Right beneath the tomato plants was yet another entrance to the burrow.
I began to wonder what I would do if I caught the groundhog, as unlikely as that seemed. I’m a fan of author David Grayson, who in his 1936 book, The Countryman’s Year, recounts a battle with his own garden thief. Unlike me, Grayson appointed a deputy — an elderly trapper who guaranteed that if shown the robber’s burrow he could flush him out. On the appointed day, some neighbor boys carried buckets of water to the mouth of the groundhog’s den in an alfalfa field. They dumped all of it down the hole at once. “Suddenly we heard a gurgling sound,” Grayson recounts, “then a snort, and a great furry head emerged at the entrance of the hole.” The trapper pinned down the groundhog with a broom handle, grabbed her by the nape of the neck, “and held her up, squirming, and showing her sharp white teeth.” He put her in a box and he was off, marching “up the road carrying the prize of war.”
Grayson never said what happened next, but I suspect the critter became the trapper’s dinner. Author Kerry Hardy, who has written about the Native Americans of New England, says we shouldn’t wrinkle our noses at the thought. “Woodchuck meat is quite pleasant to the taste,” he writes. “Unlike today’s feedlot-finished cattle, these guys are actually herbivores.” Native Americans roasted groundhog on sticks and let the copious amount of fat run off into the fire.
Even Thoreau himself, the great idealizer of nature, eventually grew exasperated with the groundhog in his bean patch. “Abandoning his not-too-strongly-held vegetarian principles,” biographer Walter Harding writes, “he trapped, killed and ate it as a culinary experiment.”
Don’t tempt me.
In the end, I abandoned the smoke bombs and other thoughts of murder with a measure of shame. Instead, I began to feel something like respect. I ultimately captured my adversary in a live trap (he could not resist cabbage). He had a large black snout, sizable claws, and whenever I approached, his back went up. In a fair fight, should one of us not have been locked in a cage, I have no doubt who would have won.
I drove him to a wooded conservation land several miles from my house and released him into the woods. This, I was quickly informed, is illegal in Massachusetts. (And as I write this confession, I wonder: Has the statute of limitations expired?)
Learn from my mistake. The reasons for not relocating wildlife range from potentially spreading disease to a new environment, to causing social stress because of potential conflict with the animals in the new spot, a brochure from the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife informs me. Besides, “other individuals of the same species” will likely be attracted to your garden anyway — and sometimes the original offender will make his way back.
The law forbidding the movement of wild animals means if you use a live trap because you don’t want to hurt the animal, you are wasting your time — you either have to let it go where you caught it, with little more than a stern warning, or you have to kill it. (The thought of drowning a woodchuck inside a barrel of water turned my stomach, even if he was my sworn enemy.)
So that brings us back full circle, to where we began: Our best defense against these hungry marauders is apparently a fence. You can install an electric one, but it’s a costly proposition, so that was out of the question for me.
Or you can erect a traditional fence with a couple of key features. Buy a 4-foot-wide roll of chicken wire and then fold it in half in an L shape. Two feet of wire then form the fence and 2 feet lie on the ground, encircling your garden. Apparently, most groundhogs don’t realize they can simply back up 2 feet and burrow under the fence.
My groundhog was obviously on the high end of the IQ range. He had burrowed from the woods 20 feet away and then popped up inside the garden. Other groundhogs, I’ve been told, simply climb over such fences. So you might want to make it 4-feet high and have some kind of baffle on the top that gives them another challenge to outwit.
Or you can skip the fences and do what I did: move. I can’t say my groundhog was the main reason my wife and I pulled up stakes in Franklin, bound for a new home in town just a couple of miles away. But I can’t say he wasn’t one of the main reasons, either.
That fall, not long after I’d driven my groundhog to the conservation land, I was packing up the contents of my garden shed when I heard a noise. Listening closely, I swear a mocking, half-whistle was coming from the woods.
Michael Tougias is the author of many books; his latest is Extreme Survival: Lessons From Those Who Have Triumphed Against All Odds. Send comments to [email protected].
Kate Middleton’s three children Prince George, nine, Princess Charlotte, seven, and Prince Louis, four, have all provided insight over the years into their taste in food.
