I really messed up this past year…

I had so much going on in my life over the last year that I didn’t devote much time to my garden.

And that means this winter, I have hardly any truly nutritious food to eat.

And THAT is one of the main reasons why I caught a nasty flu a couple of weeks ago – my first flu in at least 10 years.

I explain more in this video (or feel free to scroll down to the article, if you prefer reading)…

When you get the flu, it’s easy to get upset at the virus. “Man, I HATE this virus!”

But the real problem is that my immune system was weak enough that the virus was able to multiply.

The good news is that as I lay in bed for a few days, it became clear that I had begun to take my health – and my garden – for granted.

And coming to that realization has given me the kick I needed to get back into using my usual strategies for growing the most nutrient-dense food I can, AND to expand my organic garden this year.

Why? Because I need access to MORE nutritious food in the winter.

And although this flu wasn’t much fun, it’s not what I’m really concerned about.

What I’m concerned about is if my body is open to the flu, that means it may be open to more serious issues.

1 in 2 men get cancer. 1 in 3 women. I’d rather skip it altogether.

Same goes for the other big diseases of our age – heart disease, lung disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s, diabetes.

Luckily, I know how to give myself the best chance of preventing these, which is to improve my health, which I strongly believe is done with nutrition and exercise and cultivating a happy mind (decreasing stress, having loving relationships, practicing mindfulness, and so on).

Fortunately, growing your own food contributes to all of these things.

And if you do it right, the one it contributes to the most, also the one I specialize in, is nutrition.

The problem is that most of the food you buy in the grocery store or from the farmer’s market is quite low in nutrition – even most of the organic food.

But if you take the time to learn how, you can grow food that is SO much more nutritious than food you can get anywhere else.

I’m talking especially about getting more minerals into that food, which will still be there even if you’re storing some of it over the winter to make sure you don’t get the flu like I did.

When I say more nutrition, I mean 30% more, 50% more, occasionally 100% more – especially with the major nutrients like calcium and magnesium.

In other cases – especially with micronutrients such as iodine and boron – it can be hundreds of times more.

And it can start as simply as remineralizing 100 square feet of soil with a basalt rock dust along with a little bit of good compost and planting that area with potatoes.

You can then store those potatoes throughout the winter and eat two of them every day to bring more nutrition into your diet.

Or feel free to substitute squash or apples or whatever you prefer to eat in the winter, because although nutrition writers often focus on the different mineral compositions of various foods, in my experience what’s much more important is how that food was grown.

What I mean is, I’d rather eat the same nutrient-dense potatoes every day rather than a diversity of 10 different nutrient-poor foods.

That being said, some foods are especially medicinal. For example, I’d always suggest including a small patch of garlic in your garden for the benefits it will bring you and the garden.

Anyway, rock dust is just one of the many wonderful options we have available to us.

I’m currently working on a checklist I’ll be posting next week.

It will contain a list of these options I intend to use in my garden this year to get more nutrition into my potatoes and squash and apples and everything else I grow, and it’s also what I’ll be using to prepare a new garden so I have even more space to grow more nutritious food.

Because more nutrition means less disease for me.

And less disease means more time to enjoy life.