but I'll leave it here with apologies.

I would grow the vegetables that I know my family will eat. No one knows what your family likes better than you. Personally, I try to use many different colors of fruits and vegetables throughout the week to help get many nutrients into our diet.

The link below is from Nutrition.Gov, it's a comprehensive website about the food pyramid and basic nutrition. I've linked to the pyramid page for vegetables.

Here is a link that might be useful: Inside the Pyramid ~ Veggies

Thank you, Trudi. That's a great chart.

I really am getting spooked about commercial foods lately, since inspections are half what they were three years ago. These inspections include imported foods. But US-grown food-testing is down even more:

"Safety tests for U.S.-produced food have dropped nearly 75 percent, from 9,748 in 2003 to 2,455 last year, according to the FDA's own statistics."

So, maybe we all need to grow more of our own food for more than summer consumption, at least those foods that we think could be contaminated. But the truth is, I didn't know that spinach could be contaminated with e-coli, so I wouldn't have thought it was on an unsafe list.

Predictions are that it will get worse.

Wash your food very well and cook it, unless you've grown your own and feel it's safe to eat raw--but rinse it well anyway.

There are many blends of mesclun available that have a wide range of colors. All leafy greens are usually fast and easy to grow. Zukes make a stunning amount of fruits in a short time, so do sring beans and beets or chards.

It's most important to wisely choose what you're growing--don't waste space on plants nobody is going to eat. Make sure you'll have the supplies on hand for freezing and canning before you start cropping. Also, estimate the time you'll need and the days you can give to preserving your harvest. If you're in an area prone to blackouts then keep a generator and gas on hand, or can everything so you don't have the concerns about electricity to continually run a freezer. If you have a pressure canner you can put up meats too--make some stews or meaty soups and preserve them for the future. Some people have dehydrators for their herbs, fruits and veggies, or making jerky.

There's a lot of ways to preserve foods, but make sure you CAN do the work so you haven't wasted money and months in growing crops you can't save, and do what you is needed so that you won't have serious concerns about a steady flow of electricity for running the freezer.

I was looking at generators last week, they're not cheap but they are an important investment. On LI, it seems our winter storms are getting more severe and our summers are hotter--power lines can go down in ice storms or gales, and brownouts are no longer rare. If I was dependent on putting a large supply of food into a freezer I wouldn't hesitate to purchase a generator and several gas cans.