February 18, 2025

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10 of the healthiest fruits and vegetables that people can grow in a home garden

10 of the healthiest fruits and vegetables that people can grow in a home garden

The agricultural weather from the National Weather Service Climate Predication Center 8-to-14-day outlook for January 15 to 21, 2025, updated January 7 is predicting a good chance for “likely below” normal temperatures and an outlook for near normal chances for precipitation. A Detroit television segment about health lamented the lack of vitamin D due to less sunshine this time of the year. The average (over several decades) number of days in winter, during the months of December, January and February, when cloud covers at most 30 percent of the sky during daylight hours shows Lansing, Michigan ranking 22nd with 340 total hours of sunshine. For snowbirds, Tampa, in the “sunshine state” of Florida only ranks 9th, while Tucson, Arizona ranks 3rd. The definition of sunny days is when the sky is mostly clear but includes days when cloud covers up to 30% of the sky during daylight hours. Of the top thirteen places in the continental U.S. with sunshine more than 75% of the time shows Yuma, Arizona first and the first Florida city is Key West, ranking 12th.

Great Lakes shipping through the Soo Locks in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan closes on January 15, 2025 and will reopen, by law, on March 25, 2025. The last “Lakers” of the season were loading iron ore and coal out of Duluth this week, prior to winter layup. Shipping through the St. Lawrence Seaway closed to ocean bound traffic on January 5, 2025 while the Welland Canal, Ontario, Canada is scheduled to close for the 2024 shipping season on January 10, 2025. The opening and closing dates for the St. Lawrence Seaway varies from year to year due to the weather conditions and commerce demands. The Welland Canal opened in 2024 on March 22, with their “Top Hat” ceremony, welcoming the captain of the first down-bound vessel. The St. Laurence Seaway transported about 32.3 million metric tonnes (a metric tonne is 2204 pounds) of cargo through the Great Lakes in 2024. The most common cargoes included; grain, potash, iron and steel, petroleum, coal, sugar, liquid bulk and general cargo, including wind towers and blades. Ports in our area include Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio and Monroe, and Detroit, Michigan. The largest of the 13 “Laker” boats is the Paul R. Tregurtha, the “Queen of the Lakes” at 1013.5 feet long. The largest “Saltie” boat that can get through the Welland Canal is 740 feet long by 78 feet wide and with a draft up to 26.3 feet (8 meters). The most famous boat on the Great Lakes is the Arthur M. Anderson, which was traveling near, and communicating with, the Edmund Fitzgerald on that fateful day on November 10,1975.

The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Mackinaw the largest icebreaker on the Great Lakes moves thick ice around in the shipping channel of the Soo Locks in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan on March 20, 2014.

The MSU IPM Update held on December 17 at MSU had a number of speakers and topics. Some briefs notes include: from Eric Anderson and the SMaRT soybean projects showed a net loss of $26.03 using in-furrow starter fertilizer vs the control. Marty Chilvers said there is a new return on investment (ROI) calculator for using corn fungicides, which can be found at the CropProtectionNetwork.org website. Kurt Steinke said N-P-K prices are almost half of the COVID-19 prices of 2021-2022. Manni Singh said MSU has not had a Corn Variety Trial the past two years since Dekalb and Pioneer dropped out. (The OSU 2024 Corn Variety Trial results were just posted this week). Christy Sprague and Erin Burns gave field crop weed control updates from the new 2025 MSU Field Crop Weed Control Guide. 

Colorful raw fruits and vegetables.

The ten healthiest fruits and vegetables as listed in the Daily Almanac from The Old Farmer’s Almanac that people can grow in a home garden are “super nutritious.” Most of these do not take up a lot of space and there are numerous other veggies and fruits that are also healthy. Not listed in order, their top ten list includes broccoli, kale, garlic, spinach, bell peppers, zucchini and summer squash, green beans, tomatoes, blueberries and strawberries. Other notable healthy crops include carrots, winter squash, watermelon and various legumes, such as peas, white beans, edamame and others.