Physician Practices What She Preaches: Organic Gardening

Dr. Carrie Teasdale follows a time-honored gardening tradition: She doesn’t plant vegetables until blue jays and other migratory birds come home.

“That gives me the signal,” said Teasdale, 40, president of the newly formed California Organic Club, which is based in Fullerton and has 90 members. What’s more, the vegetables and fruit she grows by that method may have cured her allergies, Teasdale said.

“I don’t have allergies anymore,” said the semi-retired Fullerton family-practice physician who plants and cares for her own organic garden. “Organic food supposedly had something to do with that, but I can’t attribute it just to organic foods.”

She also has her own method for dealing with bugs that invade her back-yard garden patch, which includes lettuce, herbs, squash, onions, garlic, tomatoes and 14 fruit trees.

“I bought some hens because they do most of the work, and they like to eat bugs,” said Teasdale, adding that her chickens also lay blue, green, pink and white speckled eggs. “It’s like Easter here every day.”

Aside from the fun she has in her organic garden, as well as helping others with organic garden plots, Teasdale bragged that “you can’t buy food of the quality I eat from my garden. People who grow up on supermarket food don’t realize what real food tastes like.”

She likes to point out that a plant not grown organically is not as strong as those that are. “It’s not as healthy if you have to use pesticides or chemicals,” she said. “And if it’s not as healthy, it will not be as tasty or nutritious.”

Moreover, she said, “organically grown food has a longer keeping quality in a refrigerator.”

Although she’s ready to talk about the merits of food grown in organic gardens, Teasdale said she doesn’t want to denigrate farmers or their methods, but rather “to show people who are back-yard farmers how to grow their own food.”

That, she added, can make people more self-sufficient and provide them with a lifelong healthy hobby working with nature in the outdoors.

“I’m very much interested in the ecological system and working with nature because nature does it better,” she said. “You can find that out by going out and picking food right off trees. There’s just no way you can get the same flavor and aroma in a supermarket.”

To exhibit their work, club members set up a 30-by-30-foot garden area at the Fullerton Arboretum where they planted fruit trees and gourmet and Oriental vegetables.

“We’re learning through experimentation,” said Teasdale, adding that all the food they grow will be free of pesticides. “People of today are much more concerned about what food they are putting in their mouths. When they go to a market that advertises there is no detectable level of pesticide in their food, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

But she said people who grow organic food know for sure their food is pesticide free.

Nick Sherman of San Clemente won the first prize of a $500 scholarship in a Capistrano by the Sea Hospital art show entitled “Pageant of Upcoming Masters.”

Acknowledgments--Hubert Lind of Foothill High School was presented the David Shanbrom Memorial Scholarship that is awarded to a deserving scholar and athlete at the school. Lind, who will attend Harvard College, lettered in track and tennis. The scholarship is named for Shanbrom, a former Times’ first-team All-County football player from Foothill High who was killed in 1986 in an automobile accident at age 27.