Food Growing Your Own Food

Hey, foodies!

It's that time of year again. The weather is getting warmer, and I'm thinking about growing stuff.

I have an apartment with a small patio, where there are six containers for growing things. I switch back and forth between a full floral/greenery display and a mix between floral/greenery and food items.

In the past, I've grown jalapeño peppers, Swiss chard, chives, and an array of herbs, including cilantro, parsley, basil, oregano, mint, and rosemary.

This year, I'm open to trying some different stuff, bearing in mind the limitations of container gardening.

Now that I'm vegan, I want to grow something that I'll use a lot of. Swiss chard is a good choice, because of smoothies and side dishes and soup (yes, even in summer).

But what else should I do? What's easy? What has a good yield? I wouldn't mind food that could generally be used in salads and for grilling/roasting and stir-frying.

Any food gardeners out there willing to offer any tips? Tell us your experiences.

 

Yay! Container gardening! Since we've had a mild winter in Cincinnati, I have enjoyed a little something all year with my balcony garden. I just harvested a delicious little head of broccoli. It survived numerous bouts with freezing and thawing, and was the most flavorful five bites of broccoli I've eaten. We also have green onions, cabbage, and brussels sprouts, but the sprouts really didn't provide much other than a few leaves. Maybe they'll pick up now that it's getting a bit warmer. It's shocking to see just how easily some of these plants bounce back with a little sunlight and water. When it started getting chilly I brought my herbs inside, we've enjoyed fresh oregano and rosemary all winter, too. The mint didn't make it, but the roots have sprouted up again out in our little herb garden, along with more oregano, chives, and sorrel. The lavender looks pretty good, too. We are looking forward to another portable and edible garden this year. With how frequently we seem to move, and living in apartments, it has been a bit of an adventure seeing just what can do well in pots.

Here's the broccoli plant after I finished with it. I'm hoping it will produce a few more little trees before it gives up.

 

I'm tempted to do hot peppers again. But I'll need to plan better to make good use of them. I seem to recall doing sweet peppers once. They'd get used more. Maybe I'll look into those.

Wow, how big is that broccoli plant? Is that in a container? Is it easy to grow? Can you otherwise get a lot from it?

 

Camera angle is everything! The head of broccoli remaining on the plant in that photo is about 6cm in diameter. Even though that spot gets full sun until at least noon every day, it's not enough to produce any decent... produce. It's in a wicker window box, hanging off the railing. I haven't gotten a high yield from the plant, but I'm sure I would get much more if I had it in full sun - and if it hadn't been dealing with unpleasant weather. The nice thing about broccoli is that it keeps producing a little head of broccoli from every node as long as you pick them before they bloom. You can keep the plant going for a long time and continue to get lots of delicious goodies. Oh - and the leaves are killer delicious in a sandwich. You should try it, especially if you like the taste of chard and other hearty greens.

 

I'm definitely going to consider the chard, because the yield was pretty fantastic. I should mention that I too have limitations with the amount of sun I get. The patio gets about four or five hours of sun between morning and noon. It doesn't sound like a lot, but the patio area is fenced in with a wooden fence, while the base consists entirely of brick and one wall is made out of pebble sheet (or whatever you call it). This means a lot of heat gets trapped.

I've had some success with questionable plants. Cilantro, for example, did better than I thought it would. And some flowers have done well there despite the sun restriction. I used to grow some pretty decent sunflowers there.

So anything that thrives in partial sun would be ideal. I know this is pretty restrictive, but like I said, that area does surprisingly well despite the amount of sun.

 

If your space retains heat, tomatoes should grow nicely. Little cherry or grape tomatoes turn red quickly and can develop a deep flavor even with partial sunlight. Rainbow chard is one of my favorites, it's incredibly shade-tolerant. In one of my gardens I had two huge eucalyptus trees that blocked a lot of light, and rainbow chard was the only thing that thrived. Chives also do well with less sunlight - and they're beautiful if you leave them long enough to bloom.
--- merged: Mar 14, 2012 at 5:32 PM ---
This thread reminds me of this news story. http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/ageless-woman

 

I planted chives two years ago, and they came back up last year. I hope they'll do so again this year.

Thanks for the tomato tip. I'll look into it. Tomatoes would be fantastic, and I love grape tomatoes. I didn't do rainbow chard, but I'll most likely do chard of some variety. It did really well when I tried it the first time.

 

Lettuce is stupid easy and much better if you can pick your own baby greens. Last year I did rapini, parsley, cilantro, and basil in containers.

I'm fortunate to have access to not one but two gardens that require minimal effort on my part: my in-laws' garden at their home and a community garden we share at my FIL's workplace. Last year we grew a whole mess of things. Our specific contributions were French breakfast radishes, five kinds of hot peppers (Pizza, Jalapeno, Serrano, Habanero, Thai Chili), two kinds of roasting peppers, 9 tomato plants (Green Zebra [heirloom], Willamette [early slicer], Djinn [persimmon-type yellow heirloom], Juliet [small roma, good for salads, roasting, drying, and sauce--highly recommended], Black Sea Man [heirloom large slicer], and four San Marzanos [canning/sauce/paste tomato]), two cucumbers (Orient Express and Armenian), and bush beans (Royal Burgundy). That's just what we chose to plant. My MIL plants much, much more.

We used almost all of it. I canned so much of it, so I guess we're still technically using last summer's produce. We canned approximately 30 pints of green beans--regular beans in a pressure canner and dilly beans in a boiling water canner. The Green Zebra went nuts at the end of the season and I canned 12 half-pints of tomato jam. Next year, I'll be prepared. I will have a food drier and dry more tomatoes and peppers. I need to figure out a better way to preserve slicing cucumbers beyond their production season--we had tons of cucumbers. I made some relish. Next year I plan on donating some of our extra to Plant a Row: http://www.oregonfoodbank.org/Give-Food/Plant-a-Row-Program

 

If his limited sunlight is anything like mine, he should be fine. I got a bumper crop of little grape tomatoes last summer.

 

I'm totally doing grape tomatoes. Those things are like candy.

 

You might want to look for a Tiny Tim: http://www.victoryseeds.com/tomato_tiny-tim.html

 

And then you remember that so is eggplant and avocado.

 

My chives are doing well already, and my parsley is starting to come up.

 

My parsley made it through the winter. I'm not questioning it--just surprised. I guess it never did get very cold this winter, not like past winters.

I need to get out there and clean up my herb garden.

 

This is what I'm thinking. We had a mild winter and an early spring. It's nearly summerlike out there right now.

 

Well, we have snow right now, but it still didn't get down into the low-20s like it usually does here.