Ever planted a sprouting potato?
How about some beans?
Share your stories about your kitchen garden!
Here's a fun article about raiding your pantry to grow a kitchen garden. Snippets below, but full article can be found at the following web address:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/garden/24seed.html
Quote:
Seeds Straight From Your Fridge
By MICHAEL TORTORELLO
Feb. 23, 2011
What I was imagining was a kitchen garden in the most literal sense: a crop borne of the pantry instead of the usual seed catalog.
For generation after generation of farmers, the staple crops we ate at the table — wheat and barley, maize and beans — were the same seeds we sowed in the fields. They were descendants of the first semi-wild crops that had more or less “ ‘volunteered’ for domestication,” as Peter Thompson, the British conservationist, wrote in his 2010 book, “Seeds, Sex and Civilization.” These seeds “germinated rapidly, completely, and at low temperatures.”
Today’s farmers, with their pedigree seeds, grow foods that are bigger and more bountiful than the peasant crops of the past. The viability of the seeds these cereals, legumes, fruits and vegetables produce, though, is an afterthought.
Avocado is a gateway seed — a way station on the path from horticultural dabbler to gardening addict. The pit, the toothpicks, the glass of water: this is seed germination at its most intoxicating.
Though they are invasive in the wild, water chestnuts won’t thrive indoors without an aquarium or a fishbowl, he said. But plenty of other seeds that look appetizing in the produce aisle also look attractive in a planter.
Once you invite a papaya seed to sprout, it will make itself at home. In tropical weather and full sunlight, a papaya plant will shoot up six feet before its first birthday.
“I’ve seen papayas fruit in a home,” he added. “Granted, the thing was like eight feet tall.”
Looking at an old bag of dried beans, it’s hard to imagine a handsome plant. Yet the pigeon pea will develop “beautiful silvery” foliage, Mr. Hachadourian said. And in the “fall to early winter, it will cover itself in bright yellow blossoms.”
“If the plant gets up to size,” Mr. Hachadourian said, “you just get a new one.” In other words, time to start snacking again.
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I've shared my thoughts on the topic below, I hope others will share their stories as well.
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I've always been a big fan of planting kitchen waste. The affection for the process grew out of our family's backyard compost heap and the frequent volunteer plants we would obtain each spring. Tomatoes, potatoes, squash, and more - there was always something growing out of that fertile mess.
I took the concept with me to college at Berkeley, snatching the sprouting onions and potatoes from the pantry and planting them in our co-op garden.
In graduate school in Ohio, I find myself saddened at the long wintertimes without my usual plants. I stroll through the greenhouses and long for one of my own, then head home to my countertop hydroponic system that provides me with fresh basil and chives.
I have enjoyed the greenery that sprouts from the seeds collected from a canteloupe and butternut squash - even when the poor lighting doesn't allow them to produce fruit, they still liven up the front walk to our apartment. When I ran out of pots, I poked holes in old paint cans, then added colorful designs with oil paints, which could stand up to the unrelenting, life-giving rain.
I love taking unassuming kitchen scraps and giving them a place to grow.