In the past, I've grown salsa gardens in garden beds. I've also made many attempts to grow in our new location, but with rocky ground this is more work than my carefree gardening style is willing to dedicate time to. So, this year I decided to container garden.
Good news, I've had some success.
My Gardening Style
When it comes to plants of any sort, I'm the "if it lives, it lives" type of person. My gardening style is no different. However, this year I went to a whole new carefree method. I call it: Surprise Gardening.
Here's how it works:
- Take a seed or old kitchen vegetables
- Plant in a pot
- Water it
- If it grows, it's a wonderfully unexpected surprise.
Hence the name Surprise Gardening.
What Have I Grown?
This started with a post* I read here on Hive about someone who slices up tomatoes and plants them in a pot to grow. I'd never heard of such a thing, but was intrigued to give it a try. Lo and behold, it works!
Once I figured out I could grow tomatoes from a slice or in my case an old baby tomato that had been in the fridge too long, I was embolden to try out even more kitchen veggies.
Next up was a couple of green onions that had been forgotten on a shelf. They were on the dry and old side, but I figured why not plant them to see if anything could be salvaged. They took to being planted so well that now when we eat ramen, I simply snip off a green leaf or two to sprinkle on top of our ramen.
Then a couple of our regular onions began sprouting in the fridge. So, naturally those went into a pot and are growing rather well.
My mom had a cilantro plant go to seed, so I asked her to send some my way. I planted them and just recently saw that they were growing. Soon I'll be able to make some salsa with my very own freshly grown cilantro. How cool is that?!
Not Everything Grows
For as much success as I have had with my Surprise Gardening method, there are plenty that did not make it. One was a celery stalk. At first it started to grow, and then out of nowhere it up and died. Not sure if the heat was too much or whether it needed more water or less water. I don't consider it a loss since this is something I would have thrown into the trash and not missed at all.
The Experiments Continue...
I have ideas for my fall surprise gardening that involve pumpkin seeds. Stay tuned!
*If I can find the post that inspired my first attempt at kitchen scrap vegetable gardening, I'll post it in the comments. If the person who wrote that post read this post, please let me know it was you. Oh, and a BIG THANKS for the inspiration.
All photos by me done on my trusty iPhone.
Wow...The tomatoes will grow out to be so big and refreshing.
Hence ,it is a skill it self!
Thanks!
How cool! Me? Well, I do not have a green thumb. Every plant I've had dies. I remember friends coming over to our house and laughing because my cactus plant was dying. They said, "You can't even keep a cactus alive!"
It's true. So, I've just decided gardening is for others. LOL
Plants for nothing has to be good. It's great to have food from your own garden.
I have to keep reminding myself that we call cilantro coriander. My other half doesn't like the taste.
!PIZZA
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@steevc(1/5) tipped @epodcaster