Monday, August 3, 2015

Gardening Experiments

How does our garden grow? With science!

sweet potato in a glass of waterOur neighbor friends went on vacation and found three sweet potatoes they left behind. Rather than throw them out, they decided to do some experimenting and put them in water. Friend gave one to Husband and they kept the other two. The neighbors don't really have a deer-free zone to plant in, but the potato (probably actually a yam, but work with me here) looked like it needed somewhere other than a glass of water to live in. Husband introduced it to me by asking if I'd met "Sweet" yet. We haven't decided where to plant it. We have the two aforementioned gardens now and the red potatoes are out front. It looks hearty enough to plant and I'm sure it will be delicious. There are actually lists out there of all the food you can regrow from stubs, like carrots. We have found that unless they are organic, peppers and similar do not grow. It's probably not in the companies' best interest to have plants people can grow themselves. For "Sweet" I sent Husband the instructions here: http://wakeup-world.com/2012/10/15/16-foods-thatll-re-grow-from-kitchen-scraps/ This is not the longest list available. Google the topic for other lists, but they mostly include leafy greens and potatoes.

This morning Husband asked if I knew what the large plant in the middle of his front garden was. Turns out two of our sunflowers are finally growing. One is growing VERY well and one is kind of just holding its own. We had three varieties of seeds between a storytime craft program and from Kiddo's class at school. I think I killed some of the seedlings when I planted them so I'm happy that any of the five or six made it this far. Before the storytime program, I actually had no idea how many varieties of sunflower there were, so it will be interesting to find out which ones survived.

We also never got around to planting the volunteer lettuce/endive that we stuck in a container in the window. Did you know that lettuce flowers? After a point, the lettuce put up a long stalk and purple flowers appeared along it. Not sure if it's going to flower forever or not. It's not something I expected to see.The extra stalk is more than a foot long. We just keep watering it, to see what the plant will do. The other variety of lettuce (not entirely sure what - a green leaf variety) is not doing anything so interesting.

The back garden has given us lettuce (til the heat wilts it), basil, beans, peas and tomatoes. Most of the tomatoes are still green, but a couple of years ago we started eating fried green tomatoes and I found I love them. Husband also goes out early in the morning to collect squash blossoms. He keeps them in a container in the fridge til he has enough to cook and then he cooks them much the same as the fried tomatoes. We hardly ever get squash (no idea why) so he figures the flowers are his only harvest from a plant that otherwise takes up a lot of room. It's been a few years since he actually planted one - they just volunteer. So we eat them.

Overall our gardens are still very much a work in progress but we enjoy whatever we get from them. With a side of science!

1 comment:

  1. Wow, purple lettuce flowers! It's so beautiful. Is the sweet potato still going?

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