I decided to go around my garden and document every type of fruit or vegetable we have growing. Once I counted all the plants/photos, I realized that I had 24 different kinds of food growing on my .25 acre lot. Maybe 26, if you count the plants that haven't sprouted yet, like the carrots I am waiting on. That is a lot of food for such a small suburban Baltimore backyard. It reminded me that anyone can grow food no matter what kind of space issue they have. Sometimes you have to containerized your plants, like I did with my herbs. You just have to do a little research on how to make your space into a food producing machine (a garden)! I would love to see cities like Baltimore take a more active role in creating gardens in nooks and crannies (whether they be vegetable gardens or green roofs, etc.) Plants really help clean our air and can produce food (help feed the hungry) and I think we should be investing more into them. That is one of my personal missions in life and I try to do that where I can at my fathers place, which is the space I have to work with now. Most of neighbors have a grassy backyard and that is it. Little to no biodiversity or gardens and it is kind of a shame.
So here are some articles/books on gardening, that I find absolutely informative:
Of course there are a lot more, but these are some that I have found recently that I found really informative and gave me a lot of good ideas to try.
Now to My Garden:
I love the flavor of sage in cooking meats, breads, pastas, etc.
This mint has a nice light and sweet mint flavor to it. I like to use it for flavoring in my water and in deserts, especially chocolate ones. I bring this container plant inside for the winter, so I can use it even then. It is great for cocoa :)
This citrus-flavored mint is great in dishes where lemon flavoring might be used. I have recipes for sweet breads, muffins and biscuits. It is also a great herb for flavoring water. I like to flavor my water with herbs, it really helps me cut back on more sugary drinks.
I will mostly use this plant to make sachets. I might drink chamomile tea every once in a while, but I am not a huge fan of tea.
This plant still needs to be planted. It needs to be in a shady place where it can spread as a nice ground cover. It does not make a good container plant. Once I figure out where to plant it and it gets established, I will remove some of the plants (I harvest the stems) to use in dishes where the traditional tropical ginger is called for. Since the stems have to be harvested and it takes many stems to get enough spice, it may be a while before I can use this plant. If I can harvest some from the wild, I will use those instead for now.
SWEET POTATO
This plant along with my garlic and potato plants I started the same way. I go to a local organic grocery store to see what day old produce they put out for taking. I like to look for old tuber or corm veggies to use to start new plants. I took a day old sweet potato, stuck some sewing pins (or you could use toothpicks, but that is what I had) in the sides and suspended it over a glass of water. A few weeks later I had a mass of roots and a few small leaves coming from my old sweet potato.
STRAWBERRIES
Many many years ago there was a store called Franks Nursery and that is where we got our first strawberry plants. We have had them ever since, they are not hard to grow and they multiple rapidly. We use them for one of favorite summer dishes shortcake. I also use them for fruit and veggie smoothies. However, this year we did not get many strawberries and most of them were miniscule, so I went to a strawberry picking farm with some friends and got my strawberries there instead. Maybe next year our plants will produce well again. It seems to go in cycles like that with many perennial fruits. One good year and one not so good year and so forth and so on.
I lost my oregano plant this year when my dad turned my tiny plant over when digging up the garden. So, I bought a new plant at the farmers market for 3 dollars, made perfect sense at that price.
TOMATOES
Early Girl and Beefsteak Tomatoes, bought from a local garden center. 8 plants four of each.
POTATOES
I picked up a day old potato with eyes on it for free from the organic grocery store. I got two plants out of it, by doing the same thing I did with the sweet potatoes.
This tree has been in my yard forever. It was planted there by my father before I was born. Every other year it seems like we get a good crop of plums. Looks this year will be a good year. I usually make tarts and jams from my plums. I like plums, but I do not feel like these have the best flavor, so I do not eat a lot of them right off the tree, my dad does though.
We plant leaf lettuce every year, because my dad likes it on his sandwiches. Me not a fan of lettuce or most greens, but I do use them on occasion in smoothies.
BLOOMSDALE SPINACH
Heirloom spinach variety I am growing for green smoothies. Great if you cannot wait to start your garden. If you get spring fever, you can start spinach in late winter early spring, its pretty hardy.
ONION
We were about to toss this pretty sad looking onion that had been in the fridge too long, but when we saw that it had sprouted we thought we would give a second chance at life. Who knows if it will work out, only time will tell.
I was going to grow basil from seed, but when I saw this plant for a dollar at the farmers market, I could not resist. I like to make and can pesto with my basil plants. I also use as fresh and dried basil in pasta dishes. This year my goal is to find out how to use black walnuts in cooking and hopefully I will be able to use them in my pesto. You can use walnuts or pine nuts, but both are very expensive. I know where lots of black walnuts grow, so if they can be harvested, that would be a much cheaper alternative.
I also got this head of garlic for free as it had sprouted. I split the sprouted cloves up and planted them to get several more garlic heads. Its easy to grow garlic. Just plant 3 inches deep with the sprouted part of the clove facing up and wait for the sprout to penetrate the soil.
It has been years since we have found good apples on our apple tree. We do not spray our tree. Some wild trees are not sprayed, but still get decent apples, so we don't know why our tree doesn't have the same luck. I harvest wild apples all of the time from abandoned orchards. Maybe its because of that, that I don't worry too much about my own tree. If I did take the time to spray it I have a nice cayenne pepper based organic spray recipe I would use. I just need to take the time to do it sometime earlier in the season, when the apples are just forming.
Years ago we planted these bushes and every summer we get tons of black raspberries (note previous post about the difference between blackberries and black raspberries). I also pick plenty of black raspberries from local parks. I like to make jams, sauces, ice creams, so lots of berries are always needed. I also love our family's summer tradition of black raspberries on plain cereal like corn flakes. I look forward to that every summer.
About 15 or so years ago, my dad and I went to a local park to pick some cherries. One night we were eating them in the backyard and we spit the pits out into our yard, the next year we had trees there. We removed several of the volunteer trees, but kept a four. Later we removed two of the four and left the two that were at the corners of the yard. We now have two trees that are over a foot in diameter. It is hard to imagine, but when the trees were very young one of our dogs chewed one to the ground. That dog passed a few years back, but his tree still stands over a foot in diameter and over two stories tall. I guess my dog couldn't stop that cherry tree :)
Our grapes are the Americana Variety. They produce Red, White and Blue/Purple Concord Grapes. They make great grape jelly. I also use them for grape juice and of course I love picking them and eating them right off the vine.
Not that you would eat these, but they do make great bath sponges. Yes Luffa comes from a plant, a gourd to be exact and I cannot wait to see it in its full glory. I bought these Heirloom Dishcloth Gourd seeds on the internet from small company out of Louisville. www.nimblenitecap.etsy.com All you have to do is dry the gourd, clean the skin off with water and wire brush (like a grill brush, or scouring pad would also work). Then voile a usable exfoliating bath sponge.
BLUEBERRIES
My poor dad accidentally cut our bush way back, because he thought it was part of the Forsythia bush (that was leaning over it). We never get more than 10-15 blueberries anyway, and this year we are sure to get none. None of that really matters, because my aunt in Pennsylvania has a ton growing on her property, that I am sure I will be picking in the near future.
