kitchen_gardens

hello, i'm Shayley. i have three children(4yrold boy, twin girls 13.2 months) and have a wonderful husband. we are all natural and loving it for at least three years. i am a basil freak and i'm looking to grow my own indoors in the kitchen. has anyone ever used one of thses?


http://www.bestaerogarden.com/


These look really nice but before i decide to purchase somehting like this i would like to get some opinions if there are any. any help or tips would be great! thanks!

First off, to save confusion, I live in the southern hemisphere, so it is spring right now :)

Just over a year ago we had a lovely, massive plum tree. The lowest branches were a litttle less than 2m off the ground, so the whole thing  was maybe 8m tall and just as wide? (I am bad at judging heights, but I know I could not reach the bottom branches =>2m). It had pure white blossoms that shone like snow, and enough fruit to fill a truck - which when ripe, 99.9% was eaten in 2 days by a flock of tiny  birds (although I think they were probably a lot bigger when they finished). You could write legends about this plum tree. So then our neighbours rudely and possibly illegally chopped down the hedge between our properties and the plum tree as well saying "we didn't know it was there" (one of their friends who is an arborist did it, but apparenlty he is an arborist who can't recognise a fruit tree from common hedge plants). It was literally just about to blossom - within a couple of days some of the cut branches on the ground opened their blossom buds. I now hate the neighbours for life.

Ok, onto the actual question. As I said, it is spring here, new life, hope, etc. So I went to look at the 30cm of trunk still left in the ground, and although it was hard to tell cos there are still old branches everywhere, I am pretty sure there were bits growing out of it, like sometimes happens on trunks. Definitely some of the smaller twigs/branches/stick-things with leaves on them that I could get to were growing out of the trunk. But - it was only cut down about 13 months ago and some of the grown bits are a metre long or more already. And the other fruit trees (and most everything else in the garden) all have "new green" (bright and light) coloured leaves whereas these are "old green" (strong and dark) colour ie. they don't look they grew this spring, unless they grew really early.
So - I don't see how it could be anything other than the tree growing back, but I thought maybe it could be some other fast growing plant made a home there? (although the woods pretty solid still, it's not like it's rotten). Does anyone know if these bits that grow out of the trunk have a different cycle to how the rest of the tree normally grows - eg. they grow earlier in spring, don't loose their leaves over winter, didn't flower and grew leaves instead which is why they are more  advanced leaves, or something like that.

Any comments on this type of growth would be interesting and appreciated as I know little about trees :)

I am a complete novice to gardening; I guess you could say I'm a real green bean in that respect. :) But it's been a desire of mine for quite some time to have a garden in my kitchen or on my balcony (until I get a house one day and can plant an out-door garden).

The thing that most concerns me about this though, is the availability of sunlight. I live in Finland and our autumns and winters get dark for long periods of time. I'm not in the arctic circle, but with heavy clouds in the sky, during the few hours of sunlight deep in the season, let's just say they sell a lot of candles here. I was hoping someone here could give me a bit of advise on what plants I could have in my kitchen and how to tackle the light issue. Are there certain kinds of plants that wouldn't suffer from not having much sunlight?(Likewise, our summers are very long without much night, so would I have to put plants in a cupboard overnight to give them a rest from the summer sun? Really, I'm a complete novice at this.)

I'd love to have some herbs, salad, and possibly some beans...and I'm open to trying absolutely anything else. I love plants, and I'd love to learn to nurture them.

Thanks in advance! <3

So my mother in law gave me two brussel sprout plants in late spring.

The leaves of the plants were much-loved by insects and rodents, but despite this the plants grew very large, and it looked like they were going to start forming the little sprouts along the trunk.

Only now they're just covered with dark green, smelly goo. To my untrained eye, it looks like the plants are decomposing.

Does anyone have an idea of what went wrong?

Oh my, don't these look like a delicious snack? I hope they taste as good as they look!



( A couple more pictures from around the garden... )

Anyone have directions or a good recipe for kimchi?

that 1000 grams of earthworms could digest 750grams of garbage in the soil?

This is something we should appreciate because earthworm droppings -- called castings when deposited atop the ground -- are rich in nitrogen, calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus, and these are all important nutrients for healthy, prospering ecosystems. In your own backyard you might be able to confirm that grass around earthworm burrows grows taller and greener than grass just inches away.

One important thing that earthworms do is to plow the soil by tunneling through it. Their tunnels provide the soil with passageways through which air and water can circulate, and that's important because soil microorganisms and plant roots need air and water just like we do. Without some kind of plowing, soil becomes compacted, air and water can't circulate in it, and plant roots can't penetrate it.

http://www.backyardnature.net/earthwrm.htm

This is what the kids and I picked in the garden this morning.

And everything pictured has been eatten!

Today's Havest. Still not enough tomatoes to make tomato sauce, but maybe next week. There were enough peppers, zuchini, eggplant, tomatoes and onions for 14 quarts of ratatouli.

I have to admit, I'm not much on recipes, I peeled the tomatoes, chopped everything else up coursely including garlic and onions, added salt pepper, and fresh basil and oregano from the garden, and canned it at 10psi for 60 minutes.

I have a sudden abundance of cucumbers from my garden. I only need one a week to serve my salad needs... aack!

Anyone care to share your favorite cucumber recipes?

(edit: other than pickles)


x-posted to cooking

A couple of community features I'd like to bring to everyone's attention:

1 - look for the tag labeled "my kitchen garden". A lot of what we post in a gardening community is for information-sharing, but sometimes we just want to show off the fruits of our labors! If you've got stories or pictures of your garden that you'd like to share, please throw the "my kitchen garden" tag onto your post.

2 - while in general we eschew product-placement in this comm, I think a member-recommended bookshelf is a fun and useful idea that I shall flagrantly steal from other communities. Please comment with your favorite on-topic titles (with authors) - and discussions are welcome! Once we have built up a good consensus, we can add the list as a community resource.

Thanks!

So I planted a lot of cilantro this spring with the intention of harvesting it for coriander. The instructions I've found are simple enough: harvest all the plants once the seeds start to turn brown, put them in a paper bag to dry, shake loose & collect the seeds, rub the seeds to break into halves, and then store in an air-tight container (to be ground for cooking purposes as needed, I suppose).

I also plan to venture into tomato-canning for the first time, since that's what most of my garden is dedicated to. I've been reading up on the process (and yes, nobleds, I located an expert-grandma for hands-on consultation, as well!). I feel like I'm at the threshold for a whole new level of home-food production. It's very exciting!

So what kinds of foods will you be storing, and by what methods? Do you have any tips or cautions for the new kitchen-gardner with an eye towards food storage?

Taste wise they were well worth waiting for.  The plums are Roma the size of ping pong balls, and the others are Marglobe, about half usual size.   Zone 6 US/  x posted

Today's harvest.  We've been eating peppers for weeks, and there are more than enough here for a batch of peppers in tomatoes.  On the other hand, the half ripe tomato in the center is the fifth tomato this season.  Not too humilitating, I had to buy canned tomatoes to can sauce.

Peppers and Eggplant are the perfect veggie plants for containers.  I grow them in 5 gallon black plastic pots in a mixture of compost, peat moss, green sand, rock phosphate, bone meal and a little vermiculite.


( closeups after the cut )

Can anyone tell me if chamomile leaves look anything like dill leaves?

I planted a packet of chamomile seeds on Mother's day. I thought they would look pretty and I wanted to try making chamomile tea. But, woe is me, nothing came up. Over time, weeds took over. I pulled only the weeds I could identify because I hoped maybe chamomile would eventually appear, and I didn't know quite what I was looking for. But still, nothing.

I ended up using some of the space for dill, and that is coming up quite nicely. But today I noticed that what I thought was a dill plant seemed somewhat different, and lacked the distinctive dill smell. Then it occurred to me that I hadn't actually planted dill where this plant was. I did an image search on google and it looks like maybe the two plants are similar, but it's hard to tell from pictures.

Might it be that I have a miracle chamomile plant?!?

Does anyone have any ideas as to how to deal with groundhogs?  For years, I've shared my gardens with rabbits, but groundhogs don't share!  So far this year, they (?, it?) has eaten all of my lettuce and spinach, the cucumber plants, and now it is going after the tomato plants.

There is no arguing that pole beans yield far more beans than bush beans, and I certainly couldn't imagine canning a years supply without them. Nonetheless, bush beans also have a place in the garden. For one thing they bear earlier, witness today's harvest, a good two weeks before their pole bean cousins. For another, they can be planted continuously whenever a spot in the garden opens up. I plant 6-8 beans to replace each cauliflower plant as they come out. For another, they are in and out quickly, so the beans I plant today will be out of the ground in time to transplant some kale or brussel sprouts.

I grew lettuce for the first time this year. I had a really great crop, but it is getting to the end of its usability - the leaves are tough and bitter, not appetizing for a salad-full. I knew that summer heat would do that, but we have had a very cool and damp June, so I wasn't sure how long I'd be able to get use out of my lettuce beds.

So I'm wondering, did the cool weather prolonged my crop's life span? Also, is there anything I can/could have done to keep it usable, or does lettuce just reach a point of "old age" where it's not usable anymore, no matter how mild the weather is?

And another question - one of the lettuce types I planted was iceberg lettuce. Forgive me if this sounds silly, but I'm used to a nice, tight ball of iceburg lettuce like you might find in the store. Why didn't my iceberg look like that?