Grow your own

Lately I've been yearning for a house with a large yard and a garden. I have a few potted plants on my porch, but I cant plant anything in the ground here, and don't really have the room anyway. Oh, also I don't really have a green thumb. Not like my mom does, she's awesome... But I digress.

So I've been reading about foods that you can grow inside from scraps, which sounds right up my alley. You don't have to buy anything extra, and most of them claim to be easy. So far I have started Avocados and Garlic.

The avocados take some patience, I read that they take 4-6 weeks to sprout and then like 3 months before  you can plant them. Oh, and at least 7 years before your tree will flower and bear fruit. But you start them just like the potato projects from when you were a kid. Take the pit, stab 4 toothpicks into it and suspend over a glass or jar and keep watered. I guess I'll update you in 4-6 weeks :)

As for the garlic, you treat it like any other bulb. Here's a trick I like, I used to fill the bottoms of my pots with rocks or whatever I had handy to allow drainage without dirt falling out through the hole in the bottom. A coffee filter will keep all your dirt inside but allow excess water to escape. Dirt isn't that different from coffee grounds in some respects :)

After you add some soil to your pot, separate a couple cloves of garlic from a head (I hear the larger cloves grow larger plants). Stick the cloves flat side down into the dirt.

 

 

 Make sure to leave enough space between, picture a whole head of garlic while you're planting. I probably didn't :( I might have to transplant one of these into a different pot...

 



One thing that I learned from my green-thumbed Mommy, bulbs are weird. They need a season of cold before they can grow. I guess they have to be out in the cold so that when it gets warm they recognize that it's Spring and time to sprout. So my garlic has been relegated to the porch for a few weeks, before I bring it inside where it is warm(er) and trick it into thinking Spring has Sprung.

Garlic needs some attention after it has started to sprout. You have to pinch off the part that would grow into a flower so the plant can put all its effort into growing large bulbs. More about that in a few weeks when (hopefully) I have sprouts.

So, I suppose I'm in a holding pattern now until it's really Spring. Hopefully by then I'll still be as excited about growing my own food. Fresh herbs for sure, I have lots of plans for those, as soon as I can get my hands on some...