Tuesday, June 20, 2017

WE HAVE BABIES! (Potatoes, that is.)

I started my early adulthood thinking I had a black thumb. All of my plants never lasted more than a few months. Then I realized I was always buying annuals. :)

A few years ago, I bought a cherry tomato starter plant at the Vashon Island farmer's market, and it grew rapidly taller, and grew beautiful little super sweet cherry tomatoes (in fact, the type was "Sweet Million"), and it renewed my faith that I might be able to not kill a plant.

Fast forward to this year, and I'm still not an amazing gardener, but after finding some sprouted potatoes in my pantry, I decided to try my hand at growing potatoes.

First, I found a YouTube video to give me some basic pointers, and I put the sprouted potatoes in some planters. The smaller planter ended up in my windowsill and sprouted quickly with lush green leaves. The larger planter had to stay outside and got a little slower start due to the cold.

Last month, the Seattle area finally started thinking about having Spring/Summer, and it was time to transplant the planters into the garden, because I didn't feel like my planters were quite large enough.

Well, the plants that started outdoors are still growing, and the leaves look green and healthy. The plants that started indoors didn't transplant as well. The leaves started yellowing, then wilting, and then dying altogether. YouTube tells me this means the potatoes are "done", but I was pretty sure this was a failed batch, since the plants died so quickly after transplant.

Tonight, I decided to play in the dirt to see if there was anything there, and lo and behold - I found over a dozen baby potatoes!!


Here's another shot with my hand for scale. Some are like small marbles, while others are almost new potato sized. Keep in mind that the parents(?) were regular russets, so even the larger ones are pretty small. I cooked one up and sure enough, it tastes like a potato. I can only imagine that the other plant, which will have more growing time, will result in larger more flavorful potatoes.


Overall, I'm pretty excited that I successfully grew something new, with very little effort. As you can see, I had no controls in place - some were started inside, some were started outside, I transplanted halfway through because I didn't have large enough containers. I watered them when I remembered to, but took a lot of short vacations and weekends away... Seattle has been temperamental weather wise, and ultimately, there have been few sunny days. Seems that potatoes are pretty easygoing. If I can do it, anyone can!

Monday, June 19, 2017

Zero Waste on Etsy, Part 3: Produce Bags

One area that I always feel guilty about getting disposable bags is the produce aisle. At least with regular grocery bags with handles, I find a number of reuses for them, but the produce bags are just so flimsy. For a single fruit or vegetable, I've started just skipping the bags altogether, but when you have a handful of lemons or loose mushrooms, it's still nice to have a way to carry them.

The good news is tons of makers are creating reusable produce bags. Check out this awesome mesh drawstring bag:


The mesh is so light that you don't need to worry about adding extra weight to the scale, and you can still easily see the contents and the number on the sticker.

I got this one as a part of a set of 12 from Love For Earth on Etsy. At $23.75, they are just under $2 a piece. They come in their own bag, so you can easily just grab the whole bundle. I have this pouch sitting inside one of my regular reusable shopping bags for a quick grab-and-go.


With the different sizes and colors of drawstrings, you are sure to have a bag that works for everything and your own organizational system. 


While shopping on Love For Earth's page, I also learned about the tag "teamecoetsy" (Team Eco Etsy). Simply enter this tag in the search bar when shopping on Etsy for products and makers with the theme of reduce, reuse, and recycle.


Friday, June 16, 2017

It's Alive!

Hi lovelies,

So I've been pretty busy adulting the last few weeks: stretched thin at work, buying new carpet for our house, etc. What this means is that I neglected some basil that I had bought for meal prep.

I was reading some tips about keeping ypur cut herbs longer, and the tip for basil was to put it in a cup of water in the windowsill vs. keeping it in your fridge. So there it was in the windowsill, in a cup of water, for a couple weeks. Every odd once in a while, I'd top off the water, but I never did get around to my recipe.

I kindof assumed it would just die and go to waste, but to my surprise, I checked on it today, and IT HAD GROWN ROOTS!

Now, mind you, this was not one of those fancy "living herbs" with the rootball still intact. No, this was just plain cut basil. Who knew that it could regrow roots from essentially, a leaf? Is this the earthworm of plants, that can regenerate after being cut in half?


So, after the surprise wore off, I decided to plant my new basil plant in dirt, and enjoy my accidental herb garden. Check out that growth on the top couple inches - it looks like I'll have many more basil leaves to come.

I rarely buy fresh herbs, in part because of how expensive they are and I rarely need the whole package during its normal shelf life. Now that I have a plant that I can trim leaves as I need them, I'll be enjoying fresh herbs more often and saving about $4 per recipe.  Cheers to a happy discovery!