Wow, I need a garden icon
Apr. 29th, 2010 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neadodsWow, I totally did not expect that response to the poll. It may tip again overnight, but for the surprising majority, I'll add this much:
I do not till the land. Tilling the land means sweat, sand, bugs, and exposure to poison ivy. I'm doing a variation on square-foot gardening in which I went down to the local gardening center and bought a bunch of containers that are roughly 1 cubic foot and filled them with a 50/50 mix of Miracle-gro moisture control soil and organic potting mix. (It is new dirt every year - I dump the old stuff in the garden where it looks like it might like some extra soil, but I also break it up and take out all the worms to drop in the new soil. Worms R Good.)
Although there is a little bit of yard that's literally right outside the kitchen door, it doesn't get any sun, so the plants are lined up under the picture window in my bedroom. Good southwestern exposure and (probably key in the rosemary's survival) getting some residual heat and shelter from the house.
I need to get some more parsley and dill seeds - I go through that stuff like wildfire, so this year I have vague ideas of planting in shifts if I can find the time - and other than that, there's a thornless blackberry that I picked up a year or so ago that has decided it will finally flower and then what I'm getting at the farmer's market. In April most of the people there are selling more plants than produce, and I'm not arguing. Not when I can buy a 4-pack of baby lettuce for $2.50 (up 50 cents from last year) and hand-sized heirloom tomato plants for $2-3.
And it looks like the variegated mint has come back, although I'm a bit suspicious about that pot. It was being invaded last year. Although I prefer peppermint, I'm trying not to buy a lot of stuff for the garden; if I have a burning need for fresh mint, there's some spearmint running wild in the area around the kitchen.
Unfortunately for my wallet, there's a used-cookbook salesman at the Thursday farmer's market as well. Doomed. I'm doomed. Especially as I'm trying to significantly up the veggie side of my diet. (In two weeks, there will be three operating farmer's markets in 7 miles of the house, with mostly reasonable prices and the ability to choose my portions to buy. There's really no excuse for my not going mostly cook-for-myself vegetarian until they shut down in November.) I'm still surprised at the number of cookbooks that call for convenience foods, though. Feh. The easiest and fastest way for me to drop calories and consumption of sodium and HFCS is to simply cut out as much processed food as possible. When I walk in from the market with a handful of tomatoes, mushrooms, and peppers, the last thing I need to see is "add 2 tablespoons of tomato paste."
I do not till the land. Tilling the land means sweat, sand, bugs, and exposure to poison ivy. I'm doing a variation on square-foot gardening in which I went down to the local gardening center and bought a bunch of containers that are roughly 1 cubic foot and filled them with a 50/50 mix of Miracle-gro moisture control soil and organic potting mix. (It is new dirt every year - I dump the old stuff in the garden where it looks like it might like some extra soil, but I also break it up and take out all the worms to drop in the new soil. Worms R Good.)
Although there is a little bit of yard that's literally right outside the kitchen door, it doesn't get any sun, so the plants are lined up under the picture window in my bedroom. Good southwestern exposure and (probably key in the rosemary's survival) getting some residual heat and shelter from the house.
I need to get some more parsley and dill seeds - I go through that stuff like wildfire, so this year I have vague ideas of planting in shifts if I can find the time - and other than that, there's a thornless blackberry that I picked up a year or so ago that has decided it will finally flower and then what I'm getting at the farmer's market. In April most of the people there are selling more plants than produce, and I'm not arguing. Not when I can buy a 4-pack of baby lettuce for $2.50 (up 50 cents from last year) and hand-sized heirloom tomato plants for $2-3.
And it looks like the variegated mint has come back, although I'm a bit suspicious about that pot. It was being invaded last year. Although I prefer peppermint, I'm trying not to buy a lot of stuff for the garden; if I have a burning need for fresh mint, there's some spearmint running wild in the area around the kitchen.
Unfortunately for my wallet, there's a used-cookbook salesman at the Thursday farmer's market as well. Doomed. I'm doomed. Especially as I'm trying to significantly up the veggie side of my diet. (In two weeks, there will be three operating farmer's markets in 7 miles of the house, with mostly reasonable prices and the ability to choose my portions to buy. There's really no excuse for my not going mostly cook-for-myself vegetarian until they shut down in November.) I'm still surprised at the number of cookbooks that call for convenience foods, though. Feh. The easiest and fastest way for me to drop calories and consumption of sodium and HFCS is to simply cut out as much processed food as possible. When I walk in from the market with a handful of tomatoes, mushrooms, and peppers, the last thing I need to see is "add 2 tablespoons of tomato paste."
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-30 03:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-30 10:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-30 11:40 am (UTC)Parsley: is a cut-and-come again kind of herb. Mowing it often is okay, as long as you leave some stems it'll come back. You just have to plant MORE of it for your use.
Tomato paste: is not necessarily a convenience food. You *can* make your own, you know. Truly not a convenience, but once made, will keep well.
Yay for gardening!
no subject
Date: 2010-04-30 02:15 pm (UTC)I still think, though, that they're using the tomato paste as a form of thickener more than anything.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-30 12:29 pm (UTC)Amen. Most of the food in America today is not food. I figured that out when I had to start reading labels for food allergies ten years ago. It's appalling what most of us put in our bodies every day.
Propylene glycol is not food; it's antifreeze.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-30 02:19 pm (UTC)But I really need to not be at the mercy of the stores for some stuff, like tomato soup. There is no reason why I can't learn to make a decent tomato soup.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-30 04:54 pm (UTC)http://rhiannon.dreamhost.com/lj/icons/others/summer_icon.jpg
The paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo have fascinated me since I ran into them in college (because of the influence of a specific teacher, I got sucked into the art history side of history more than I expected). The whacked-out paintings look like something just barely pre-Dali, but he actually painted in the court of Charles V's brother Rudolph II, so he was solidly late Renaissance. A lady in Renaissance dress made of vegetables sounded like it might be up your alley. ;)
no subject
Date: 2010-04-30 11:17 pm (UTC)Yes! Although the reality is more like a half bug-eaten tomato, usually....