Kitchen Scraps to Garden Treasure - Easy Plant Propagation

Starting plants from leftover scraps

Springtime and fellow gardeners are getting excited about planting seedlings. Seed starting is a key activity. This year I'm excited to be planting food scraps. Yes, there are a number of foods that you can grow from kitchen scraps. That's pretty great. The next best thing to buying local is not buying at all. Is this food recycling? It's nice to always have a home-grown supply of these items on my kitchen window sill or garden.  While it saves a little bit of money - it is also easy and fun! Kids that come over find it amazing.

To facilitate the process I use a plastic container from Costco apples. These little impressions are the perfect place to put the root end of celery, carrots, lettuce. Take a look at how this all works with examples of specific veggies. 

Here's my list herbs and veggies that I've (tried to) regrow from the scraps. Others listed at the bottom can be grown from seeds - but that's another story :)

Planning My Vegetable Garden

Home Grown Goodness! 

One of my favorite garden activities in the winter time is planning out the plantings for spring and summer. This year I'm getting more serious about the vegetable garden. That is because I'm eating lots more veggies this year :) and my neighbor cut down mature ash/elm trees which were along the property line and reducing the sun available to my garden.

Last year I broke my wrist in the spring so the vegetable garden never really got planted. It sat fallow all year. So this year it should be ready to burst forward with an abundance of produce!

There are many great resources for planning a vegetable garden. Advice for site selection, soil preparation, and more available. My task was selecting the plants and arranging them.

Container Gardening - Inspiration from Rick Bayless Garden, Chicago

Architecture: containers
adding height to the garden

In an earlier post I highlighted the urban agriculture and leisure areas in Chef Rick Bayless' farm/garden in downtown Chicago.  I was also very pleased to see all the containers used in the garden.

I've captured a few of my favorites here for your consideration and inspiration.  I use quite a few containers in my own garden and teach others on the subject. So I'm always on the look out for tips, examples, and motivation. 

One thing that I find interesting in this case is that many of the plantings seem to stay consistent over the years - as I compare photos from prior tours and blogs.  Hitting on something that works and sticking to it is not a bad thing at all! I'm still in trial and error state in many parts of my garden. 

Some interesting aspects of the use of containers:

Architectural elements along pathways and within/raised gardens. For example the raised pots in the photo just above right. We were told that the sun hits the top of the garden much more than the floor - hence the high sun items raised up to greet the day.   Another interesting use of containers was to add strong vertical structure to the porch area. These large containers create an effective screen from prying eyes looking into the house, beautiful colors, and vegetables too. The climbing vine is a spinach variety!  This photo also transitions well to my next point which is clustering more than one container together in one vignette. 

Urban Gardening / Farming - Tour of Rick Bayless Property, Chicago

In August I toured the Chicago urban farm and garden owned by Rick Bayless - chef and restaurateur. The garden features a mix of traditional beds, raised beds, containers and vertical garden space.  It hosts annuals (Tropical), herbs, vegetables, Citrus, fruit, succulents, and "farm" animals.

The garden was started over 15 years ago - as a hobby, but also as a demonstration of urban agriculture and to support organic greens and vegetables for his culinary needs. Since then it's grown to cover three city lots.  The vegetable growing space is over 1,000 square feet and includes indoor and "alternative growing spaces."  By alternative I'm referencing porch grow-box, vertical gardens, as well as indoor space utilizing grow lights.

Chicago Urban Garden (see the beehive)

At the start of the tour the guide and full-time gardener stated "don't try this at home" indicating that the garden has evolved overtime and is a business with nearly 6-8 part time

Urban Children's Garden Revisited - Harvest time

In spring I had the pleasure of touring an after-school programs urban garden - which was growing along the fence between two buildings. The photo at the right shows you the location of the garden along the fence.

The kids were so excited to be growing their own vegetables and herbs when I was here in the spring. I was skeptical that there would be produce at the end of the journey - I'm pleased to say they were so successful!

Take a look back at where they started in this blog in May 2014 - and see the results in August in the photos below. This is a wonderful example of maximizing small urban spaces as productive growing areas. I would have never thought that some of the vegetables would grow under these low light and small container conditions.

Urban Vegetable Gardening - Grow Your Own

What do you need to grow your own vegetables - space, soil, water, light. Sometimes that can be a challenge in the middle of a city. A few solutions are container gardening (see prior posts and links here) as then there are raised beds. If you have any trepidation about what may be in your soil or the composition of your soil - there are steps you can take to get in the right direction. These include "lasagna gardening", "raised bed gardening", and "vertical gardening."

Let's explore these last options - and I'll use photos taken June 2014 at the Garfield Park Conservatory and prior blogs to illustrate.  The outdoor Urban Demonstration Garden at the conservatory is a purposeful example of an Urban Vegetable Garden.

Panorama of Chicago's Garfield Park Conservatory, Urban Demonstration Garden June 2014

Children's Urban Gardening - Making do with small spaces

Urban Children's Herb & Vegetable Garden

I had the opportunity to visit Creative Little Minds, a bilingual day care on Chicago's Northside. I was pleasantly surprised to see how the owner, Gloria, is incorporating gardening into the regular activities for everyone. This is with very little space in a city block. Here's the integration of Urban Gardening, Community Gardening, Children's Gardening and education all in one.   

Maybe these are some best practices:
1) Select clear garden spot with easy access for kids.  There is no threat to other garden plants or outdoor furniture or breakable objects. I think the use of the fence and walkway on the side of the house (pictured right) is a great idea. Although I wondered if there was enough sun for mature plants. 

2) Plants, pots, and tools are all placed within easy reach and at their level. I can imagine that it is easy for kids to inspect their plant growth every day.  The planters on the fence are at multiple heights - based on each child's abilities.

Container Gardens - Growing Herbs

Grow Your Own Fresh Herbs - Container Gardening

More recently as I teach Container Garden classes I'm asked specifically about growing herbs.  In particular small urban patio gardens and families with small children seem to enjoy this activity. I am an avid consumer of fresh, home grown herbs! Photo of harvest of mint, dill, parsley! Herb container gardening is a great way for new gardeners to dig in. There is a great satisfaction in serving delights from your garden. Plus the fragrance from herbs is wonderful. There are many herbs that I always grow in container (aka mint!) This year I'm putting more herbs and veggies in containers to make it easier to access from my kitchen! Planning container gardens is one of the many tasks on my Spring to-do list for my cold climate garden. 

World's Best Botanic Gardens

I'm making my Botanic Garden bucket list - this article on Huffington Post caught my eye.
Here's a list of 10 great botanic gardens around the world.

Naturally I am THRILLED that the Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago, IL USA is on the list. I just adore this place --- and if you ever want to go, email me and I'm happy to arrange a behind the scenes tour for you!!!

The Gardens By The Bay - a new conservatory opening in Singapore looks simply amazing. From design to programs to just scale!

So many places to see. For now, I'm going back outside to toil in my own backyard (I sound like Dorothy from Wizard of Oz!)

Teresa Marie