Growing Kitchen Scraps

Testing to see if the mushroom stalk will grow tiny mushroom babies.

Growing Indoor Kitchen Scraps

Why not take composting to a new level? Instead of throwing out your scraps into the compost bin, how about trying to grow new crops from the bits you have left over after cooking. There are a lot of vegetables to try. Anything with a bit of root will do for a start such as carrots or parsnips; these will set out new shoots from the central crown of the cut top when left is a saucer of water with some tissue in it. It’s a great way to get children involved in both seeing how things grow, and getting them active in the kitchen.

In the growing season it’s also been proved that if you put the cut tops of cut vegetables like carrots around the actual crop in the vegetable patch, it distracts the carrot fly away from the carrots you will be harvesting later in the season. Some sceptics do say that doing this might attract the pests in the first place, they might have a point.

Here are some suggestions for growing on the windowsill:

Spring onions (Scallions)

Take the left over white roots and place them in a container with a small amount of water in it. Within no time new sprouts will come us. Change the water once a week to stop it smelling.

Onions

Use the root bit that’s cut off when prepping. Place in a saucer or put into pot with some soil in it.

Lemon grass

Lemongrass is great for juicers. They grow the same as grass so cut them when about 6-12 inches tall with scissors. They should just keep coming back.

Lettuce, Celery and Cabbage

Use the crown pieces after cutting. They can also be placed in water or into moist soil.

Ginger

Interestingly different. The ginger root will sprout easily when put in contact with soil. Just pull it from the ground, trim a bit off then place it back into the soil again.

Potatoes

Pick either a small full potato or cut a big one up so that each piece has an eye (growing point) These will grow very easily in soil.  You might see just how desperate potatoes are to sprout when you leave them in the cupboard for too long, so I don’t think they will be too demanding to grow. Sweet potatoes will be grown in the same way.

Garlic

One clove will produce a new bulb eventually but if you just want a bit of green garlic trimming then cut the new growth off as it appears to garnish your salads.

Mushrooms

Mushroom make for an interesting growing project.  There are spores you can get that just sprinkle onto the soil surface before leaving in a dark place. You can get these in most garden centres now.  The way I am experimenting is by cutting off the stalk then pushing it into moist compost. Apparently (I don’t know this for sure yet as mine has only just gone in) the stalk will produce little baby mushrooms which can be harvested. I’ll keep you posted.

Pineapple

Cut the tops from the fruit and trim it of the moist flesh. Place the top in a bit of soil and eventually it will send up ne shoots from the crown.

Avocados

The large seed in an avocado can be spiked with three cocktail sticks and placed on a glass just above the water.  It will send roots to look for the moisture. It’s a great one for kids to take an interest in.

Sprouting seeds

As we are on the subject of growing on windowsills, don’t forget the sprouting seeds. Edible ones such as alfalfa, lentils, mung beans and chic peas are very widely used.  The list is pretty long of seeds that we can grow to eat too. I haven’t tried a lot of these, but I might make an effort to grow some over the following months to see how they do.   Some are more common that others!

Choose from: adzuki bean, almond, amaranth, annatto seed, anise seed, arugula, barley, basil, navy bean, pinto bean, lima bean, broccoli, buckwheat, cabbage, canola seed, caragana, cauliflower, celery, chia seed (mint family), chickpeas, chives, cilantro (coriander), clover, cress, dill, fennel, fenugreek, flax seed, garlic, hemp seed, kale, kamut, kat (a type of grass seed), leek, pearl millet, mizuna (Japanese greens), mustard, oats, onion, black-eyed peas, green peas, pigeon peas, snow peas, peanut, psyllium (husk fibre from the plantago plant), (pumpkin seeds),  quinoa, radish, rye, sesame, soybean, spelt, sunflower, tatsoi (spinach mustard), triticale (wheat and rye hybrid), watercress, and wheat berries.

Plants with Pain Relieving Properties

The “Healthy Bodies Healthy Minds Initiative “ offers edible fresh food to anyone who wants to pick it!

A recent article about choosing different food colours for health and for influencing moods certainly got imaginations flowing. I have had a lot of good comments about the benefits of “Eating the Rainbow” and not just sticking to mono colours. One interesting comment I heard was about growing plants that contain pain killing properties. Multinational pharmaceutical companies would probably prefer that we didn’t know anything about such matters as their profits might take a bit of a nosedive. 

We have been using medicinal plants for thousands of years though and there are a lot we can use safely, which might save us a trip to the chemists. There are some instances where we might need something over the counter.  I know when I get toothache it can take over your whole life, as my mother used to say “Any pain above the neck it all consuming”  so cloves don’t always do the trick and something prescribed is more urgent. It is great to have the choice of both though.

Plants with Pain Relieving Properties

There are hundreds of common herbs, flowers, berries and plants that serve all kinds of important medicinal and health purposes. They are used as:  anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, insect repellent, antiseptic, expectorant, antibacterial, detoxification, fever reduction, antihistamine and pain relief.  It’s what we used before the multinational pharmaceutical companies took over!

• Hemp ( Marijuana) was widely used before it was criminalised to treat depression and anxiety and to reduced blood pressure, pain alleviation and glaucoma treatment.
• The Californian poppy is an effective nervine (anxiety reliever)
• Ginger alleviates cramps, migraines and headaches.
• Turmeric has lots of virtues including being a COX-2 selective inhibitor, which is a form of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug.
• Red seaweed is said to ease pain.  The deep oceanic flora contains all the minerals the body needs for cellular rejuvenation
• White willow bark can be taken as a supplement or brewed into a tea to alleviate pain and reduce inflammation.
• Devil's claw and stinging nettle are herbs that act as analgesics to help relieve pain, particularly osteoarthritis pain.
• Boswellia (arnica) , is a herb often used in topical products to reduce muscle and joint pain
• Capsaicin is another natural pain killer that is extracted from chili peppers.
• Diluted eucalyptus oil or lavender are often used as natural pain killers in aromatherapy.

Usual disclaimer . Patients with chronic or severe pain should talk to their doctors about their conditions before using natural pain killers.

Planting food in urban spaces

Edible planting in urban spaces is catching on around cities and towns. Instead of putting bedding plants or shrubs in containers, some places are now seeing attractive vegetables and herbs being grown.  Instead of staring aimlessly at your phone as you wait in the bus station for the number 15 you can help yourself to some salad leaves and a carrot from a planter.  The idea could catch on I hope.  Any urban place could be used to grow all sorts.  Pam Warhurst who co-founded Incredible Edible has helped to transform her home town of Todmorden in Yorkshire from a tradition market town into an area full of fruit, flowers and vegetables by what she calls “Propaganda Gardening”  The railway station, health centre, police station and people’s front gardens have all been transformed into lush edible landscapes. 

Gareth Austin has done something similar on a smaller scale. The Project 'Healthy Bodies Healthy Minds' saw the installation of 15 mixed herb planters at the front door of the Tower Building in Strand Rd.  The herb planters are for both the catering students to become more familiar with the source of fresh produce and also for all students to pick and enjoy. 

Community Garden Network of Ireland meeting in the City of (Horti) Culture!

Gareth is also arranging the next meeting of the Community Garden Network of (All) Ireland  which will be held in Derry/Londonderry on the 9th of March. The meeting will take place in The Playtrail from 12-2pm and then a series of tours will be offered to participants in the afternoon. From 2-3 there will be a guided tour of the Leafair Community Garden and from 3-4 a tour of the Fountain Community Garden - these two gardens recently won a second place in the All-Ireland Pride of Place awards , followed by a tour of the playtrail facility.

YouthAction NI will give a presentation on how best community gardens can engage with young people. This meeting is free to attend and all are welcome, and to allow for numbers please book your place by going to Gareth’s website garethaustin.com. Together we can make this a real cross border initiative.

Turning dog waste into Enegry

 Park Spark in action

It might not be a good idea to read this week’s gardening article if you are eating your mid morning chocolate biscuit and sipping on a cuppa. The reason for this is that I am touching on the subject of dog poo. This particular issue comes about quite regularly, especially when we don’t have any heavy rain for a long period to wash the stuff away from the paths. 

Father Hegarty’s Rock

There was a bit of a campaign about the shore path near Father Hegarty’s Rock where locals were venting their displeasure at having to keep a constant eye on the ground and dart from one side of the path to another to avoid big lumps of the stuff. Some folk suggested covert cameras and naming and shaming the offenders who allow their dogs to foul the paths without clearing up after their pets.  This would mean either CCTV being installed or a member of the camera club hiding in the undergrowth for hours or even days on end until they catch one of the animals in the act. They would then have to run pretty fast to get away with the photographic evidence and present it to the council.  I can’t see either of them working or being implemented so it will most likely have to be some form of ‘educational programme’ to get dog owners who don’t see this as a problem to repent the error of their ways.  I don’t really see that working either.  There could be a solution though and as daft as it may seem the poo could be used to generate electricity to light up the path by means of street lamps.

Turning Dog Waste into Renewable Energy

Most of us dog owners will pick up the mess with either a specially designed poopa scoopa but more likely you will be like me and use a plastic carrier bag.  This has then either got to be carried to the nearest dog bin, which isn’t always handy, or carried around until you get home. It sounds yukkie but it’s something we get used to. Nothing useful happens to the poo though when it’s put in the bin.

What we could use is an idea from artist Matthew Mazzotta who suggested introducing small digesters into public parks to collect dog waste and transform it into methane, which in turn could produce electricity. The idea called Park Spark is simple, put the poo in the digester, turn a handle to mix it with water which releases the microbes gasses and provide the nearest lamppost with fuel, and earns the local area carbon credits.

It needn’t end there either, cow manure in The Netherlands, has been used to heat water to boil tea at a site of communal tea drinking. There was a time when the Nightsoil men would come to your house and collect the solid and liquid waste; in cities they would take this to local farms for spreading, maybe that would be an idea to reinstate that service. I wouldn’t be in the queue for the job though. That’s me finished about poo so you can get back to the biscuits now.