AvraShow
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
A Small Treat
There's probably nothing healthier to eat than something you pick from your garden. Whatever vital forces are in food sometimes diminish the longer the time since picked. Of course this doesn't apply to peaches or avocados or things that ripen after being picked, but for lettuce and carrots and peppers and squash and corn the sooner they are eaten from the time they were living on the plant the better their nutrition.
On my apartment deck I usually grow rosemary and parsley and chives. I even grew peppermint in a big planter once. But vegetables are not as convenient. Oh sure commercials show tomato plants grown in hanging baskets and I'm sure people grow strawberries in potted plants (but the few they would produce would be frustrating for me).
This year I bought some lettuce transplants and put them in potted containers on my deck. Lettuce has shallow roots so a container doesn't have to be deep to grow them. Also, you don't have to harvest the whole plant at one time -- you can take kitchen scissors and snip off the outer leaves allowing the inner ones to keep growing until they are ready to clip. That way, you have a few fresh leaves to add to any salad for an extended time period. That addition has to be good for you. My favorite non-lettuce green is arugula (also called rocket). That peppery taste in a sandwich or in a salad drives me wild.
I could grow these greens from seed, but that's a work intensive process, and to take advantage of the cool weather (many varieties of lettuce bolt or turn bitter with milky white sap in hot weather) I bought these lettuce transplants as soon as they were available in spring. So far so good. It's like a living micro greens salad mix. I'm trying to keep the plants wet enough to keep the leaves healthy and dry enough so the soil isn't soggy.
There's probably nothing healthier to eat than something you pick from your garden. Whatever vital forces are in food sometimes diminish the longer the time since picked. Of course this doesn't apply to peaches or avocados or things that ripen after being picked, but for lettuce and carrots and peppers and squash and corn the sooner they are eaten from the time they were living on the plant the better their nutrition.
On my apartment deck I usually grow rosemary and parsley and chives. I even grew peppermint in a big planter once. But vegetables are not as convenient. Oh sure commercials show tomato plants grown in hanging baskets and I'm sure people grow strawberries in potted plants (but the few they would produce would be frustrating for me).
This year I bought some lettuce transplants and put them in potted containers on my deck. Lettuce has shallow roots so a container doesn't have to be deep to grow them. Also, you don't have to harvest the whole plant at one time -- you can take kitchen scissors and snip off the outer leaves allowing the inner ones to keep growing until they are ready to clip. That way, you have a few fresh leaves to add to any salad for an extended time period. That addition has to be good for you. My favorite non-lettuce green is arugula (also called rocket). That peppery taste in a sandwich or in a salad drives me wild.
I could grow these greens from seed, but that's a work intensive process, and to take advantage of the cool weather (many varieties of lettuce bolt or turn bitter with milky white sap in hot weather) I bought these lettuce transplants as soon as they were available in spring. So far so good. It's like a living micro greens salad mix. I'm trying to keep the plants wet enough to keep the leaves healthy and dry enough so the soil isn't soggy.
