Some who have read my posts for a while, know we've had this smart garden in our kitchen for a few months now. The garden initially came with a starter pack of plants and herbs, of which we had tomatoes, lettuce, basil.
Being big lettuce fans, the lettuce supply ran out faster than toilet paper in your local supermarket. We used it on our fried egg sandwiches, hamburgers and sometimes even salads. Damn, lettuce, wish you'd stayed with us longer.
Then there's basil, of which I didn't really think anything initially and even contemplated getting rid of the basil plants and replacing them with something more favorable. Oh boy, I've never been so wrong in my entire life. I slowly started using basil in recipes and I will never look back - basil now being one of my favorite herbs. Pastas, salads, omelettes, you name it.
And the minitomatoes. Useless and waste of space, better get some from the grocery store. With a slow harvest of 5-6 minuscule tomats per face, this plant has not justified itself taking soem much space and care.
We've replaced the lettuce with rucola (arugula), parsley and coriander. Unfortunately, no-one really likes coriander except my mom, so coriander got the boot to be replaced by Brassica juncea (leaf mustard), of which we have not yet formulated an opinion. As you can see the plant is young (third from the left), so time will tell.
But with lots and lots of homecooking, the garden is growing thin. Even with the original basil still producing, we've had to purchase basil from the grocery store as well, to cover our basil needs. Parsley is scarce as well, as it gets used every morning on our sandwiches and omelettes.
So we decided to try growing green onions. Armed with nothing but lack of knowledge, we just put some onions onto a paper egg cartridge and watered them every second day or so. Alas, after a week and few days, it was clear that these onions would not grow. 3 got the boot as they were getting kind of soft and had that weird rotten feeling about them, 3 got salvaged.
So we tried another method. Placing these onions and some new ones into shot glasses and eggholders and filling them halfway with water. Viola! After a week, it was clear that we were onto something. Some of the onions were growing roots and in a day or two more, one of the onions started yielding green spikes.
Here you can see the closer look at our champ, sitting my old Jagermeister shot glass like noone's business. Go ahead champ, you've earned the glass!
Alas, as it turned out at the same time, these eggholders are not suitable at all. While the onions in the shotglasses were thriving, the ones in the eggholders had started rotting and emanating a smell I'd better not describe. Luckily, you could smell it only if you picked the onion out from the holder, but I immediately got rid of those poor suckers.
The reason? These eggholders don't have space for the onion to spread it's roots and drink water. Water being the source of all life on earth and all that.
See how the onion in the transparent glass has grown roots? That's a healthy onion:
So shotglasses it is. By the time of writing this post, out of the three surviving onions, the second one has started giving a nice harvest as well. I have already cut a few straws from the first onion and used it on an omelette - nothing beats homegrown stuff.
There's still much for me to learn about this, but living in an apartment, a kitchen window garden does really make a difference and has definitely given me a taste for some new things. I now use more herbs and spiced in foods, I purposely seek out new healthy recipes. And I definitely value what we have grown ourselves.