A new direction

My new favorite thing is gardening. Which I possibly enjoy more than video.

I grew up literally next to a large vegetable & flower garden, but I didn’t try it for myself until 2 months ago. You’d think that coming from a place where everyone has their own vegetable garden I’d be well-trained for it, but truth is, I didn’t like the idea much until recently (mostly after my husband started following healthier diet last March). The feeling of seeing something growing day by day is beautiful: the plants almost feel like children.

The idea

I started with a pot of parsley, but I now I have also planted tomatoes, zucchinis, mix of salads, radishes, basil, oregano, spearmint, and bell peppers. I’m also expecting in the mail some celery seeds (not the Utah variety found in the US, but one that grows and looks like parsley, same as the one I grew up with), and runner beans (“μπαρμπούνια για φασολάκια). I’m also planning on growing thyme, marjoram, sage, garlic chives, and possibly mache & a small rosemary bush (that my JBQ seems to be fond of). These plants really don’t need much work: possibly about 5 minutes a day, to water them. And since our apartment doesn’t have much sun, 5 minutes every 2-3 days feels more accurate.

I have a rule of thumb. Basically, I’m growing everything that I always need a little bit of, but I can only buy in big quantities here in California, costing me a lot of money, and ending up with half the product in the garbage. Fresh herbs well-fit in that category. I usually need a tiny bit of basil or salad for a dish, but I have to buy big quantities, since these are usually sold in bunches, and then we end up throwing away half of it, since it would usually go bad within a few days in the fridge. Bell peppers also fit in this category, since they cost about $1 each, here in the Bay Area. Eggplants don’t fit in this category, since they take their sweet time to grow, and they can be bought individually at super markets anyways, at reasonable prices. So my goal is to eliminate costs, by growing by myself small portions of what I need.

Another aspect is that some of the plants I want to grow can not be found easily in the US. For example mache, green amaranth, Amsterdam celery, fresh “flat” runner green beans, are all super-rare (or too expensive).

The “fresh” and “organic” aspect in all this is secondary for me, since our local market actually has pretty fresh vegetables. Freshness and ripeness is more important for bigger plants, like tomatoes, I guess.

I have already harvested salads, basil, parsley and spearmint for my daily cooking, but I’m expecting that my radishes will be ready too in 15 days or so. I’m mostly excited about the zucchinis, although so far only 1 seems healthy, the rest 2 seem problematic, and the 4th one didn’t sprout out at all. When (and if) the zucchinis grow up, we will probably have a difficult time walking around our patio, as they spread a lot (and this year we also bought an outdoors table & chairs, limiting our patio space even more).

Vleeta, aka Green Amaranth

The last two big pots I want to plant this year is that of green amaranth (viridis variety, aka “βλήτα”/vleeta). This is one of the most underrated plants ever. They can only be found in some Chinese super-markets in the US & Canada, but only in their red, non-wild, variety (I grew up with the green variety). The Green Amaranth is basically wild weed. It grows up in Greece where you don’t want it to grow, often pissing off my mom for “choking” her plants.

In Greece, we eat the amaranth alone, or with pieces of zucchini and potatoes, well-washed, and then all boiled for 30-40 minutes, and then strained. Then, we put some olive oil and lemon on them (treating them like a cooked salad), and we serve it with fried fish. They taste great! They’re much sweeter than the winter wild weeds (“άγρια χόρτα”) — even my husband noticed (when my mom served winter wild weeds to JBQ a few years ago, he hated them)! Even if amaranth is wild weed, its sweeter taste is such a very popular delicacy in Greece, that even fish restaurants there serve it to tourists. I’ve read a number of blogs with their writers wondering what kind of vegetable that was in their summer vacations (most of them thought that it was spinach or chard). Here are pictures of how it looks like cooked, and uncooked.

So I’m planning on growing it on two long pots, allowing me for harvesting it until the end of September, once about every 1-2 weeks. Since it’s a weed, it only needs 30 days from planting time to its first harvest; it grows really fast. In the south Bay Area climate should be good to allow harvest from April to October, and you can allow 1-2 roots to grow seeds for next year’s planting (seeds are also edible btw, but an even more rare delicacy). And I should not forget to mention that amaranth is very nutritional (the wild variety I’m interested in is more fiber-y than the tested variety linked, I’m sure).

Join me

If you have a patio/balcony I highly suggest you try planting something too. It’s really easy, it takes no time, and it will make you feel accomplished (much more than trying to beat a high score on a computer game). I can’t offer inside info yet as to how you would feel if a sickness kills your plants, since I’m new to this too, but that would be something to expect too. Regardless, it’s really worth the effort. Eating something you grew, gives you a new outlook about the food you consume, and the nature around you.