Wk 4 + 5: Growing Micro Greens & Reusing Food Waste
Week 4: This week we planted microgreens! I had never known how nutritious and easy these little sprouts are. I thought they were just a trendy Whole Foods shopper thing. I’m really excited to embark on the process of having a garden and growing my own food. My grandmother and my mother have both grown food; looking back my grandmother’s garden was actually quite plentiful and diverse. However, this is something that has seemed inaccessible while living in an apartment. Finding plants that are resilient enough to grow in urban settings, out of pots, from scraps, and in nothing but water has reframed this initial assumption. Obviously, microgreens can’t be the center of my diet but they are a nice jumping-off point to start creating space and rituals for food production at home.
Week 5: I harvested and ate my microgreens with breakfast! Starting another batch.
Mini Update: About 24 hrs after harvesting and watering the seeds that remained I can already see little sprouts again.
Right now I am holding off on planting my seeds just because the week has been chaotic, but I went in my cupboard and look at that my onion is growing. This happened in a totally dark cupboard with no water or soil. I’m gonna get this bad boy some water and find a nice home to plant him in and see what happens. Updates to come!
This is my scrap back! It is where we store all the bits of vegetable scraps that come from cutting things like onion, garlic, sweet potatoes, carrot, mushrooms, etc. for dishes. This big ol’ bag is stored in the freezer and then we use it to make stock! This is something my partner put me on to when we started living together. It’s a great way to get the most out of food scraps and make some really tasty stock for other cooking endeavours.
Update 03/19/2022:
Microgreens
So my first micro green grow is captured in the first two rows of images. The third row shows what became of those micro greens. Before I harvested them I used them in a photoshoot for my kinetic energy project. Then we took a few and cooked them into a frittata! The rest are chilling in the fridge and being used slowly overtime. There were quite a few seeds that didn’t sprout in the first grow so I just re-watered my soil and let those sprout. I had three trays of micro greens: two small circular ones and one larger rectangle. All of them are on their second grow almost ready for harvest.
Food Waste
Our scrap bag got very full and we made chicken stock. It’s chillin’ in the freezer now and we’re gonna make Sopa de Tortilla later this week.
A few othering growing projects have also begun in the apartment.
This onion sprouted in the back of a cupboard. I brought it out into the light and the sprout transformed into this beautiful green. It’s definitely ready to go in some soil and water… I just need to go get a pot.
We also put some green onion scraps in a glass of water and they took off. The pictures below are both after a couple days. They also are definitely ready to be used and it go in some soil.
I’ve been really enjoying seeing all these areas of green and re-use around the home. I definitely feel a fondness towards all these projects and their development. However, things are not completely smooth. More than once have my micro greens become very sad and wilty from not being watered often enough. Even though I’ve been talking about planting my onion all week it’s still not in the soil and I noticed it has started to get droopy, same with the green onions. I really struggle with integrating plant care into my routine mainly because I don’t have a routine. I feel chaotic in a way that is unpleasant. Although all my plants are in central locations in the home (living room windowsill, kitchen, bedroom) I sometimes go days interact with these spaces so briefly or in such a rush that I don’t notice my plants. I’ve mentioned slow living being an interest of mine and it is moments when I notice my plants are wilty and the soil is bone dry that I really yearn to embrace that.
It’s actually taking care of plants and discussing gardening that gave me words for what I was yearning for. My partner is the type to get frustrated by technology easily whereas it takes a lot for me to get frustrated. In trying to explain to him that he needed to chill out when we couldn’t figure out why some device wasn’t working correctly right away I framed it around the garden we’ve been talking about starting. I said something to the affect of, “growing food isn’t about instant gratification. It takes time, energy, patience, and there’s definitely going to be a learning curve. If we’re talking about growing our own food, we’re talking about waiting, being patient, and letting things take their course. I think it would be could if you could apply some of that thinking to other areas and try not to get frustrated so easily.” Although it just came to me in the moment, I was finally putting words to a feeling I’ve been grappling with for a while. I want to slow down and I want the things and people around me to slow down too.
And a little fun addition. I was talking to my friend about this class and turns out she started making sourdough during lockdown. She gifted my partner and I a bit of sourdough starter!
