Wednesday, 28 October 2009
-
Daily Q: Do You Grow Your Own Food?
The locally grown food movement has become quite prominent as of late, and there's nothing more local than your own back yard. I don't currently grow any produce myself, but in the past I've had tomatoes and garlic in my backyard as well as several herbs. It's a hobby I'd like to get back into.
Do you grow your own food?
RecommendRelated Posts
Post a Comment
- Back to ireallylikefood's IReallyLikeFood Site!
- Note: your comment will appear in ireallylikefood's local time zone: GMT -05:00 (Eastern Standard - US, Canada)
Comments (24)
Yeah; my dad and I have a fairly sizable vegetable garden.
It is so satisfying to pick vegetables that you grew yourself. And they taste better, too.
Plus it makes your yard look prettier.
My parents have two gardens in our backyard. We've grown so many things each year over the past 5, 6 years:
bitter melon
tomato
opo squash
long squash
fuzzy melon
gourds (winter gourds I believe)
hot pepper (spicy little thing that put jalapeno to shame)
cilantro
scallion
about 10 different kinds of herbs, mint, basil, perilla, and ngo gai/eryngo are some I can recall
tayota (it's the spanish name since I have no idea what it's called in English)
lettuce
chive
rosemary
watercrest
long green beans (chopstick beans we call it)
chinese okra
edible amaranth
garland chrysanthemum
komatsuna (mustard leaves I think)
malabar spinach
snake gourds
yu choy
molokhiya
houttuynia cordata
edible luffa
Okay, I can't find any more English names (or at least any kind of name besides Vietnamese) for the rest of the vegetables we grow.
Man, my mom&dad really went all out! LOL
I tried. Everyone else had such delicious homegrown tomatoes, but ours were so sparse and puny--any hints? And the strawberries vanished--squirrel food!
Yes. I just moved into a house turned into two apartments, and we share a great backyard with our upstairs neighbor. This summer, we had cucumbers, tomatoes, and even some strawberries along with herbs!
When it gets cold out, I still to my windowsill herb garden :o)
@tigerdauphin@xanga - Holy crap, Thuy. Can I come live with you guys?
I've always lived in fairly urban/ high density suburban areas; so I've never had much land to grow food on -- one of my dreams is to one day live on a nice 40 acre plot out in the countryside where I can plant as many crops as I want, have a stable of horses, and have a pond I can aquaculture in. Yes, I'm a NYC kid living in Hawaii who wants to be a Cowboy and a Farmer, how weird is that.
I only grow a few vegetables and have a decent herb garden. I do have a lot of flowers though; lots of orchids :)
What I really want is a Kaffir Lime tree and a Yuzu tree, but I can't get one. =/
@chow - I'm always amazed at how much produce they crank out of the two little patches of dirt >_<. One's 3' x 8' and the other one is 5' x 10' (guesstimates). They both have overhanging mesh to one side for the plants to crawl on.
Right now we're inundated with tayota. Want some? LOL They're the Vietnamese ones with spikes on them =oD. I love love love bitter melon and can eat it raw. yum...
For some reason I've always pictured you with an abundantly overgrown garden full of produce. Chef that you are and all =oD.
my mom has her own garden. she grows tomatoes, chili peppers, green peppers, cabbage, green beans, onions, cilantro, mint leaves, pumpkins, etc...yeah it's a lot to name but even though she grows all that stuff, we still buy a lot of vegetables from the market as well.
@tigerdauphin@xanga - Oh is that all? I've got that space. You know, I was thinking of getting rid of some of the roses and starting up a vegetable garden again actually.
I know I know, for shame. I really should be growing my own vegetables =/
Space is limited here in NYC, but the community garden trend has caught on big time and a lot of people plant gardens on their rooftops. If coudl dedicate myself to it, it'd make a pleasant contrast to my neighbors' satellite dishes.
We have some vegetables, yeah.
i live in a little apartment with poor sunshine but i manage a little container garden. This year i grew tomatoes, garlic, lettuces, blueberries, and radishes, when i move later this year i am going to try and get a well exposed south facing balcony
@tigerdauphin@xanga - lol asian parents. Mine do the same thing and most those names are foreign to me since i known only the vietnamese names for them. With the addition a of chicken coop and a fish pond of course :/
most of our veggies and fruits are home grown :D
Hrm, we only grow herbs and tomatoes. Oh, we have a little lemon tree too.
@shunny@xanga - I've been trying to convince them to put in a little fish pond but they won't since it's a bit impractical: freezing in the winter, and the fish will be decorative, not actual "food."
But one day I'm just going to surprise them with it! See what happens LOL.
@chow - okay so I lied. I measured the darn things and they're a lot bigger than they look O_O
Our original one was about 9' x 22' and that was plenty for us. But since my parents are both farmers (rice field paddies) at heart, he added on so it's more like 9' x 31'
We always end up with too much, not eating it fast enough cuz they grow like weeds!
Then for some reason, which my mom never really understood either, my dad added another little garden (I think b/c he didn't like our neighbor since he did right across their view of our yard, therefore dividing it up a bit LOL) and this one is 7' x 19'
I think this might be why we have so much produce every summer. It's sickening sometimes! We end up giving away about 3/4 of what we get from the our gardens. And I get force feed greens during the summer. Almost, but not quite, kidding here.
Everything is grown in rotation too so that's why we have so many, even when we had a much smaller garden.
This year we grew
Summer squash
Cucumbers (which were bitter and gross)
Corn
Tomatoes
Peaches
Grapes
Next year we will be expanding the garden. I know we'll be adding peppers and onions.
I don't grow my own food (don't have my own backyard yet), but my brother's family does have a garden. One day, eventually, they want to get all their produce from their garden. They really enjoy taking care of it.
I have the proverbial BROWN thumb. I can't grow vegetables, so I stick with the peach trees and goats.
I grew tomatoes, orka, and jalapenos, but my new apartment doesn't get direct sun, so not more growing for me.
not currently but when we were little my father grew lots of vegetables. during the summer when they were ripe, there was no need to go to the store, we had it all. i miss it now... maybe i'll start next spring.. mmm.
It's hard to grow veggies in a forest- animals eat them all.
We managed to pull off a few tomatoes, lettuce, beans, and herbs this year...
But we always have a bumper crop of venison right from our backyard.
No, but like you..it's something i'd like to get into.
I wish I could! Living in NYC though, buying a house with a backyard garden large enough to feed my stomach is pretty expensive.... lol. But my mom and I do grow a few things in our backyard and in pots. We grow mints to put in pho (I don't know the correct name for it), zucchini, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, squash, watercress, bitter melon and this Chinese melon.. thing. We used to have a peach tree but the bees kept attacking us when we tried to harvest them.
We're now in the process of growing our grape vine for wine!! :)