Covid-19 Victory Garden

Staying home + minimizing trips to the grocery = start a garden

The best way to start gardening is to grow from your compost pile (or trash can, if you're not composting yet). Pull out all the vegetable scraps you've been throwing away--you can start a garden with that!

In fact, many vegetables and herbs can regrow in water, at least for a few rounds, so if you're home without dirt just find an empty container and get started. We've eaten leeks, green onion, basil, mint, etc for weeks from a scrap that we stuck in a cup of water. Eventually they will run out of energy (unless you add fertilizer) but by then you might be ready to transplant outside or to a pot.

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If you eat sweet potatoes, enjoy how easily you can sprout them on a windowsill. We cut off both ends and stick each in water, using toothpicks to keep about 1/3 of the chunk out of the water. First leaves will grow up, then roots will grow down. Keep topping up the water.
In the photo on the right, check out the tall leaves on chunks we started two weeks ago. Our newest starts will look like that soon.

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We've had sweet potatoes growing like this all winter. Eventually they suffer since we're not adding any fertilizer (see the yellowing leaves below). You can move them to dirt (inside or outside, weather permitting) and they'll keep producing leaves, and eventually grow more tubers. Trim and eat the leaves - in warm weather you will get a salad a day from your sweet potato plants, and then a fall tuber harvest, too.