I've always felt you could only 100% claim something was "homemade" if you helped grow the ingredients. Since I have lived in cities my entire life it is unrealistic to think that I could grow my own food. Plus, farming is hard work and I have a job already. That being said, last year I decided to try some things. I looked over the seeds available in the "Mega-Hardware store" and quickly decided that Basil, Cilantro and Roma Tomato would be my first experiments.
The blazing hot summers in Arizona present a real challenge so I figured I would start my garden in the fall and grow through the winter. On paper this seemed like a great idea. However, I live at a little bit of elevation on the outskirts of town and every few years we get a freeze up here. Last winter we got three. I lost my first batch of basil and tomato to the freeze last year, but I did learn some lessons. Lesson number 1, the plants don't like the cold either (duh!). Lesson number 2, you can't kill cilantro if you try. I have a friend or two that would happy to call cilantro a weed and not an herb, and this lesson made it harder to argue that point :-) After a few weeks I learned a third lesson, you can't just let cilantro grow indefinitely, it becomes coriander (and hideously ugly) after awhile. So now I have a container filled with coriander/cilantro seeds that maybe some day I'll use to grow more cilantro or grind to use as coriander. (Anyone have a good recipe with coriander in it? I don't)
However, this story isn't about cilantro. I did use some of it in Guacamole and Green Salsa within that two or three week sweet spot in it's growth period. What I really want to talk about is the Basil and Tomato. As I stated earlier, I had lost those "crops" to the harsh winter (okay, it hit 29, but that's harsh here!). Last spring the flower boxes I had been using started to spring little green signs of life. At first I assumed that the tree they sat under had it's way with them, but I was pleasantly wrong. (That's right, I'm admitting I was wrong, don't get used to it!)
I now have two full flower pots of Roma Tomatoes and a sense that in combination with that basil I will be eating caprese salad often in the not too distance future. I picked my first tomato from this seasons crops and although there are no others very close to being ready I was excited. The last time I tried this I did get 1 tomato, yep ONE. I think I have several dozen growing right now and I believe the little bit of winter we get here in Arizona has mostly passed, so I'm fairly optimistic that this little adventure will pan out. I'm sure I'll be blogging about all the amazing recipes I've found for my herbs and vegetables in the future, but for now anyways, I'm simply crossing "farm" off of my bucket list. I'm sure my mother will get a kick out my claiming that three flower boxes of plants is "farming" but hey, they're organic and locally grown, they up-sell that in the grocery store! :-)
The blazing hot summers in Arizona present a real challenge so I figured I would start my garden in the fall and grow through the winter. On paper this seemed like a great idea. However, I live at a little bit of elevation on the outskirts of town and every few years we get a freeze up here. Last winter we got three. I lost my first batch of basil and tomato to the freeze last year, but I did learn some lessons. Lesson number 1, the plants don't like the cold either (duh!). Lesson number 2, you can't kill cilantro if you try. I have a friend or two that would happy to call cilantro a weed and not an herb, and this lesson made it harder to argue that point :-) After a few weeks I learned a third lesson, you can't just let cilantro grow indefinitely, it becomes coriander (and hideously ugly) after awhile. So now I have a container filled with coriander/cilantro seeds that maybe some day I'll use to grow more cilantro or grind to use as coriander. (Anyone have a good recipe with coriander in it? I don't)
However, this story isn't about cilantro. I did use some of it in Guacamole and Green Salsa within that two or three week sweet spot in it's growth period. What I really want to talk about is the Basil and Tomato. As I stated earlier, I had lost those "crops" to the harsh winter (okay, it hit 29, but that's harsh here!). Last spring the flower boxes I had been using started to spring little green signs of life. At first I assumed that the tree they sat under had it's way with them, but I was pleasantly wrong. (That's right, I'm admitting I was wrong, don't get used to it!)
I now have two full flower pots of Roma Tomatoes and a sense that in combination with that basil I will be eating caprese salad often in the not too distance future. I picked my first tomato from this seasons crops and although there are no others very close to being ready I was excited. The last time I tried this I did get 1 tomato, yep ONE. I think I have several dozen growing right now and I believe the little bit of winter we get here in Arizona has mostly passed, so I'm fairly optimistic that this little adventure will pan out. I'm sure I'll be blogging about all the amazing recipes I've found for my herbs and vegetables in the future, but for now anyways, I'm simply crossing "farm" off of my bucket list. I'm sure my mother will get a kick out my claiming that three flower boxes of plants is "farming" but hey, they're organic and locally grown, they up-sell that in the grocery store! :-)
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