If you read this blog often, you know that we tend to grow some things that some might consider strange. Even for us they can be a bit abnormal, but as we try to become more self-sufficient and look towards a future where food costs just continue to rise, we find ourselves focusing on growing more and more interesting things.

For example, we’re now trying to grow ginger root. We were in an Asia store the other day and saw a few pieces there which were already starting to sprout a bit. So we took a piece home and looked it up on the internet. Put two-thirds of a 2-inch or more section of root into water and wait until it starts to root. Simple enough.

If you can see the little green arrow on the pic at the bottom, that is where a nice strong root is sprouting. The next photo shows it a bitter closer up although blurry. Click on the photo to enlarge it.


And here you can see the other one starting to root as well…just barely. What are we going to do with all the ginger? Make lots of tasty dishes, and lots of ginger ale. I’ve never had any made fresh but I like the regular stuff so we’re looking forward to giving that a try when we’ve finally got this producing some bigger roots.

We’ve had some windy weather here lately and one of our tomato plants got knocked over, breaking off this stem. There are a few little tomatoes on it so we figured we’d stick it in a jar and see if we might get it to root. It looks like it might be starting to sprout a few little roots and it’s definitely not drying up or dying so we’ll see. You can “clone” tomato plants by taking the little shoots that grow in the “Y” of a stem and we’re trying to root one of those as well which was on this stem. No signs of roots there yet but it’s still very early.

I’m also starting a herb container garden in my window sills. They get lots of sun during the day and have been very empty so the two windows closest to our kitchen are getting an array of herb seeds planted in them. We bought some thyme a while back and that plant is thriving. The rosemary unfortunately didn’t survive but I have thrown some seeds in a pot to give a try along with small-leaf basil, parsley and tetra dill. The dog got to either the dill or the basil (she ate my markers out of both pots so I have no idea which is which now) so one of them is almost certainly not going to come up…but there’s no harm in trying.

I would love for the banana tree we have to start producing something, but it has a long way to go still before that would be possible. It’s only about 3 feet tall now. But as all banana plants do, it has lots of suckers and I decided to take those off the main plant today and see if I can get them to grow also. They will be given away to friends at some point but not until I determine if they are going to make it or not. You should really cut the suckers when they are 2-3 inches in diameter but since that’s the size of my main plant, I took these off much smaller. They all had roots on them already so they should be ok. At some stage I will move one of these into the greenhouse (when it’s heated year round) and then we’ll really see if this thing will produce any fruit or not!

And we certainly can’t eat it, but I’m happy to say that I have FINALLY found a corner where my poinsettia is happy. I always try to make them grow after we buy them at Christmas, but so far they have all died. The first one we had I kept alive for about a year but never did get it to turn red again…of course I also didn’t lock it away in a closet or anything since I was just trying to keep the thing alive. I nearly killed this plant too but after moving it over here in the window, it’s starting to thrive so perhaps this will be the first poinsettia I actually manage to keep for a while. I’m having fun trying at least. ๐Ÿ™‚

Oh, and we have a zucchini which will be ready to harvest this weekend! There are a couple small ones coming along on there again also so we’re quite excited. The tomatoes are coming along slowly as well and we did our first fertilizing of them with worm tee. They seem to like it so far and hopefully it will boost their growing a bit too!