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Step 4Grocery Shopping for the Future (Choosing Plants)
A while ago my sister (antibromide) got us both into the habit of grocery shopping once a week. Every single Tuesday is grocery day. This was a GREAT idea. I know how much of each perishable I use per week. We plan a weeks worth of meals at once. We've almost eliminated wasted food that we don't get to before it expires. We're making a lot fewer trips to the grocery store, too.
This was very helpful when I was picking plants to grow. For example, I know that we can easily make it through a head of lettuce and a single cucumber every week. When reading seed packets/catalogs it tells you how long it takes to go from seed to a head of lettuce. Most of what looked good to me was about 60 days. At my current rate of consumption I should have at least 8 spaces dedicated to lettuce. On the other hand, a quick google search tells me that an average American slicing cucumber vine will give me 6 large cucumbers in a 2 to 3 week period, and that I should grow a couple of them to ensure good pollination. Since I don't care for pickles and I don't know of any other good way to preserve cucumbers these would be an awful choice for me. Just two plants would require me to at least quadruple the amount I like to eat. (I know I could donate them to a food bank or give them away to friends, but the point I'm working on is determining how much is consumed in my house and covering as much of it as possible.)
After considering my standard groceries, climate and preferences, I developed a list.
I included 10 different herb varieties - fresh herbs are expensive, dried herbs aren't as good as fresh, and if I really grow too much I can preserve them. I LOVE cooking with fresh herbs. I add them to everything when I have them. That made herbs a total win.
Bell peppers were next on my list because they don't grow terribly well in the ground here, they tend to get eaten by woodland creatures, and I love sweet red bell peppers. Two plants each of two varieties - that should be about right for my use and if I don't get to them in time it's easy to clean them up, cut them into wedges and pop them in the freezer. I've even put whole peppers in the freezer before and they come out in great shape for cooking into things, but I wouldn't expect them to be the glossy perfection they were when they went in.
Tomatoes are delicious and I can eat and save an almost unlimited amount of them. Cheap 'imperfect' tomatoes at the farmer's market have always been something worth turning into sauce so there's no consumption based reason to limit my tomatoes. This system isn't really large enough to have many tomato plants but I've developed a compromise. Three plants that are bush (as opposed to vine) style that grow small-but-larger-than-cherry tomatoes. Great for salads and baking into bread, good enough to save if need be. These may be moved later into more substantial housing, but they're fine in here for now.
Three or four spinach plants because spinach is nutritious and tasty in salads. If I'm growing it I can use young leaves.
A few squares worth of bunching onions because I love onions and I wanted to test them out in this system.
I chose a few loose leaf lettuce variety seed packs. I especially went for colorful choices for two reasons - they look good (and there's a heavy interest in aesthetics here), and more colors generally equates with more nutrition in produce. I can't stand iceberg lettuce but I'll find lots of ways to use the fancy stuff. This also very significantly frees up some fridge space in the house - no need to refrigerate this stuff at all, just go out and pick the leaves I need when I need them. A less full fridge can increase the efficiency a bit there, too.
I also added in a hearty sampling of mesclun and 'microgreens'. They're small and fit into the gaps between the big plants and they come with pretty rapid gratification. These spicier and brightly colored greens are growing at unbelievable speed so far - I'm looking forward to salad time.
Fundamentally, I'm still working more healthy/fresh food into what I eat so I need to be really careful to pick things I'm sure I will like. In the future I'll keep experimenting with more choices (some strawberries that have grown past their boundaries in the garden for starters) and quite possibly adding a second system to my life. Cooking with fresh ingredients eats fridge space and I would be delighted to help remedy that.
This was very helpful when I was picking plants to grow. For example, I know that we can easily make it through a head of lettuce and a single cucumber every week. When reading seed packets/catalogs it tells you how long it takes to go from seed to a head of lettuce. Most of what looked good to me was about 60 days. At my current rate of consumption I should have at least 8 spaces dedicated to lettuce. On the other hand, a quick google search tells me that an average American slicing cucumber vine will give me 6 large cucumbers in a 2 to 3 week period, and that I should grow a couple of them to ensure good pollination. Since I don't care for pickles and I don't know of any other good way to preserve cucumbers these would be an awful choice for me. Just two plants would require me to at least quadruple the amount I like to eat. (I know I could donate them to a food bank or give them away to friends, but the point I'm working on is determining how much is consumed in my house and covering as much of it as possible.)
After considering my standard groceries, climate and preferences, I developed a list.
I included 10 different herb varieties - fresh herbs are expensive, dried herbs aren't as good as fresh, and if I really grow too much I can preserve them. I LOVE cooking with fresh herbs. I add them to everything when I have them. That made herbs a total win.
Bell peppers were next on my list because they don't grow terribly well in the ground here, they tend to get eaten by woodland creatures, and I love sweet red bell peppers. Two plants each of two varieties - that should be about right for my use and if I don't get to them in time it's easy to clean them up, cut them into wedges and pop them in the freezer. I've even put whole peppers in the freezer before and they come out in great shape for cooking into things, but I wouldn't expect them to be the glossy perfection they were when they went in.
Tomatoes are delicious and I can eat and save an almost unlimited amount of them. Cheap 'imperfect' tomatoes at the farmer's market have always been something worth turning into sauce so there's no consumption based reason to limit my tomatoes. This system isn't really large enough to have many tomato plants but I've developed a compromise. Three plants that are bush (as opposed to vine) style that grow small-but-larger-than-cherry tomatoes. Great for salads and baking into bread, good enough to save if need be. These may be moved later into more substantial housing, but they're fine in here for now.
Three or four spinach plants because spinach is nutritious and tasty in salads. If I'm growing it I can use young leaves.
A few squares worth of bunching onions because I love onions and I wanted to test them out in this system.
I chose a few loose leaf lettuce variety seed packs. I especially went for colorful choices for two reasons - they look good (and there's a heavy interest in aesthetics here), and more colors generally equates with more nutrition in produce. I can't stand iceberg lettuce but I'll find lots of ways to use the fancy stuff. This also very significantly frees up some fridge space in the house - no need to refrigerate this stuff at all, just go out and pick the leaves I need when I need them. A less full fridge can increase the efficiency a bit there, too.
I also added in a hearty sampling of mesclun and 'microgreens'. They're small and fit into the gaps between the big plants and they come with pretty rapid gratification. These spicier and brightly colored greens are growing at unbelievable speed so far - I'm looking forward to salad time.
Fundamentally, I'm still working more healthy/fresh food into what I eat so I need to be really careful to pick things I'm sure I will like. In the future I'll keep experimenting with more choices (some strawberries that have grown past their boundaries in the garden for starters) and quite possibly adding a second system to my life. Cooking with fresh ingredients eats fridge space and I would be delighted to help remedy that.
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