Green Blog Project

Indira’s beautiful pictures about methi seeds inspired me to start this Green Blog Project.

I love cooking as well as gardening. And someone famous once said, “A good cook always is a good gardener” (hehehe. I made that up!). But won’t it be nice, if we can host something every summer and winter, with the vegetables we grow in our garden?Ah! Are you thinking, “I live in an apartment with a 3*2 feet patio and she wants something from the garden?”

Everything grows in containers here. Yes, if back home someone told me curry leaves grows in container, I would have laughed my head off. But here I have seen giant Mango trees to Palm trees in 20 gallon containers…yes 20 gallon giant pots.

Won’t it be sweeter, if we cooked up something as the main ingredient, right from our garden without those harmful pesticides and fertilizers? Isn’t it nice to go back to those simple old days back home, where you grow almost everything and you do your little part in turning the planet green?How often there will be a round up? One round up for summer (April to September) and another round up (October to March).

So you know you have ample time to prepare. If you start something today, you can get something in one or two months. So, on September I will post all the round up recipes for summer vegetables and on March,the winter ones.

Okay, all fine. But I didn’t understand the main criteria?

Simple! Try to post a recipe with a picture of your plant and the vegetable as the main ingredient.If it is your neighbor’s plant also it is okay, as long as you didn’t buy the vegetable. :-)Well, how would you know?eh ;-)
Oh,C'mon I think I can trust anyone who loves to cook! Besides, it would be 'nice' to see your plants(Aha!)

Try growing one vegetable for summer and another one for winter and keep on trying a new vegetable every season, so it will be really interesting. And if you have kids at home, make sure you don’t tell them anything about the roots. My little brother used to pluck every plant every single day to see whether it had roots, after he was told by my mom, “we are waiting it to have good roots.”

“But, if I grow chickens, can I post those recipes too?”

Oh yeah, you are more than welcome, but please send us some pictures of your chickens first :-)

Okay, how about the fish in my fish tank? No, sorry, can’t do that. But if you really catch some live fish -- from a lake or the sea then you are more than welcome!

(But the hard part is going to be, I think my blog is visited by 2+3 = 5 people, so the hard part would be for me to publicize. But I hope the great cooks with hit blogs out there would help me in this. I will send you people cookies. I hope people are not going to think I am arrogant to start a blog project when I hardly started posting:-). Pardon me fellas, but I wanted to get this started as soon as possible, so we could get time to grow something out there.)

This is also a dedication for the ‘Garden Fresh Aunty’. I used to live in her basement as a tenant and she used to grow all kind of vegetables in her yard and she would cook them up (she was a great cook!) and would feed me her dishes, announcing with a big smile on her face and a spring in her step, ”Garden Fresh!”. We nicknamed her Garden Fresh aunty. She died two years ago of breast cancer. May her soul rest in peace!

Now the next question is what all can you grow? There are so many vegetables for the people with the yards out there, but for people with patios, here is a small list to start with.

For summer:
Methi
Corainder and all kinds of herbs
Curry leaves
Tomatoes
Oriental Spinach
Chilies
Okra
Brinjal

For winter:
Cabbage
Broccoli
Carrot
Beetroot
Spinach
Onion

Seems like little hard work than the usual, but trust me, nothing tastes better than your own garden grown stuff. And to watch those tiny little things fruit is extremely fulfilling.

Gardening Tips (For U.S):Get good potting soil for pots, and get cow manure dry (no, there is no smell) at Wal-mart, Home Depot etc. Mix 1:1.

Add the seeds or the plants (from Garden Center of Wal-mart /Home Depot/K-Mart/Lowes etc), follow instructions, water them regularly and just watch them grow. I will try my best to answer any gardening questions here.Want some more seeds?

Try evergreenseeds.comSo go ahead, soak your seeds and start your little garden out there and post your recipes as a comment here. This link is always going to be on the top.I hope all those food bloggers out there will participate and make the blog a greener place to be!

Send the entries to greenblogproject AT gmail DOT com or leave a comment here