Vegan Cooking & Cookbooks discussion

Does anyone grow their own food? I am really excited about attempting to grow some of my own vegetables this year but our back yard is ringed with large trees so I thought I would try some container gardening. I would love to hear recommendations for veggies that are easy to grow in pots/containers that don't need sunlight all day.

I once did a salsa garden: Tomatoes, cilantro, and various hot peppers. They all grow easily in pots. I made a ton of salsa and hot pepper sauce.
Herbs are always good container gardens.

Thanks Jenny!

Yesterday I actually planted a few herbs including cilantro, chives, basil and thyme. I'm worried it might be too early here in Ontario because it still gets chilly at night but I'll see how they survive. I also bought some brussels sprouts plants, swiss chard seeds and some onions. I have no idea what I'm doing but I'll just plant stuff and hope for the best. At least it will be a fun experiment!

Hi Alex, Welcome to the group. The group avatar is of a vegan dish our co-mod Lee made. Perhaps she can tell you exactly what it is.

It's called Gypsy Soup, a recipe from The Moosewood Cookbook.

I'm very interested in container gardening, too. Even though we have a bit of a yard, it's not really "garden suitable" but I'm hoping to grow some tomatoes this year in pots--nothing like a home-grown tomato!--and some herbs, too. So far, I have parsley growing like crazy ;-p

We actually have mint growing wild all over the garden in-between the flagstones. I don't usually cook with a lot of mint but I'll definitely be looking for recipes to use some of it up.

And Kathryn, I agree that nothing beats homegrown tomatoes! I hope to plant some too!

Home-grown tomatoes are always the best. They do need sun though, lots of sun.

Lee, mint might make a good herb tea if you can't think of foods you'd like to make with it.

That's a good idea Lisa, I had fresh mint tea a long time ago and it was excellent. Much better than with dried mint.

My favourite tea is green tea leaves plus fresh mint with honey(or agave). It's just the best thing ever.

I haven't gotten past herbs as far as growing my own food. I want to try some conatiner gardening, since I don't have a yard, but I kill plants very easily.

Well, honey isn't vegan, but agave, and many other sweeteners are. Jayme, Sounds good, but without the honey.

Lee wrote: "Does anyone grow their own food? I am really excited about attempting to grow some of my own vegetables this year but our back yard is ringed with large trees so I thought I would try some contain..."

Hey Lee~
I hope this might be helpful to you or someone, Lee, but I'm a lazy gardener, meaning that I will work for hours in our garden, but I'm lazy about hand-watering. Anything in a pot/container, is on its own. Plants around here must thrive on neglect! Hence, I delayed an herb garden for years. Every time my mother visits, she tries to start something in a pot for me, but I'm hopeless. So, it suddenly occurred to me last summer--I'm a little slow--that I could plant those herbs right in the ground to be watered by our automatic sprinkler system. I treat them like other ornamental/landscape shrubs. (We live on a wooded property, so I chose my sunny spot carefully.) The result has been a small, healthy herb garden, some of which over-winters, and new herbal recipes for my cookbook and blog (www.thebloomingplatter.com)!

Besty, I ended up planting most of what my seeds and plants in the ground instead of pots. I love spending time in the garden too but I'm not famous for my green thumb. I think the herbs I planted were the most successful (so far) and it's amazing to see some of them flower! I never knew cilantro would grow so tall and have such pretty, delicate white flowers. I'm learning all the time.

Lee, I think it's much more resource efficient to plant in the ground. Plants just dry out so fast in pots. Yes, as far as edible, herbs are my biggest success. I agree about the blooms. I was so surprised and delighted to see the gorgeous red flowers on my pineapple sage. You are lucky you can grow cilantro. Here it burns out quickly and goes to seed.

Right now, we are living in a huge city townhouse so all of our gardening is in containers. We are growing tomatoes, strawberries, pumpkins and three kinds of mint in pots and they are thriving on our balcony garden. We have loads of flowers too- morning glories that come out of the pots and twine around the balcony railing, wave petunias, cleome, and lots more. When we can, I want to grow in the ground again but I find this to be perfect right now and it is so easy to protect against animals or people getting into the plants. We're growing catnip for our kitties too. We are growing stevia which is a nice sweetener too.

Terri~you are right: container gardening certainly has its applications and yours is the prime one! Your balcony must be a thing of beauty. And you make a good point about protecting the vulnerable plants from critters. My old dog Webster, now deceased--I miss him so--used to jam his head down into a neighbor's cabbage plant and come up with a big leaf before I could stop him. And, he was old with food as one of his greatest pleasures in life, so I didn't try too hard. But I would take it from him, give him a piece, and then carry it home where I kept it in the fridge. Periodically, I would break off pieces, roll them up, and give them to him as a special treat. He was the original Veggie Dog.

Pineapple sage sounds so delicious and pretty! I've never heard of that. Next year I'm definitely going to plant more herbs. That's a very sweet story about your dog Webster sneaking cabbage.

Terri your containers sound great. I would have never thought to try pumpkins in a container.

I have some pix of it to post when it was in bloom. It is really pretty and it actually tastes like both sage and subtle pineapple. Oh, Webster was such a sweet boy. If you search his name on my blog you'll find a photo of him eating a raw sweet potato in our garage, milky eyes and all. Every day when we'd pass by for our walks, he'd been eying a bag of them in the garage given to us by a farmer friend. One day, he finally took the plunge.

I've just planted out pineapple sage - I finally found a plant in the local nursery - plus for me it's frost tolerant, and able to rebound on the harsh frosts we get here, and cope with our super hot dry summers - with a few hand waters to get it through....

I'm looking forward to trying it out......when it gets established.

I have found the book Bountiful Container by Rose Marie Nichols McGee and Maggie Stuckey to be very helpful in my efforts to grow food in containers. This book has everything - vegetables, fruits, herbs, even edible flowers, with all of the details such as soil depth, types of containers and some recipes.

Have bookmarked the book you suggested - thanks for the heads up Susan!

Thanks for the recommendation, Susan. :-)
Next spring, I'm really, really, really going to attempt to plant a few veggies, in something.