Green gardening...indoors

Tips for Creating a Sustainable Kitchen

By ecoRI.org News staff

The following is some growing advice from Massachusetts author Elizabeth Morse Read’s forthcoming book “Toward a Sustainable Kitchen”:

• Just like children, plants need a healthy home (soil), good nutrition (water and fertilizer), sunshine (real or artificial), protection from destructive influences (disease, pests, weeds and severe weather) and lots of support as they grow (trellises, cages). 

You can spend a fortune buying all of the above, but it’s much more practical to create your own homegrown solutions from your kitchen’s resources and repurposed stuff.

• Dirt is the crumbly gray dust you find in the cracks of sidewalks and nothing but weeds will grow in dirt. Loam is the moist, chunky brown soil, full of decomposing organic matter that provides nutrition for flowers and vegetables. 


This organic material is basically the “compost” you create in your kitchen crock — vegetable peelings, eggshells, coffee grounds — that you then mix up with carbonaceous waste, such as shredded newspapers, cardboard egg cartons, toilet paper rolls, even dryer lint, in a compost bin.

• Plants don’t grow in the cold or the dark, so find a south-facing window, balcony or patch of land you can convert into a garden. If your driveway is taking up the southern exposure, consider container planting and park your car on the street. You also can consider a green roof garden or convert your garage/basement into a mini-greenhouse. And many towns and cities have community gardens you can join.

• Vining plants such as peas and cucumbers grow vertically, so throw a fish net over the fence or tack an old volleyball net on the outside wall of your garage. For indoor vertical gardening, repurpose a wooden pallet and create a waterfall-effect garden of herbs and salad greens. 

Bushy, spreading plants such as zucchini or chard need a lot of horizontal space or a half-barrel container all their own. Tall-growing plants such as tomatoes and peppers need artificial support like stakes and cages so they don’t topple over when the wind blows or they’re heavy with fruit.

• Destructive influences, depending upon where you live, could be your neighbor’s cat that thinks your garden is a litter box; assorted wildlife (deer and rabbits) that thinks your garden is free lunch; insects and low-life forms (slugs and snails). The best way to be rid of them is to learn about their behavior. 

Many insects don’t like the scent of marigolds or garlic; deer don’t like the scent of dried blood; you can construct a “fence” from old window screens to keep out the cats and rabbits. Put out a pie-plate of sweetened water to drown the slugs and snails.

• If you don’t sprout your own seeds, make sure that the seedlings/plants you buy are healthy stock from a reputable farm or nursery. 

Those displays of 2-foot-high tomato plants at discount stores come from the “puppy mill” version of Big Ag farms. They have been known to spread diseases and alien insects not only throughout neighborhoods when introduced by some newbie gardener down the street, but also throughout entire regions, such as the 2010 tomato blight along the eastern seaboard.

• This is the kind of gardening savvy that’s hard to find in books: One elderly gardener once told me to drive long iron — therefore, rust-able — nails throughout the garden after planting. He said it would repel certain insects and confuse moles. I don’t know if it really works, but I still do it every year, and I’ve never encountered a mole.