Are You Looking For A New Hobby, Because Gardening Gives You Free Fruits & Vegetables!

Gardening is easier than you think.

Your garden doesn't have to be perfect. Just a normal one will do. If you are too concerned about perfection, you'll never start at all. There is a new trend in gardening and it is aptly named Subsistence Gardening.

Oh yes, gardening not just for the joy of it, but to put free fruit and veg on your table. Who can say no to that? Eating your own homegrown vegetables is a fantastic experience and once you have tasted it, you'll want to have it again and again. Eating vegetables in their respective seasons. Most of us don't know anymore what the correct season for all the various vegetables and fruits are. No, not everything grows all year round on the supermarket shelf.

Imagine if everyone just grew one vegetable in their garden / veranda. That is one less item having to be transported to the supermarket. Less carbon emissions, less wastage. I bet you anything, that if you grow your own vegetables, you will eat them even if they have a funny shape. Any dark marks can be cut out without having to throw away the vegetable in question.

Wastage of food ( especially fruit and vegetables ) in supermarkets all over the world, is a big contributor to Global Warming. Why should we care? Well, have you watched the news lately? Flooding, storms, hurricanes, disasters on almost every continent.
Article in the Huffington Post on Food Wastage.

We had planted a ' hand-me-down ' vegetable that my mum gave to us. It got too bulky where she had it planted and she dug it up and gave us the bulbous root. Sometime in August, our garden got the new residents. It was the Topinambour.

Frankly, we planted them in a spot where both of us hardly ever looked or spent time in. Every now and again, I threw glances in their direction, but more because the flower part of it grew to massive proportions. They are a type of Sunflower, so you can imagine the size of them.

As we are more of the not-so-perfect-and-lazy type gardeners, we noticed that in the last week, the stems had frozen and looked spent. When I got home yesterday, there was a nice surprise waiting in the kitchen. A bowl of Topinambour.

Bob had wanted to weed out the dead plants and to his amazement they bore plenty of fruit! When we looked up online on how to cook them, I got a second surprise.
They are actually also called ' Jerusalem Artichoke ', a well know delicacy.

A health food indeed and let me tell you, we boiled it like an ordinary potato and it tasted out of this world. A dash of salt and a dollop of butter was the only dressing needed... Imagine, treasures grown in our backyard and for free....!

Biggi

Our homegrown Jerusalem Artichoke! No, this is not a bowl of Ginger....