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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
a wonderful book for those of us without a yard, but..., October 15, 2009
This review is from: Don't Throw It, Grow It!: 68 windowsill plants from kitchen scraps (Paperback)
I have one major problem with this book. I would give it an enthusiastic five stars but for this one oversight: it's very unclear about which plants are decorative and which will actually bear fruit/vegetables. On the cover of the book it shows a recycling triangle symbol with an avocado plant, suggesting that you could run a complete cycle with avocados. I'd be astonished if anyone got an indoor avocado plant to fruit. A few plants explicitly state that you can harvest (herbs, potatoes, and a few others), while a few pretty solidly suggest that they're just decorative, but an awful lot have no mention at all. For those of us with dreams of a mini-windowsill-victory garden, that's frustrating.
Another significant problem is that they'll casually mention when a plant is poisonous (potato, in the case that i recall). No bold face, no larger font, no red warning, just an offhand mention that every part of the potato plant except the potato itself is poisonous. For those of us with pets and children in the house, a little red warning box might be nice.
Beyond those, this is a wonderful book. I have but two west-facing windows in my apartment. No dirt. No patio. Not even any windowboxes. I've found, by trial, error, and luck, a few edible/fruiting plants that i can grow with some success in my windows (hot peppers, bush tomatoes, basil, mint). This book has 68. Sixty-eight. Wow.
And that's not even including hot peppers and tomatoes, which i suppose are less decorative than some of the book's suggestions.
Another omission that i'd love to see rectified in a future version of this book is the damp-paper-towel germination method. They include instruction on starting in water, soil, and gravel, and even have a description of the sphagnum-moss bag method, but for some seeds (avocado, especially), all you need is a dark place, a damp paper towel, and a plastic container. There's no reason to muck around with a sphagnum moss bag for that.
I know that sounds like a lot of criticisms for a book i call wonderful, but trust me, it's wonderful. It could be better, but it's still wonderful. Sixty eight plants!
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Plants from spices, pits and other unlikely places! This is from THE PITS., July 8, 2008
This review is from: Don't Throw It, Grow It!: 68 windowsill plants from kitchen scraps (Paperback)
While it's not really a cooking book, this little gem (6 ¼" x 7 ½") is a great resource for anyone--most especially teachers--who want to introduce the world of sprouting seeds and growing them to mature plants to their students. It was originally published as The Don't Throw It, Grow It Book of Houseplants (Random House, 1977), and with the Storey Touch it comes alive. As you read through the directions for each kind of seed and how best to grow it, it's likely you will think of Lois Ehlert's Growing Vegetable Soup as a likely source of seeds to grow and a read-aloud to start with. In addition to the obvious plants a classroom could grow using the author's simple "sphagnum bag" (a zip lock bag with sphagnum moss) method there are simple, encouraging directions for more exotic challenges like mango, ginger, papaya, avocado and persimmon. Why grow just beans when you can get your kids watching sesame seeds, mustard seeds and lentils? I didn't even know peanuts could be sprouted, or that pomegranates actually would grow inside the house. Among the projects to encourage hopeful botany projects you'll find sugar cane, taro, water chestnuts and jicama. Whoda thunkit? The directions are simple and include botanical name, plant type (Annual, perennial, bush, vine, bulb, tuber) and whether it's a quick growth prospect or not, whether you can grow it from seed (almost all of them), and how much light is required. What it looks like is an important section ab out what it grows up to be, but unfortunately, the illustrations are only simple line drawings. The projects that are truly easy have a little 'easy' label. Each seed has a sidebar telling its country of origin, and a small text section on eating it or cooking with it. The introductory text tells how the authors (both New Yorkers) would prowl around ethnic food stores back in the "old days" even before even the invention of the local mega-mart, looking for exotic new possibilities in the food aisles of small groceries. The Pits (an organization of pit-growers and pit-savers of which Deborah Peterson is the founder, newsletter editor and tireless missionary mother) also known as the Rare Pit and Plant Council is acknowledged at the end of the book, which I found reassuring because they did a delightful calendar a couple of years back with detailed instructions on sprouting pits of the most exotic types, to encourage even a black-thumb like me to partake of the magic of seeds and growth. Like the book says on the cover, "It's kitchen magic!" Share that magic with your students.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Turning ordinary household organic garbage into a thriving personal garden, July 12, 2008
This review is from: Don't Throw It, Grow It!: 68 windowsill plants from kitchen scraps (Paperback)
You can't recycle organics, only paper, plastic, and glass -- or can you? "Don't Throw It, Grow It! 68 Windowsill Plants from Kitchen Scraps" is a novel but effective guide to turning ordinary household organic garbage into a thriving personal garden. "Don't Throw It, Grow It!" promotes the ability to take the remains of countless vegetables and nuts such as almonds, celery, kiwis, squash, and others, plant them, and grow them once more into food. The veggies can then be consumed again, repeating the cycle anew. A conservationist's manual of efficiency, "Don't Throw It, Grow It!" is highly recommended for community library gardening collections.
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