Don't Throw It, Grow It!: 68 windowsill plants from kitchen scraps [Paperback]

Deborah Peterson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 7, 2008

Magic and wonder hide in unexpected places — a leftover piece of ginger, a wrinkled potato left too long in its bag, a humdrum kitchen spice rack. In Don't Throw It, Grow It! Deborah Peterson reveals the hidden possibilities in everyday foods.

Peterson, former president of the American Pit Gardening Society, shows how common kitchen staples — pits, nuts, beans, seeds, and tubers — can be coaxed into lush, vibrant houseplants that are as attractive as they are fascinating. With Peterson's help, a sweet potato turns into a blooming vine; chickpeas transform into cheery hanging baskets; the humble beet becomes a dramatic centerpiece; and gingerroot grows into a 3-foot, bamboo-like stalk. In some cases the transformation happens overnight!

Don't Throw It, Grow It! offers growing instructions for 68 plants in four broad categories — vegetables; fruits and nuts; herbs and spices; and more exotic plants from ethnic markets. The book is enhanced with beautiful illustrations, and its at-a-glance format makes it a quick and easy reference. Best of all, every featured plant can be grown in a kitchen, making this handy guide a must-have for avid gardeners and apartment-dwellers alike.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Deborah Peterson…stops at nothing to grab some strange piece of produce, seed or pit to start a plant….Lots of fun here with figs, feijoa, fruiting citrus and more for the whole family.”

Orange County Register

“I found Don't Throw It, Grow It! to be an absolutely delightful little book. I can't wait to start using as many of the suggestions as I possibly can. There were even ethnic fruits and vegetables I had never heard of - genip, anyone? Children will enjoy the magic of watching a new plant grow. This will help you brighten your living space while recycling at the same time. This is one of my favorite new books, and I just can't highly recommend it enough.”

About.com

“This clever little book from Storey -- priced right at 11 bucks in paperback --offers up suggestions for sprouting not just avocados, but also carrot tops, garbanzo beans, peanuts, jicama, lemongrass, ginger, and just about any other kind of grocery store produce… There's something so thrifty and retro about sprouting food from kitchen scraps that makes it seem just right for the times.”

Garden Rant

“Here’s another way to be creative with plants: Read Don’t Throw It, Grow It! …Peterson and Selsam go way beyond the avocados and potatoes we used to root in water glasses. Besides fruits and vegetables, they include nuts, herbs, spices, and more international foods like chayote and litchi.”

Philadelphia Inquirer

 

From the Back Cover

Eat Your Vegetables (and plant them too!)

 

You can also have houseplant fun with fruits, nuts, herbs, and spices. From the common carrot to the exotic cherimoya, dozens of foods have pits, seeds, and roots waiting to be rescued from the compost bin and brought back to life on your windowsill. Planted and nurtured, the shiny pomegranate seeds left over from breakfast and the piece of neglected gingerroot in your refrigerator will grow into healthy, vigorous houseplants — kitchen experiments in the wonder of botany.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC (May 7, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1603420649
• ISBN-13: 978-1603420648
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 0.4 x 7.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (75 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,991 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #1 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Landscape Design > Ornamental Plants
  • #2 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Landscape Design > House Plants
  • #30 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Gardening & Landscape Design > By Technique

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

147 of 151 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

By Silea TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format: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! Read more ›

36 of 39 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

By Gwynne C. Spencer

Format:Paperback

While it's not really a cooking book, this little gem (6 Ľ" x 7 ˝") 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. Read more ›

14 of 15 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

By Midwest Book Review

Format: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.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting October 12, 2009

By Pheldda

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I got this for my birthday because I wanted to grow plants for Food. The book in informative and has cute pictures. I found that I could have found most of this for the internet and that most of the plants wont produce food.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars save your money January 13, 2013

By James Howard

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

this is a book more about growing ornamental type plants rather than vegetables.
I wouldn't recommend it to the serious grower

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Great book for teaching kids about where food comes from October 7, 2012

By BB

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

There are a few good ideas in this book but a lot of it is just obvious. The cover is also a little misleading. It says "68 windowsill plants from kitchen scraps". I thought it was going to be about things like sprouting new onions from the roots you cut off, but most of it is stuff more like buy a carrot, stick it in water, and it will sprout roots and leaves. Well, dough. There's really not much about using "scraps". I guess it's a great book for folks who have always lived in a big city and don't know much about plants or growing food. I mean who knew if you plant seeds and water them that plants will sprout from them? Really? There a few tidbits I got from the book, like how to start a pineapple plant, but most of it was really obvious. However, all that said, I would recommend it for kids to teach them about nature and where food comes from.