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.
Don't Throw It, Grow It!
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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.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
136 of 139 people found the following review helpful
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!
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!
35 of 37 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
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.
14 of 14 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
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.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book is so much fun.
So far I've grown a lemon, orange and grapefruit tree, and I have a huge flowering sweet potato, (all indoors because I live in a cold climate,
If you like growing things I... Read more
If you like growing things I... Read more
Published 6 days ago by Appetizer
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good purchase
This book was good quality. It given us alot of fun project and worth every penny.
I would recommend it.
I would recommend it.
Published 7 days ago by Denise Landolt
2.0 out of 5 stars
not really about windowsill plants
While this was somewhat informative about plants in general, I was looking for a book that specifically addressed windowsill and indoor gardening. Read more
Published 12 days ago by Martha Bennington
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love this book.
Who knew you could plant so many different types of produce?? Things that people would normally just toss down the garbage disposal can now be "recycled" and make more food... Read more
Published 12 days ago by Beth A. Essington
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good Book
A++++++ I am happy to do business with them again. This is a great book fun to read Cool
Nice
Nice
Published 15 days ago by NieeMA
5.0 out of 5 stars
great
its got a lot of helpful stuff I will be going back to this one for reference from time to time so glwd I can just pull it back up on my kindle instead of having to go fetch the... Read more
Published 18 days ago by Deborah DeWitt
4.0 out of 5 stars
interesting
Some of the things in this book I didn't know so it was interesting to read this book. will share it.
Published 19 days ago by DEBBIE HOUSER
5.0 out of 5 stars
good stuff
very cool awesome illustrations and very good information. if its you buy it. Thank you for this book so cool
Published 22 days ago by Joshua
5.0 out of 5 stars
GreAt book
Conclusive infomation covering all aspects of the plant even a little history here and there. Entertaining and educational book. Read more
Published 23 days ago by anita
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is a really informative book
Even as a small child I would try to grow anything that sprouted. This just takes me one step further, and broadens my experience with my food.
Published 23 days ago by GardenGerty
