We Answer Your Gardening Questions!

Posted by Katie Elzer-Peters
March 27th, 2009
Filed in Savory and Sage Tidbits
Tags: Compost, flower, vegetables

This morning I was watching the Today Show, and a very prissy guest host was talking with P.Allen Smith about gardening, and they were planting lettuce and potatoes and stuff.  He got dirt ( excuse me, soil) all over her arm and she freaked out. It was hilarious.

What was NOT hilarious, though, was watching them indiscriminately eating violas straight out of the cell packs.  Yes, those flowers are edible, but does P. Allen know where they came from? Who grew them? If not, that was irresponsible.  They could have pesticides all over them!  So, I tweeted my outrage and a word of caution about eating things at the hardware store or garden center.  One of my followers asked me, if she wanted to grow her own edible flowers, which flowers should she grow?

On a completely unrelated note, another tweeter said she wanted to plant a garden in a shopping cart, but didn’t know how to do it.  I am all for found objects in the garden, so I told her I would answer her questions on the blog today!  So, tweeps: here are my answers to your questions.  If you want to ask a question, feel free to tweet at me @gardenofwords  or comment your questions to this post!

Growing Edible Flowers

You can grow your own edible flowers, and that is what I recommend if you are going to actually eat them.  These are the easiest to grow from seed, which is the only way you can truly know that they haven’t been treated.  (You have to buy organic seeds.)

• Nasturtiums. These have a peppery taste.  You need to plant them in the early spring, and be patient.  Mine took three weeks to sprout, after I soaked them for about three hours before planting.
• Dandelions.  Eat the young flowers, so that they aren’t bitter.
• Viola: Eat small quantities
• Pansy
• Violets
• Squash: flowers only last a day.  Good stuffed.
• Marigold: Lemon gem and tangerine gem are yummiest
• Snapdragon
• Calendula

The NC State Extension has a good list of edible flowers here. A word about edible flowers:a lot of people do freak out when they see flowers in their food.  If you are not serving horticulturists, you might want to use your edible flowers as a garnish (rather than mixing them in) and tell your guests they can eat the flowers if they want to.

Planting a Garden in a Shopping Cart

You can plant a garden in almost anything.  The shopping cart has something good going for it, in that it has lots of drainage.  The whole thing is a drain!  In order ot have a successful garden, you need to line the shopping cart with something.  This is my completely un-scientific, un-tested recommendation about how to do this.  (I’m a big fan of making things up as I go along-in terms of engineering and building things-and have had some good results.)

1. Gather a bunch of sticks.  You can get green twigs or grape vine and weave them through the shopping cart holes, and line the bottom of the cart.  If you use older, drier twigs, you can tie them onto the cart with jute twine. (Going for the “rustic basket” look.)  I would not advocate using sphagnum moss because it is not a renewable resource.  You could potentially use coir, the fibers from coconuts. It is sustainable.  It depends upon the look you are going for.
2. Fill the bottom 1/2 to 2/3 of the shopping cart with a mixture of soil, chopped up leaves and packing peanuts or old coke cans.  (I learned this during my trip to ECHO.)  You don’t need three feet of soil for the plants to grow, and it will be less expensive to fill the bottom with something other than soil.
3. Fill the top with a good container mix or compost/container mix blend.  You should mix in some vermiculite for water-holding properties.
4. Plant, and wheel to desired location!

This could be a particularly fun project if you have a light problem in your yard!  You could grow veggies on wheels, and move them around as the sun moves.  I seriously want a picture to post on the blog when you are done with your shopping cart garden!  Click the contact us link and send it to us!

Keeping Dogs out of the Compost

The next question comes from someone who wants to keep family dogs from eating food in the compost pile.  Having a dog myself, I understand how hard it is to keep them from eating anything.  She eats everything. (If you know what I mean.)

There are a couple of things you can do.

1. If you leave your dogs unattended outside a lot, you probably need a compost bin.  (We had to buy a much better trash can for the kitchen when we got our dog.)  A compost bin or tumbler with four sides and a lid with a latch will most likely keep the dogs out.  That is, unless you have very large dogs.
2. If you are usually outside with the dogs, you can try adding food scraps to the middle of the pile, rather than the outside.  That way, if they go over and start digging, you have enough time to get to them before they reach the “treasure!”
3. Never compost meat, dairy products or unwashed egg shells.  Most homeowners, unless they are true die-hard compost monitors, are not set up well for composting animal products.  These products attract all kinds of critters.
4. Put up a fence around the compost.  If you don’t want to get a bin, or can’t, keep the dogs out.
5. Feed your kitchen scraps to your worms, and then add the worm castings to your compost.  I am this close to getting a worm farm, because the dog/compost problem is my problem, too.

Do Tomatoes Love Strawberries?

The last question comes from the enterprising gardener planting edible flowers. She wants to know if tomatoes and strawberries are compatible. I consulted my Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food to answer this question.  Apparently, strawberries and tomatoes neither love nor hate each other.  They aren’t in the same plant family, so you don’t risk pest issues.  Strawberries do not love brassicas (cabbage family).  They do grow well with spinach, beans and lettuce.  So, I bet if you introduce tomatoes and strawberries, they would enjoy each other’s company.

Thanks, everyone, for your great questions!  Send me some more and I’ll make this a regular feature!