Don’t Throw it, GROW IT! Book Review

Posted by Katie Elzer-Peters
October 20th, 2009
Filed in Organic Book Reviews
Tags: books, houseplants

I enjoyed pilfering from the publishing table at Garden Writers this year.  However, I always review books, often on multiple sites, so I feel less guilty, sort of.  The book Don’t Throw it, GROW IT! is an adorable little gem, re-published in 2008 by Storey Press, and written by Deborah Peterson and Millicent Selsam.  Peterson is the founder of the Rare Pit & Plant Council, and according to the back cover, has lectured extensively on gardening with pits.  Out of the several books I picked up, I am most excited about trying the projects in this one, especially with Winter coming fast.  (Or, in the case of Chris, because winter has already been at his house for, oh, about a month.  LOVE YOU CHRIS!)

Neatly Encapsulating my Husband’s Kitchen Philosophy

Author Peterson says that there’s no such thing as a green thumb.  Well, I don’t believe her.  My Mother-in-Law, Susan, has the greenest thumb of pretty much anyone I know (sorry Mom! and Grandma!).  She routinely coaxes the orchids we send her back into bloom, and has HUGE avocado plants, papayas and other tropical monstrosities growing in her sunroom, all from the pits of a fruit purchased at the grocery store.  I believe that her indoor jungle is why my husband, bless his heart, NEVER wants to let a seed or pit go without trying to sprout it.  I don’t think he knows that I have this book yet, but he will once he reads the blog.  I’ll be sure to report back with pictures of his forthcoming experiments. With Peterson’s thorough explanation of how to grow “68 Windowsill Plants from Kitchen Scraps,” anyone, even my husband, should be successful.

“One to Eat and One to Plant”

This little book was really a labor of love for the two authors, who met at a lecture about Pits that Peterson was giving.  Selsam and Peterson became best friends, and set off on a journey through New York City’s ethnic markets to find interesting plants to grow.  This was all around the early 1970s.  The new addition takes into account that things have changed, and more fruits and vegetables for experimenting are available at conventional grocery stores.  When they began their adventure of buying, eating and growing weird plants, the ladies adopted the philosophy “always buy two-one to eat and one to grow.”  If one was out and about without the other, she would buy four, so each could have two for eating and experimenting.  I love that!

Easy Instructions and Surprising Results

Some of the plants described in this book won’t produce fruit or vegetables for you, but, rather, are fun to grow on for a few months as unusual houseplants-an antidote to peace lilies in every corner of the house.  The first section of the book describes basic horticultural information for a novice grower.  The next section covers propagation, or how to take the seed, pit, root or stem of the plant you have and get it to sprout into a new plant.  The final chapters detail different types of plants and how to grow them. In addition to a good primer on how to grow weird plants, this little book is also an interesting source of information about where the food we eat comes from.

Is it Organic?

So, I hate to even put this in my review, but since I’m reviewing it for an organic gardening blog, I have to mention this:  the book does detail how to create a “moist, humid environment” for pit sprouting by using peat moss or sphagnum moss, both of which are not environmentally friendly.  I’m wondering if we could get the same result with perlite or vermiculite?  I might give that a whirl.

All in all, I think this is a cool little book for people who enjoy tinkering with houseplants.  And, because of its great price, you can get one to keep and one to share with a friend.