New beginnings

Sadly, today when I got home from work my taller tomato was all limp.  Some of the leaves had been getting a little bit spotty. 

I thought, instead of trying to revive it and risk possibly spreading something to my other plants, I'll just pull it.  It had some really impressive roots though.

I never realized before how root-colored my floor is.

Let's pause for a moment of silence.


In that space, I planted another mighty mini cherry tomato.  I had bought some mini sweet red pepper seeds (non GMO of course) on eBay that I was itching to plant.  Hopefully they don't get too large, because I planted two of them where my spacers used to be.

Now on to the exciting part.  Check out my mighty mini:

Right there in the center is the first blossom beginning to open!
I can see now why someone may want to plant a whole garden of just tomatoes - because although there are at least 10 other closed blooms on the plant, I'm not sure that any of them will be open in time to pollinate this first one.

Oh well, live and learn I guess.  If all else fails, I still have plenty of mighty mini seeds.

Basil harvest + ravioli!

Over the weekend, I ended up cutting off over half of my basil plant.  It had been touching the light.

before

after

Basil!

I threw the leaves in the freezer in a baggie overnight.  When I was ready to use them the next day, they crushed easily without me having to chop them.  The flavor still seemed pretty strong, so I'm thinking this may be the way to go when preserving fresh basil.

Instant basil flakes

I combined my fresh basil with ricotta cheese, mozzarella, cooked beef and Italian sausage, an egg, and some other seasonings and ended up with a killer ravioli filling. 

I ended up making 2 gallon storage bags full of homemade ravioli.  I can't wait to try them!

Is this what I think it is??

I don't claim to be a tomato growing pro, but to me those look like the beginning of flowers in the middle of my plant!

According to my rough calculations, my Mighty Mini cherry tomato has been growing for just over 6 weeks.  It was planted a few days after the other plants in my AG7.  Not too bad if you ask me! 

taco night

Tonight we had homemade tacos with aerogarden lettuce.

I had underestimated how much lettuce we would need so I found myself running back several times to chop more leaves. The kids love this stuff!  They kept asking for more even though on a normal taco night they don't want lettuce at all.

Here's the garden after we were done:

More salad!

Today I had a fresh salad for lunch, and I still have enough lettuce growing to have another one.

This lettuce is growing so fast, and drinking really quickly as well!  I hadn't checked it for a couple days and the water was half gone.

I'm normally a person who smothers her lettuce with ranch.  Lots and lots of ranch.  With this fresh lettuce, I'm finding that I prefer much less dressing because I want to taste the flavor of the leaves.  My kids will even eat this lettuce plain.

Regrowing kitchen scraps: an experiment

I'm sure by now, most of us have seen the Pinterest/Facebook post about regrowing parts of fruit and veggies that we've thrown away.  They claim you can grow things from salad to fruit trees.  I've been pretty skeptical about this, especially the fruit ones, so I decided to try a little experiment of my own.

I had a head of romaine lettuce from Christmas that I threw into a bowl of water with just a drop of Aerogarden Nutrients.  I have not been keeping track of how long that lettuce has been in there, but I'm sure by now it has been at least two weeks.  I have changed and refilled the water fairly regularly.

Here is the result:

There is some growth, but not much.  I have three little shoots popping up, probably 1/2 an inch or less in height.  I seriously doubt you'd get much salad from this ever, but it's a cool experiment to try with your kids.  Of course this lettuce got optimal light, thanks to my AeroGarden sitting right next to it!  See, this post is relevant to AeroGardens after all!
I'm going to have to go ahead and call this Pin busted.

I'll probably let that sad little lettuce grow another couple weeks before I compost it just to see what happens.  But I have no reason to keep it around when I can have fast growing lettuce like this:

week 6

Yesterday the nitrient light on my AG7 was flashing. I decided it was time to change the water completely.  It was a good excuse for me to look at the roots:

However, while i was changing it, the tall tomato drooped way over. It recovered after a few hours, but I think for that reason I will not be changing that water any more.

First basil harvest!

Yesterday morning when I woke up, the top of my basil was drooped over.  That's how I knew it would be the day that I harvested it.  I cut about half of the green basil off, and the top few leaves of purple.  The green was actually touching the lights.

I made one of my son's favorite dishes with it, one that he calls "curly pasta stuff" which is just curly noodles, spaghetti sauce, ground turkey, fresh basil, and mozzarella cheese.  The fresh basil truly does make all the difference in the world.  I would have used fresh tomatoes in it too if I had them.

Fresh basil!

The finished product

And the oregano is finally above the paper! 

Fresh lettuce in the middle of winter? Heck yeah!

Almost week 7 for my salad, and from looking at it you would never guess how much i chopped off less than 2 weeks ago!

My son is taking a ham sandwich for lunch today topped with what else but fresh lettuce! It's so exciting to me to see my kids excited about veggies.


Over the weekend i did a complete change of water. The instructions say once every 4 weeks is suggested, but my goal is to do it at least once every 8 weeks.  It's just so easy to dump in nutrients and be done with it for 2 more weeks!  The water was starting to smell a little like fish tank so I figured it was time.

I finally had to give in and raise the hood of my AG7.  I trimmed leaves multiple times, but i was worried about taking off too many.  The mini tomato, purple basil, and oregano are still far from the lights, but the cherry tomato and green basil are close.

4 weeks 1 day

My ag7 reached its 4th week yesterday.  The plants seem to like their new lights.  I trimmed the middle leaves on the tomatoes and basil, and can already see new growth right below where I trimmed.  Cherry tomato and green basil are doing way better than mini tomato and purple basil. The difference in tomatoes is not surprising but I wouldn't have expected there to be so much difference in basil.  The oregano is still hanging in there too. It has several sets of leaves, but it's just not very tall yet.

The cherry tomatoes are almost up to the lights. I will probably try to trim them rather than raising the lights since my other plants are so short.

Purple basil and mighty minis. You can see a little oregano here too

My lettuce garden does not seem to be too upset that it got a major haircut a few days ago.  I was able to harvest some leaves for lunch:

And even after taking the biggest leaves, the plants still look happy.