The Canny Gardener

how to grow, cook and use plants, plus some philosophy!

Tag Archives: roots


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watering plants

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Plants need watering the summer. I have been using my bathwater (cooled down) for watering and this is economical and eco-friendly. I use bio-degradable and organic soaps so I am guessing that the water should not harm the plants in any way. In fact, soapy water kills off certain bugs and pests so this is a double benefit.  Here is a wiki article-

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Soapy-Water-Garden-Spray

Street plants need water too although their roots absorb a lot of water from underground.  In the summer, the watering pipes stuck into the soil help the local council to water trees as the soil may be very dry.  However, lately I have been finding people putting rubbish into these pipes- sweet wrappers, paper, cans and here in this photo, a plastic bag full of dog poo.   This is so silly and selfish.  If you see anyone doing this, please explain the reason why the pipe is there- they may not know.  Already plastic is choking our seas and killing animals, now we are choking plants with plastic too.


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Resilient Mint

Today’s dinner made by me with my able sous chef, my ten year old, was very special. It was made with leftovers and mint from my little container garden.

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It consisted of leftover pasta, peas and baked eggs with leftover gravy/meat juice. All very simple and tasty. The peas that you see are a combination of Ramsey and Slater recipes. Very quick to make-

Two cups of frozen peas, four mint leaves chopped up, a tiny bit of garlic chopped up, half of a small onion sliced into thin slices, salt to taste and two teaspoons of olive oil. Heat the oil and put everything in it, cover it and stir from time to time. Ready in about 10 minutes!

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And the mint you see is very special too. It came as a free gift with my organic vegetable box. I put all the mint in glass of water to keep it fresh and one of the stems grew roots. I put it in a pot and it grew. Now that was last year. During winter, it all died down. Now that it is spring, I have my resurrected mint again! Amazing how resilient these herbs are. I hope to get some of its resilience into my life too!