How to Stop Throwing Away Food (and Money) - Gardenista
I feel like a criminal every time I open my refrigerator and see wilted lettuce or old limp celery, or cilantro that turned to a slimy mush in the crisper drawer. The other day as I was cleaning out the refrigerator, I realized this has to stop. Photographs by Michelle Slatalla except where noted. But I personally also have a second food storage problem: hoarding random condiments. Then I drove home and surveyed the sunny spots of my garden: where could I fit this stuff into the existing garden? One stalk of rosemary is about the right amount to cut up and toss in with the roasted potatoes. If you have no outdoor space, plant a pot of herbs on your kitchen windowsill. On the other hand, if this experiment works, I will have spent $50 at the nursery for a summer’s worth of crops. I got the idea for the random vegetable garden from my roses. The mint grows around the base of the roses to cover bare roots as nicely as any ground cover. A Green Zebra tomato plant, against a backdrop of roses in my garden. I am off to a good start because I already have a Meyer lemon tree in my garden. The rosemary came from Julie’s house, where she has a 15-foot-long hedge of it growing against a fence. Photograph by Erin Boyle. A second prong of my plan is to stop buying jarred condiments. That means you really wanted it to be a part of your dinner. I am thinking of waiting until the tomatoes are ripe and then whipping up some homemade ketchup–stealth ketchup, as it were–to win them over.