December – Gardening with Ugly Produce (Family – any age)

By Jess Winn, STEAM Educator

In this episode of Winning Ideas, as the cold months of winter begin to set in and we are longing for fresh fruits and vegetables – this is a great time to harvest seeds, plan a garden, and get some green growing in our kitchen all winter long. Have you ever walked the aisles of your favorite grocery store and seen that bin with ugly almost over ripe fruits and veggies that they are selling for a dollar for the lot. They look sketchy, potentially gross, and you might think they have absolutely no purpose and should just be thrown out? What if I told you – a lot of those are perfect for quick recipes and fun treats that you might not be thinking about. They are an opportunity to explore, use your creativity, and even plan a garden for next year.

Before we begin, I want to acknowledge the importance of growers who harvest seeds for a living. They are working hard to ensure that the food we eat is nutritious and full of vitamins and minerals. There are several different types of seeds we will touch on here, open pollinated (which are ones we will discuss later), heirloom and hybrid seeds. Heirloom vegetable seeds are seeds that have been bred, generation by generation, to be true to the parent plant. Often they are bred for certain qualities and have had consistent breeding for over 50 years. They consistently grow fruits and vegetables that have the same qualities that the year prior had. Heirloom seeds can be open pollinated (where they are pollinated freely by bees, bugs etc.) or they can be hand pollinated by the grower. In either case, they are steadfast and consistent and will always produce fruits and vegetables that are hearty and flavorful. On the contrary, seeds from your grocery store tomatoes are likely hybrid seeds. Plants grown in the moment to get certain qualities from two or more different parent varieties. They are bright and well flavored, but the next generation of seed might not be as robust and might show up with different qualities than the parent fruit or vegetable it came from. They can either be viable (able to reproduce) or nonviable (not able to reproduce). The trick is finding out which they are once they are ready to grow!

One of my favorite trials was creating my own variety of marigolds. I spent years open pollinating certain colors, features, and sizes to get the perfect flowers for my garden. I started one year planting 12 different store-bought marigold plants in my garden. At the end of the season, I harvested the seeds (for marigolds – wait until the flower dies and dries then gently tug the centers out of the flower husks) drying them on paper towels and then storing them in a simple Ziploc bag. The next year I planned those seeds along with 10 new different varieties of marigolds – this year with larger flowers and only orange. The first year I got typical marigolds and had the seeds from the store-bought ones. I loved watching the bees happily pollinate my marigolds and apricot trees (I grew up in Southern California). The next year, I chose a smaller flower along with all of the seeds I had harvested from the previous year. This year, my plants were a little more unique but still like a short marigold variety. As the years went on, I ensured I was mixing a fun new variety of marigold from the store with the marigold seeds I had harvested from the year before. Eventually I got the ideal marigolds I wanted. They were tall, almost weedy in nature, but produced the most amazing smelling colorfully diverse flowers. That was the year, I stopped buying store marigolds. I was able to harvest my personal variety of marigolds every year – and every year I was treated to beautiful plants that filled my garden. I now generously spread my marigolds throughout my garden, sharing the seeds with others to encourage them to try their own varieties. The joy that comes from growing your own plants, flowers and foods is a lifelong, sustainable practice that I will continue to pass along to my children.

So how do you grow plants from the seeds living inside fruits and vegetables? It can be intimidating to have to harvest the seeds. Fear not! It is way easier than you think. For things like tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, or lemons, remove the seeds, rinse them clean in water, pat them dry, then let them continue to dry on a paper towel in a cool dry place for several weeks. Once they are completely dry, cut that paper towel into small sections with multiple seeds per square and store them in a zipped-up bag in a cool dry area until growing season. For the grow in the moment, you can trim your lettuce, green onions or celery down to about an inch from the root, place them in shallow water and allow them to grow back. Keep in mind they need light and occasionally fertilizer. (Fertilizer made from banana peels in water offers a lot of good nutrients your growing plants need!)

For other things like those over soft avocados that need to be eaten immediately, rinse the seed under warm water, gently removing any of the avocado from pit. Wrap your pit in a damp paper towel and place it in an unsealed Ziploc bag. Check your bag every few days and re-moisten your avocado pit, ensuring it doesn’t dry out. After about a month you will start to notice germination – a seedling root popping out of the bottom of the pit. When that pit is at least 4 inches long, you are ready to pot it in soil! (Don’t get too excited – avocados, like lemons, take years to grow and produce!)

But what do you do with the fruits and vegetables you are gathering while you are trying to harvest seeds? THIS IS YOUR PERMISSION TO EXPLORE! Try making something new – look up a recipe on your favorite social media and give it a try. Make lemon bars with a shortbread cookie crust out of those lemons. Experiment in making your own pasta sauce out of sauteed and blended tomatoes, onions, carrots, zucchini and spinach (it’s a great way to hide veggies in your kids pasta sauce). Cut up white or rye bread, cucumbers, add cream cheese, and some everything bagel seasoning and make little cucumber sandwiches. Don’t limit yourself to what you know – trying new recipes, flexing your creativity, and experiment. Bring your kids into the kitchen! It can be an amazing and fun way to engage their brains, teach them skills and try things out together.

One final note – there is debate about the importance of heirloom vegetable seeds vs. hybrid seeds that typically come from the store. While I don’t contradict the importance of utilizing heirloom seeds, they aren’t always accessible nor are they inexpensive. For a family on a budget, harvesting seeds from the over ripe tomato from the dollar bin at the grocery store might be the route to go. I have grown many plants from hybrid seeds. Some have been successful; some haven’t produced anything. The fun was in exploring, testing and growing my own varieties, and – the joy of spending time outside, getting my hands in the dirt and seeing things that I grew come to life is immeasurable.

Don’t forget to share your projects with us! Tag #NIUSTEAM and @NIUSTEAM for a chance to be featured in our weekly newsletter. Do good things, be good people and make yourself better than the day before.