68 Windowsill Plants from Kitchen Scraps
by Deborah Peterson and Millicent Selsam
2 stars
An okay read on how to grow your own plants from the items you buy at the grocery store. I’ll admit, I didn’t look at this too hard before getting into it, so I didn’t realize it mainly focuses on growing houseplants rather than producing food. Fine for those looking to add some greenery to their house or yard.
The book opens with some basic growing techniques including how to start, care for plants, and deal with pests. It then goes through a variety of entries of plants that can be grown from the seeds, corms, tuber, and other parts of store-bought produce.
Each entry contains of the scientific name, plant type, growth rate, method, light level needed, what it looks like, how to grow it, and where it originates along with an illustration of the seed and full plant. There is also a designation of plants that a deemed easy to grow.
The 2008 edition is a republishing of the 1977 version. Though some information has been revised, it doesn’t appear the tone has changed much. The focus is quite white-centric and assumes the reader is white as well. The authors “discovered” these growing techniques by going on excursions to a “particular ethnic neighborhood” to search for “unusual fruit or vegetable”. They encourage readers to look for “unusual goodies” in Asian shops and enjoy the “exotic odors” of Middle Eastern markets, despite the fact their antics at times alarmed and irritated grocers.
The organization was a little confusing to me. It is broken down into basic sections of vegetables; fruits and nuts; and herbs and spices. Then there are separate sections on plants from Latin America and Asia. This seemed like an unnecessary distinction since some of the foods found in these sections are available in modern mainstream grocery stores (jicama, ginger, persimmons) and many of the plants featured in the first three sections also originate in Asia or Latin America (star apple, feijoa, kiwi). This may have made sense in the original version but doesn’t really fit for the revised edition.
At its base, it’s a fine book at presenting the information it has to share. It is a useful little reference guide on cultivating scraps. However, the tone was out-of-date and made it difficult to fully enjoy.