How to Grow Free Tomato Plants from Cuttings

Tomatoes are an interesting plant. They are notoriously difficult to grow from seed, but once you get them going they want to go. A curious property about tomatoes is that it any part of its stem system can become roots, meaning that you can theoretically snip off a tomato plant anywhere, put it in ideal conditions, and a new tomato plant will start growing.

How to propagate free tomato plants from older plants: snip off the armpit shoots and put in water. pic.twitter.com/skIe3W5DlO

— Holly Wood (@girlziplocked) June 6, 2015

So where is the best place to snip? The armpit. I don't know what this is called. I could look it up, but I won't. Basically, as you can see in the first photo, shoots will emerge from the armpit of a branch and the main stem. These shoots can be pinched off and collected in a cup of water until you start seeing a new root system emerge. After about a week, you'll be able to plant the new roots in moist soil and start a new tomato plant that will effectively emerge as a clone of your previous tomato plant and your garden will be full of tomato clones.

How to Grow Lettuce in a Bottle

Lettuce is pretty easy to grow. It's forgiving. It wants you to succeed in growing it and ultimately killing it. It's basically masochistic.

Lettuce also needs very little soil to grow, which makes it an optimal container plant. Unlike tomatoes, which need lots of soil, lettuce can probably survive in softball-sized amount of soil.

So making tiny greenhouses for your lettuce is very easy. You could do it with an empty water bottle.

Simply take the a bottle (this is a Dasani bottle), remove the wrapper. Using a box-cutter, slice the bottle right below where the neck begins to curve. Fill the bottle about half-way with moist potter's soil (you can buy a small bag of it about $5).

How to grow lettuce in an upcycled water bottle. #greengreen pic.twitter.com/QnJDs9d8Ur

— Holly Wood (@girlziplocked) April 30, 2015

Plant three tiny little lettuce seeds by just placing them on top of the soil and pressing down with your finger. Lettuce doesn't really need to be "buried." Then place the top of the bottle back on, leaving the cap off. Use a spray bottle to keep the soil moist and place in a window or anywhere there is sunlight. The bottle will protect your baby lettuce from getting eaten by critters, so you can be more daring with where you put these. Once they start growing full size, it's fairly easy to pull the rootball out and replant it, if you want. You can also harvest baby lettuce straight from the bottle.

This lettuce shown here is baby black seeded simpson. Each packet of seeds (about $1-2) could probably cover at least 20 bottles if you got ambitious.

Sprouting Lentils

Everybody wants to have fresh greens in their diet. If you don't, you should. But when people talk about why they want fresh greens, a lot of the time they don't think about the science. You want fresh greens because the closer a plant is to its natural state, the richer its store of vitamins, minerals and enzymes that will, over time, deteriorate and dissipate--meaning the stuff at the grocery store is losing nutrients every minute it sits on a shelf (which is also the reason I try to tell people to buy frozen over fresh produce when it doesn't make a culinary difference).

But sprouts--oh man. Technically, sprouts you grow at home from dormant seeds and legumes. Most of us already have dormant seeds and legumes in our house. Like lentils. 

Cooked traditionally, lentils are good for you. Full of fiber and protein. But sprouted? 

The sprouting process changes the nutritional composition of lentils. There are obviously debates about whether any of the this matters, but remember, I err on the side of science that says we haven't yet identified all the things in plants that assist the body. Nor have we figured out a way to deliver these things in isolation so they can be assimilated. There's a breakdown in our scientific understanding of how food affects the body and you really don't want to trust your virility to it. You should just eat more plants and err on the safe side.

So sprouted lentils. Like I said, the process of sprouting lentils changes them. They change from seed to plant. By soaking them, you germinate the seed, telling it to wake up, producing enzymes and catalyzing the growth of new plant cells. These new plant cells are (*shocker*) tiny plants. In other words, sprouting is like gardening, but really, really tiny gardening.

Sprouts!!!! pic.twitter.com/lgLZ55MxoV
— Holly Wood (@girlziplocked) April 27, 2015

How to prepare sprouts:

1.  Soak your sprouts in water over night (12 hours or so), using at least 3x as much water as you have lentils. They will absorb the water and triple in growth.
2. The following morning, drain your lentils in a colander. Rinse them. For expedience, you can just keep your lentils in the colander, since you'll be rinsing again
3.  Rinse at least twice a day for three days, keeping your lentils in a dark area, away from sunlight.
4. In 2 days, you'll start seeing little tails.
5. On the third day, they are ready to eat. You can eat them raw in salads.

More info on sprouting? Try here. 

Grow Your Own Pea Shoots Stupid Easy

Pea shoots are a fancy, rich-person green. You can find them adorning canapes, which are French for bougie-shit-on-crackers. They cost like a million dollars.

la-deee-daaaa

You can also, you know, eat them like a human being and reap the insane nutritional benefits that come from eating sprouted seeds and beans.

For less than a dollar, you can grow pea shoots in practically any container that will hold 2" of moist dirt.

One bag of green peas (98 cents) planted in whatever refuse you have will grow super healthy pea shoots. #greengreen pic.twitter.com/z80Id0lnLW
— Holly Wood (@girlziplocked) April 15, 2015

So, basically, you need to buy a bag of WHOLE (not split, dumbass) green peas. These are found wherever they sell dried beans.

Then, you soak them for about 24 hours. You could go ahead an soak the whole bag, but each pea will produce one shoot (duh) and you'll be hard pressed for containers if you go this route. Try a quarter of the bag first.

Then fill your containers with dirt. Practically any crappy dirt will work. Seriously. I tried this with clay-laden dirt from my backyard and they still grow pretty well. But for your purposes, I mean, seriously, you could just go steal some dirt. Dirt is free. Go find some.

Ok, then you basically just toss your soaked peas over the dirt and sprinkle a little dirt on top. That's it. Donzo. Keep it moistened and in a relatively sunny spot (windowsills work fine). They're idiot proof.

Here's what they'll look like after four weeks:

Pea shoot harvest day! Imma gonna eat youuus. #greengreen pic.twitter.com/BQlkEjkxYV
— Holly Wood (@girlziplocked) April 15, 2015

Weekly pea update pic.twitter.com/6IMFCj2BQU
— Holly Wood (@girlziplocked) April 9, 2015

You can repeat the process repeatedly all year long. These things are really good for you. You can eat them in a salad or prepare them pretty much any way you might prepare spinach. You eat the entire thing, so grab a pair of scissors and snip when they reach around 4" tall.

Holly's Green Smoothie Recipe

So between January and February, I started feeling very ill and fatigued. I couldn't stay awake for more than a few hours at a time. Eventually, I went to the doctor and yeah, I don't want to go into it, but I was sick. 

During March, I tried a bunch of things to feel better. Then one day, I decided to just do what made the most sense to me: walk a ton and eat a ton of spinach. The thing is: it worked. I feel a million times better. My skin has cleared up. I'm more energetic. I can think more clearly. Things are looking up.

Today, in honor of walking my 900th mile since April 1, I'm going to share with you my green smoothie recipe. I've been drinking this by the blender every morning for the past 3 months. It's a product of a lot of trial and error. 

 I've gone ahead and put all the ingredients into Cronometer so you can see just how insanely good for you this recipe is. 

You can buy ALL of these ingredients with the exception of Stevia in the Raw at Trader Joes. You can buy Stevia drops at TJ's, however, and they will work just as well. I personally moved to Stevia in the Raw because I wanted to eliminate all alcohol from my diet (like vanilla extract, the drops contain alcohol).

Holly's Green Smoothie Recipe

6 oz. Frozen Strawberries (1/2 bag)

8 oz. Frozen Spinach (1/2 bag)

1/2 Banana

2 cups Unsweetened Almond Milk (Vanilla or Plain)

2 cups of water

Stevia in the Raw (to taste - I use about 1/4 cup. Don't judge me.)

1 tsp. Chia Seeds (optional)

1 tsp. Flax Seeds (optional)

1) Put everything in a blender:

2) Drink it.

3) DRINK IT EVERY DAY.

As you can see, for a measly 300 calories (for the entire blender), I'm hitting most of my vitamins and then some. I take an Emergen-c Packet alongside my smoothie to cover the B vitamins and: 

BAM. That's breakfast and I'm awesome.

Good luck, guys! 

Vegan Gingerbread Kids

This recipe is my vegan adaptation of a traditional recipe found in the Alpha-Bakery, Gold Medal's Children's Cookbook. It's not perfect eating (boo flour boo), but I've made the recipe vegan using coconut oil instead of shortening and it makes a cookie that you can decorate with icing and/or build Gingerbread tardises out of.

Vegan Gingerbread Cookie Dough

1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup of dark brown molasses
1/2 cup of coconut oil (softened, but  not melted)
1/4 cup of water
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp baking soda
2.5 cups of white flour

1. Beat sugar, molasses, coconut oil and water in large bowl with electric mixer until relatively smooth. (Coconut oil will probably make tiny little lumps--s'ok. Deal.)

2. Add rest of ingredients to make dough

3. You can optionally chill the dough for 2 hours to make roll-out cookies.

4. Shape your cookies to be about 1/4" thick.

5. Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

6. Makes about 5 or 6 biggish cookie shapes that will stay relatively puffy but will harden as they cool. Once they harden, you can decorate them.

We made gingerbread sonic screwdrivers and daleks. We ate them, though. This is what remains.

Dairy-Free Instant Chocolate Pudding

A lot of recipes for dairy-free pudding require you to have in your possession a ripe avocado. In life, ripe avocados are like four-leaf clovers. But I've recently learned that there is bottled avocado oil!

Dairy-Free Instant Chocolate Pudding

1 14 oz. box of silken tofu (here from Trader Joe's)
1/2 cup avocado oil
3-5 tablespoons of brown sugar
1/2 cup of cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla extract

Dump all ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth (or use an immersion blender). I can't recommend a nutrilbullet enough for this kind of task, though.