Veggies & fruits

Piri

The UN General Assembly designated 2021 the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables (IYFV). 🍏🥑🥦

So how do you choose your fruits & veggies?

Do you grow them in your sustainable garden?
Do you buy them from local ecological farms?
Or maybe exchange with your neighbors?
Do you buy them in the farmers markets or regular stores unpacked?
How do you avoid their waste?

I am far away from being a gardener, but a great seed supplier to my parents! 😁 This coming season we will enjoy different tomato, cucumbers (this time African ones as well), potatoes, colourful beetroots, carrots, parsnips, eggplants, courgettes, peppers, butternut squash, leeks, kale and many more greens, berries and fruits. And usually have some preserved goodies for winter.

But we still always want tropical fruits and vegetables... So we try to buy the ecological ones, just the prices sometimes are too high.

Egle-K

Piri This coming season we will enjoy different tomato, cucumbers (this time African ones as well), potatoes, colourful beetroots, carrots, parsnips, eggplants, courgettes, peppers, butternut squash, leeks, kale and many more greens, berries and fruits.

Maybe you can put me in contact with your parents, I can also be a seed supplier 😁

I like the idea of growing everything, I know I want to do it but I do not have the place and never make the time and I do not think I have knowledge or am skilled at it. Mostly it is just not having the place though, I do not want to grow just one tomato or one lettuce in my window, it does not make so much sense to me.

Žaklīna

Piri Or maybe exchange with your neighbors?

I would love to do this but it is not so easy in the city to find anyone who grows anything to swap with, so I guess this is always going to be more of a small place idea. My mom gets eggs from one neighbor and swaps some veg that she grows with another one or two. They still all need to go shopping normally as well but a lot of the basic stuff gets covered that way.

Piri

Egle-K 😁😁😁 I promise we will invite you for some amazing dinners when we will finally be in Lithuania and maybe will make some take away goods!

Arvīds

Egle-K I do not want to grow just one tomato or one lettuce in my window, it does not make so much sense to me.

You could still grow herbs, small tomatoes, wheatgrass. They are all good and take no space, some herbs are hard to kill and really easy to grow.

Piri

The community gardens in the cities are already appearing in Lithuania, the more known Silainiu in Kaunas and Miesto Laboratorija in Vilnius. While in Spain is it going for a while. As well gardens on roofs. I think it is a great initiatives of course takes an effort to keep it running, and if the pollution is high it is not so healthy.

But some shops already have the roof gardens , in India roof gardens are booming.

Skylar

I try to buy them directly from farmers who go to farmers markets or sell online, but buying online normally means that even no packing products end up in packaging. 🙄

Piri

Skylar it is true... There are some farms that delivers in a box to home and you give it back. It looks that this is going in many countries. For sure in Lithuania, but mainly they don't in the cities, Denmark, Mexico, it is a thing.

Vilte

We've been trying to grow some different fruit and veg over the last few years, but the soil here isn't great and the weather isn't right for a lot of the things that I would really like to grow, so they don't do very well. Probably we would need to put up a greenhouse to do better.

Basic things like potatoes, onions and garlic we grow every year, and some tomatos and beans.

Skylar

Vilte Basic things like potatoes, onions and garlic we grow every year,

These are the type of things I could probably manage to grow but they all need outdoor space and I do not have any.

Indoors things all seem more complicated, apart from some herbs, I have some of those in the kitchen window but I use them faster than they grow.

Skylar

Vilte Basic things like potatoes, onions and garlic we grow every year,

These are the type of things I could probably manage to grow but they all need outdoor space and I do not have any.

Indoors things all seem more complicated, apart from some herbs, I have some of those in the kitchen window but I use them faster than they grow.

Piri

Skylar window but I use them faster

Yes!!! You need to wait for quite long and it is gone in one day!!!! It is nice to grow of course, but so long process and sometimes so little outcome!!!

Skylar

Piri Yes!!! You need to wait for quite long and it is gone in one day!!!!

Exactly, right?

A couple of quick meals and half the plant is gone!

Piri

Skylar

Yap! This is a thing… I mean people are different, but I could eat all kind of salad greens everyday not in a small amounts like salad and green blends. And you need a great amount for it.

So looking forward to have a greenhouse and to try it out. Kale can handle even a bit of minus so probably even in Lithuania without special heating it is possible to have it in the greenhouse for quite long season, maybe beet leaves aswell.

Well I do not really like gardening part, but enjoy eating part! I mean I killed a cactus 🌵😂 so not so sure about other plants…

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