You Wouldn't Download A Plant

Tired of going to the grocery store just to either have to deal with higher food prices or shortages? Well, we've got a solution for you: grow as much as you can.

When we say "grow as much as you can," we don't mean "become a farmer." What we do mean is learn about what is provided at your local grocery store and learn how to take better care of it. For example, have you ever tried to grow bell peppers from the store, and they didn't quite grow as expected? Sometimes that's due to what you grew it next to (ie: if you grew it too close to something in the same family the plants can cross pollinate and create an odd hybrid). Peppers are a bit odd as they are culinarily a vegetable and botanically a fruit (like tomatoes, which is also weird) - specifically they are classified as berries. These are relatively easy to seed and plant; you can either store the seeds in a paper towel for 2 years or go ahead and plant the seeds to see if they germinate. Peppers prefer warm temperatures, so they may not be the plant of choice if you live in a place that is consistently less than 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

If you like fruits, you can always try to germinate the seeds and pits of your favorites, especially those that spoil within a week of buying. Which fruits are those? That would be apricots, berries, mangoes, peaches, and plums. Fun fact: 99% of the bananas you see in the store are seedless and are classified as a berry but are technically herbs because they do not grow from a tree or bush, nor do they have a true woody stem. Fruits harvested from bulb-based plants unfortunately cannot be planted, and the bulbs themselves have to be split in order to "create more plants."

Fresh herbs also spoil pretty quickly so unless you're going to dry them or attempt to root them in water, they should also be used within the first week of buying them.

Some produce takes more time to spoil; for example apples, lemons, oranges, and limes can take 2 or more weeks to spoil. Apples are also a weird plant, though they have seeds you're extremely unlikely to successfully get an apple tree to grow. Also consider that there are male and female fruit trees, where the males are there for pollination and the females bear fruit. Apples, like oranges, are grown asexually by grafting a mature cultivar onto a seedling rootstock to ensure the same yield and identical fruit characteristics. Oranges are a bit odder because for the first few (up to 7-10) years of bearing fruits, they may not be edible. There is also the issue of whether or not the trees grown directly from seeds will be fertile and there is a good chance the fruit produced will not look like the parent.

Got produce that you want to use quickly but it's not ripe? Put it next to your bananas! Bananas produce a fair amount of ethylene, a hormone that encourages flowering and ripening in plants. So, if you want to have something ripen sooner, store it with your bananas. If you're wanting to preserve it, there are products that trap ethylene and prevent it from getting to your produce. If you don't have a product like that, it is best to keep your produce away from other produce that ripen quickly.

The more you know!