It’s January and we’re still eating carrots from the garden – stored in the basement since fall!

Kevin’s recording studio takes up most of the space in the basement but a small room for the freezer, a sink and some shelves provide me with a bit of a cold storage for veggies. The room has a window I open on warmer days to try and get the temperature close to 4˚C. Because the cold storage is only indirectly heated, I also have an insulated insert for the window for the really, really cold days, otherwise the potatoes may get too cold.

In the fall, I realized I would have too many carrots for the fridge and I was too busy to process and freeze them. The recommended way to store carrots is in damp sand; I did not have any clean sand around, so I decided to risk it and layer the carrots in plastic buckets with loose, fairly dry soil from the garden. I topped off each bucket with a few scrunched up sheets of newspaper to maintain some moisture.

I have to admit, some of the very small carrots shriveled up and most of them have started to sprout. The occasional carrot has a soft, rotted spot and some of them taste a bit odd.  However, the majority are still crunchy and tasty. Not bad for January!

I love the look of the funky window farms sprouting up all over. On a trip to the Evergreen Brick Works in November, I got to admire a live version of a pump-free window farm that some of the staff built. Very impressive! Check it out here: http://ebw.evergreen.ca/blog/entry/window-farms

At home, I have been sprouting seeds in jars or in recycled containers for a while. Most do fairly well without supplemental light. Recently, I wanted to grow some mustard greens and I also picked up a package of Mum’s Arugula. I decided to place the containers on my window ledge, a south facing window. I like things fairly simple and I also like to reuse materials I already have. So I found an old shower curtain rod (the kind that clamps on with a spring inside) and it fits my window perfectly. I also have a SunBlaster light that I use to start seedlings in the spring and I hung it from my curtain rod. Voilà! I can supplement the amount of daylight my plants get and raise the lamp if needed. This system also allows me to use real soil and compost, instead of special hydroponics pellets and liquid fertilizers.