I asked her if it wasn't possible for her to order some seeds from a seed catalogue but she said that it had been at first but now everything has stopped. So this led me to having a long hard think about what I could grow if I could only use the contents of my kitchen.
This isn't entirely new to me as I have always grown things like this since I was a child. It was my mum who helped me sow a lemon pip when I was about 8 years old, a plant I managed to keep alive for many years afterwards. At 12 years old, my friend and I tried growing avocado stones and again, I managed to keep my plant going for several years. I even managed to get the top of a pineapple to establish as a pot plant, although my dream of growing a tiny pineapple on it didn't ever happen!
As an adult, I have often wondered "what would happen if..." As such, I have ended up growing root ginger, peanut plants, an orange plant, turmeric and lemongrass. It has been fun, interesting and educational, although none of it has resulted in much to eat!
But the conversation with Amy made me take a fresh look at the resources in my kitchen. What could I grow if I didn't have access to packets of seeds? What might grow into something I could actually eat and what might just be interesting to try, especially if I were a small, eager child, excited to see something germinate?
At first I thought about the kind of stuff that I normally grow on my allotment. Which things in my kitchen have seeds in them or are seeds themselves? This includes tomatoes, peppers and squash. Unfortunately, cucumbers, aubergines and courgettes don't have mature seeds inside them. Other things, such as peas, beans and sweetcorn all tend to be picked before the seeds have matured so wouldn't be viable even if they weren't also frozen or tinned!
There are, of course potatoes, which at this time of year are busy trying to grow in the cupboard so that's a definite thing to grow. A whole new garlic bulb will grow from a single clove. And shallots will grow 6 or more new shallots from a single bulb. Onions and spring onions don't work - they would just go on to flower and I guess you could get seeds from that at the end of the season to use next year but I sincerely hope that things are back to normal before then!
I had a rummage in my cupboard for dried food and found pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and sesame seeds that I use in bread making and for my breakfast granola. I went looking for dried pulses and found some dried bolotti beans saved from last year's harvest but I was disappointed to find the lentils were all split. There is, of course, rice and that is a type of grass seed. And there was pearl barley in there too. Then I hit upon the popping corn, which is a type of mature, dried sweetcorn.
Next I raided the spice rack. Most of these are powdered so no good but I considered whole allspice berries, cloves, cardamon and maybe peppercorns. What are peppercorns anyway?! I have some crushed chilli too and on close inspection there were definitely whole seeds in there that have survived the crushing process. I can only hope that the drying process was natural or low temperature and didn't kill the seed.
Of course the dry roasted peanuts are no good as the roasting process kills the viable seed. I have grown peanuts before but they were unroasted monkey nuts and I don't have any of those in the cupboard currently. However, we do have peanuts that we feed to the birds and they should grow - I sometimes find peanut plants in the garden thanks to our little squirrel gardeners planting them!
In the fruit bowl currently I have apples, oranges and lemons that could all yield seeds. In the freezer, I have a multitude of soft fruit that all have seeds too and I don't think the freezing process would have damaged them. However, no fruit plant grown from seed this year is going to yield fruit any time soon. The best hope would be a strawberry seed but even then I would only expect fruit in the second year. Apple trees I believe need to be about seven years old to yield fruit. They are still fun to grow though, if you just love the miracle of germination.
Armed with my misscellanous selection, we headed to the greenhouse and set about sowing the seeds into flower pots. The first stage will be to see which of them manage to germinate and then we can go from there. The garlic and shallot we planted outside, directly in the ground so that they will have enough space to grow, should they be viable. And the potato we planted in an old bucket with drainage holes in the bottom. We put some lemon pips in a jar of damp cotton wool so that we can see the germination process. The avocado will have to wait until we have eaten the flesh!
In pots are have sown popping corn, pepper, chilli pepper, tomatoes, peppercorns, bolotti beans, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, sushi rice, cardamon, peanuts and pearl barley.
Now we have a tray of labelled flower pots and I must confess I am very excited to see what happens next!
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