Megan Paska, an urban farmer and homesteading blogger, says you don’t need a backyard to produce your own food. Here are her top three indoor suggestions:
* Cuisinart butter: “Get heavy cream — it can’t be homogenized. Let it get to room temperature and then put it in a food processor. Within a few minutes you’ll see the butter curdle from the buttermilk. Once it gets into a big clump, you push all the butterfat together, strain out the buttermilk and then rinse the butter in cold water. Then wrap the butter in parchment, salt it or not, and you’ve got really good-quality fresh butter.”
* Espresso mushrooms: “You can grow oyster mushrooms indoors in espresso grounds. Wash out a bucket in hot water, then go to a nearby coffee shop and ask them to fill your bucket full of used coffee grounds. Buy oyster mushroom plug spawn [seeds] and stick it into the grounds for a couple of months. The mycelium [growing mushrooms] will eat up all the grounds, and you can divide them into new containers. You can grow them underneath your sink, if it’s dry there, or in your basement.”
* Bucket tomatoes: “If you have a really limited amount of space, you can make inexpensive self-watering containers out of a five-gallon bucket that plants will thrive in for less than three bucks. There’s plans for it all over the Internet — it’s very easy to make. You can grow tomatoes, lettuce and peppers very easily that way. Herb gardens are also really easy.”