Mary Kate’s Awesome Salad Shooter (Tower Garden by Juice Plus+)
Dear Beautiful Blossom!
“What is this glorious salad shooting thing I speak of?” you ask.
OH MY YUMMY GREEN-EATING GOODNESS! So glad you asked.
Let me introduce you to my affectionately dubbed “Salad Shooter”! (I name everything: my trees, my computer, my phone, … it just makes life more fun being surrounded by friendlies!)
My Salad Shooter is delicious green growing goodness!
It’s year round yummy nummies for my hungry tummy!
It’s ease. Convenience. Independence. Self-sufficiency.
My Salad Shooter is the answer to many questions. The solution to problems. My Salad Shooter is easy, happiness, yummy convenience in my kitchen. My Salad Shooter is LOVE!
Why do I have a Salad Shooter (aka Tower Garden by Juice Plus+)?
So just over a year ago, this thing happened. It’s still happening. You may recall and be aware … the pandemic. (BTW: pandemics kinda super suck, … right?!!!!)
Well, so … last year 2 inciting things happened that made me stop and re-evaluate our food supply.
The first was the food shortages and dangers we saw everywhere. Grocery store shelves were empty. Access to food was immediately a health-jeopardizing outing … going to the grocery store could get you sick … and you could die … wuuuuuuuuuut???? (Remember how we were all once washing off all the packaging groceries come in? Well, I was all like, how do you safely wash produce that you don’t cook, like salad and greens?)
The relative safety of normal, everyday outings was gone. And that impacted so many aspects of our lives.
I wanted to be able to eat green without being worried about getting sick from a “community source” of food.
The second thing is that the pandemic made me look at how I live life and my interdependence on others. My reliance on outside factors. My consumption of goods. My impact on the world around me. … And it made me think I needed to use this pandemic time to create a better way of living for me and for my honeybun.
So, when my awesome chiropractor from New Hampshire, Dr. Bryan Natusch (a rep for Tower Garden by Juice Plus+) put a video up on his FB wall of this “new”*** fangled salad growing device he was growing green goodness on, I was all like … What is this glorious salad creator? And we talked and talked. He shared more videos. And I was IN!!!
I hollered out: Send me my Salad Shooter ASAP! And I’ve been growing goodness in my kitchen ever since!!!
*** Tower Garden by Juice Plus+ have actually been around for a while. So when I say “new,” I mean new to me knowing about them.
How Does a Tower Garden (my Salad Shooter) Work?
When I show snaps of my Salad Shooter to peeps, they goggle-eye with a dropped jaw and utter, “That’s. So. COOL.”
I know, right?!!!
And then they ask … how does it work?
The short of it is: water + nutrient solution + air + Tower Garden + seeds + light = Yummy Nummies for your Tummy Tummy.
It’s an incredibly water and energy conserving way to grow your own produce! And the peeps at Juice Plus + made a cool, short but helpful info video which shows you Green Growing AMAZINGNESS!
After the video, I’m gonna share my growing goodness from my most recent starting point with snaps and chat, so you can get an idea of what Green Loving Yummy Goodness I’m talking about. (Inside note: You can replant and start afresh every number of months depending on which plants you’ve grown and their needs.)
The video you are about to see shows you the Flex Tower Garden, and I’ll be showing snaps and chat with my Home Tower Garden. They both work the same. They are different sizes of Tower Gardens: Home (for salads, greens, and herbs) and Flex (for salads, greens, herbs, and many other biggerish plants like tomatoes, watermelon, broccoli, zucchini, celery, and more).
I love my Home (Salad Shooter) so much I recently expanded with a Flex (not named yet). We are finishing our basement with a year round growing area for our Towers and other plants … so I’ll have even more to share as I grow my growing capabilities and experience!!!!!
For now, let’s show you a quick video so you can see how Tower Gardens grow plants. No dirt. Aeroponics = water + nutrient solution + air = yummy nummies for your tummy tummy!
Mary Kate’s Current Growing Cycle Snaps and Chat
Getting Started!
Snaps tell a thousand words … or for us … make us hungry! LOL.
My first snap at first glance looks maybe a little lack luster … cuz it’s just baby plants … seedlings. Buuuuuuuut … a cool thing is that most of my seedlings were ready to transplant onto my Salad Shooter within 2 days. The few remainder seedlings were able to be transplanted 2 days later.
I transplant to my Salad Shooter when the seedlings are about 1 – 2 inches tall. And I use a cool trick I learned while in grad school for growing seedlings up fast. (I did cell biology research in a lab that used pumpkin seedlings as model plants.)
What is this trick? Well, after you put the seeds and water in the seedling tray, you close up the tray and cover it with a towel for a couple of days. The seedlings, desperate to find light quickly will “shoot up” fast.
The faster you get your seedlings onto your Tower, the faster you get to eat yummy nummies!!!
Mary Kate’s Current Growing Cycle Snaps and Chat
The WOW Factor!Having my Salad Shooter is delight on so many levels!
One: Look how fast salad, greens, and herbs grow!
Two: Getting to eat mouth-watering, super healthy, free-from-pesticides-yucky-chemicals, super green diverse (kale, chard, arugula, leafy greens, herbs … you can grow a tasty, beautiful variety) salads within 3 weeks is AWESOMENESS!!!!
Three: It’s in my kitchen. We harvest practically every day!!! It’s RIGHT THERE! Clean, ready to eat right off of the Tower, and deeeeelicious! (No grocery story. No other human hands, or coughing mouths, sneezing noses, or germy hands touching your delicious food!) Self-sufficiency and independence!!!! I love it!!!!
So … check out real time growing!
A little kale plant baby … growing up so nice and bright and green … for me to devour!
Mary Kate’s Current Growing Cycle Snaps and Chat
Let’s Eat!
After about 2 1/2 weeks we were able to harvest our first salads. We each got a medium-ish bowl of salad (bigger than restaurant sized side salads). By a couple of days later, we were eating BIG bowls of salad … like cake mixing size bowl for me and serving dish size for honeybun … every day!!!
To put our salad eating sizes in context to “normal” human salad eating, our daily harvest is enough for a family of four, easily. There’s lots to gobble, and it’s so good for you!!!
Here’s one of my early salads. I go pretty simple … lots of greens, some dried strawberries, walnuts (gotta have those helpful essential fatty acids to help absorb all of the chlorophyll and pigments and phytonutrients in those green leafies!!!)
Isn’t the color gobble-worthy? All that green yumminess!
One of my favorite things to eat is Zasta (pasta with zucchini noodles), or in a pinch, gluten-free pasta with marina sauce, Italian seasoning, mozzarella cheese, HANDFULS of fresh basil (grown on my Salad Shooter), and a sprinkle of parm.
I love how I can green up every meal. Smoothies. Salads. Green on top of pasta … Green, green, green, green, green!
It’s healthy goodness made as easy as walking over to my Salad Shooter and harvesting right onto my plate or into my bowl!
If that doesn’t make you hungry … how can that be??? LOL
So yeah. You may have guessed by now. But I love my Salad Shooter so much I bought the next bigger up Tower to gain variety in my growing power. And I even became a rep for the Tower Gardens!
Growing is so easy, so healthy, so good for you, and it helps create food independence! I love that, and I want to help you have it, too!
Future Growing Plans!
I will keep on growing salad greens and herbs on my HOME (Salad Shooter)!
Once our basement growing room is completed, I plan on planting watermelon, cantaloupe, broccoli, zucchini, and cucumbers to get started on my new FLEX (name TBD)!!!
It will be my first ever time trying to grow a diversified indoor garden year round. Can’t wait for our basement growing room to be complete! I’ll blog about it when we get there! I have plans to grow on my Tower Gardens, plus additionally, I plan on having a root veggie bag garden, and some dwarf blueberry shrubs and lemon trees. I’ll have to phase it all in, and adapt and grow with my own learning and experience … but I am excited! I am excited about being able to grow my own clean, healthy food!
I am excited to be able to grow more energy efficiently, conserving water, and having easy independence!
I am excited to eat these delicious yummy nummies … and right in the convenience, ease, and safe-cleanliness of my own home!
Thank you for being here with me as I grow my food independence and share my yummy nummy snaps with you! I hope you wanted to gobble your screen!
Big Loving and Big Hugging YOU … PINK & GREEEN!!!
