Garden 2.0.09

Even though a week ago it was still snowing here, when I went grocery shopping at Smithy's last Saturday they totally indulged my desire to pretend it's spring by having a Start Your Garden Indoors! display.

They had seeds for everything, and those little peat moss things (or fake peat moss since using real peat moss is Bad for the environment) that expand so that you can start seeds indoors. In all sizes! I could start a few seeds, or a lot of seeds, or a ton of seeds. Of anything.

And even though I do know it's not really spring yet, I totally bit. I bought it ALL! Well. A lot of it, anyway. I won't need more seeds for a long, long time.

I knew I wanted to start growing fresh herbs for my kitchen (I think this was even on my 101 list), so I got the Kitchen Herbs kit, which came with six little pots and seeds for Basil (mmmm), Chives, and Parsley.

And then I chose the seed growing kit that had 72 cells (instead of one with 50 something or 30 something.) And I chose seeds. I'm growing: cilantro (which is also coriander. Who knew?), rosemary, mint, oregano, thyme, onions, cauliflower, broccoli, cantaloupe, arugula, celery, peppers, and mixed lettuces.

Here are some of the lessons that I learned from my garden last year:

- Buy little plants instead of using seeds, especially for tomatoes and strawberries. Otherwise, it takes all season for them to grow to be big enough to give fruit and then there isn't enough time for them to grow things before fall.

- Don't plant anything outside until after it's done snowing.

- The little pods that are not just dirt (so that you can plant them in the tiny pot they grow in) are cool, but they make me feel concern for the roots that aren't strong enough to break through.

- Even though seeds are tiny, you don't have to plant a whole lot for them to grow.*

- Thinning a garden is not fun, because you have to take little plants (!) that worked so hard to grow from being teeny tiny seeds (!) that are totally viable (!) and just throw them away (!)

- Science has a lot figured out, but God has even more figured out.

- Plants need sufficient light to grow. If the package says it needs direct sunlight, partial sunlight for a few hours isn't going to cut it.**

Anyhow, I got the stuff, and I planted it. I planted the little kitchen garden first, and then I planted the other stuff. I came up with a plan so that things would stay organized:

I used my label machine to make little labels for some of the things on the sides so that I would remember what was where on the actual thing.

And then I put it up on the plant shelf in my kitchen window and left it.

AND THEY GREW!

I planted this stuff one week ago, and here are pictures from today:

I still need to figure out who had the garden in front of our house last year. We have a triangular space about 1o' x 15?' that someone used for gardening last summer. If it was the girl who used to live where I am now*** then it's my garden now. If not, I may have to fight someone for it, I mean share nicely. In either case, I plan to get a bunch of pots for outside since Krista's garden thrived last year, and hers was in pots, and mine didn't and wasn't.

* But that didn't keep me from planting several lettuce seeds in each cell. Because they're just so tiny. Annnnd, now they're all growing. Of course.

** Hooray! I have great sunlight at this house.

*** Likely, since she had a ton of plants in this apartment--hanging, on shelves, in pots outside.