Grow it Yourself

As much as I love going to the farmers market and find it an inspiration for cooking I also found it an inspiration for planting. If it's $2 for a head of kale but $1.50 for a packet of seeds, if I can grow it myself and get more than one head that seems like a pretty good deal. It's been a process to get ready to plant.

First we made the beds, then last Friday we rented a pickup truck and made a few runs, filling up the truck and bringing the loam mixed compost around the house to the beds. We don't have a huge yard but discovered a wheelbarrow to be invaluable. On Monday I transplanted some herbs and tomatoes we had growing in pots into one of the beds. We'd also had some type of squash growing out from our compost which I tried to dislodge and transplant but it seems I didn't get the roots so it's not looking good.

Today after going to the farmers market and having spent last weekend in a yard with bountiful raised beds I was too excited to wait any longer - and a little afraid if I did I wouldn't be able to try growing anything this year. I purchased seeds, anything that said late summer on it, and planted them. I made markers for the beds using chopsticks (from take-out) broken in half and some packing tape to tape the names from the seed packets.

This is my first attempt at growing food so it will be interesting to see how it all works and if I did it right. I was so excited at the store I bought 15 seed packets. The first thing I did was look up if there are certain things that should not grow together and use that as a guide to decide what to plant in which bed. Then I laid out the packets on the beds to see how much space I could give each item. I read the instructions on the packets for how deep they plant and how far apart the rows are. Having no experience I wasn't sure how many seeds to plant - what's the percentage of them that will germinate and grow and because it's late in the season I did not plant any indoors first to transplant outside later which was recommended for a few things so could be a problem. For each item I made little mounded rows (2-4 depending on package distance instructions) then ran my finger down the top to make a trough the recommended depth for the seeds, sprinkled the seeds in and covered them up. It's pretty incredible how different all the seeds look. I didn't have much space for any one item since I got some many different things, which also will allow us a variety of produce, so I have about half packets of seeds for everything I planted.

Once everything went in it was time to water. Just in time for the working crowd to come home and join me on a trip with the wheelbarrow to get some mulch to put around the base of the beds. Hopefully we'll see some growth in the next few weeks and in the next few months have some food!

*the mint is still in its own container so it won't take over the beds