Gardening is sucking up my soul...
Yesterday I went to a talk put on by my local Master Gardeners group. It was titled "Grow Your Own Food: Save Money & Eat Healthy". Well, it interested me because I'm trying to switch to more home-grown and home-made stuff (my efforts on the bread front are being hampered by a lack of flour and parents preferring the store-bought sandwich breads over mine... d'oh!). I have some veggies growing this year in containers, but I want more... And we have plenty of space out in the side yard that Dad was going to do some project or other with...and hasn't started in over 15 years. So I'm slowly preparing it for putting in raised beds so I can have a much bigger veggie garden.
The talk was interesting, but very general and just gave a basic overview of what you need to do, from why to have a veggie garden to where to put it and how to get it started. They also had a raffle (I didn't win anything), free papers with tips (I grabbed most of them), and free seed packets. I ended up with six of those. :D Two tomatoes (Better Boy and San Marzano varieties), two peppers (California Wonder-a bell pepper- and jalepeno varieties), and two zucchinis (Raven and Ronde de Nice varieties).
Speaking of seeds... I want to try starting my own seedlings. I'm thinking I can probably take those plastic pint-sized strawberry containers we get from the store and separate them into six compartments with cardboard, then stick them in a tray that I put water in. That'll allow them to be watered from below (so as not to disturb the seeds) and the tops of the containers can be used as mini-greenhouses to help the seeds warm up and sprout faster (though they'll have to come up as soon as the seeds sprout--not enough room). Buuuuuuuuut... I'll need to prepare an area to grow the seeds. Starting them on a windowsill is actually not a good way to get them light, despite being traditional (it makes them grow tall and spindly, rather than stalkier, and there's cold that seeps in through the windows even with the best of insulation). Starting seeds in a windowsill is doubly-hard for me because we have none that get direct sunlight! So I'll need to set up my own area for seed-starting... Which means picking a location (I'll likely have to ask my grandma if I can use her garage since we have no room here), setting up benches, getting ahold of some cheap fluorescent shop lights and setting up some way to have them just a few inches above the seedlings and with adjustable heights... I'd need a timer for the lights (those sell for cheap on eBay, though), and a seedling heating mat, since none of the potential areas to start seedlings have any heat in the winter. The seedling mat will likely be the hardest to acquire... Those things are expensive!
So anyways, to round this post off...
( Pictures of my garden, as taken a little over a week ago! )
ETA: Gah, I'm having html problems all over the place with this post...
The talk was interesting, but very general and just gave a basic overview of what you need to do, from why to have a veggie garden to where to put it and how to get it started. They also had a raffle (I didn't win anything), free papers with tips (I grabbed most of them), and free seed packets. I ended up with six of those. :D Two tomatoes (Better Boy and San Marzano varieties), two peppers (California Wonder-a bell pepper- and jalepeno varieties), and two zucchinis (Raven and Ronde de Nice varieties).
Speaking of seeds... I want to try starting my own seedlings. I'm thinking I can probably take those plastic pint-sized strawberry containers we get from the store and separate them into six compartments with cardboard, then stick them in a tray that I put water in. That'll allow them to be watered from below (so as not to disturb the seeds) and the tops of the containers can be used as mini-greenhouses to help the seeds warm up and sprout faster (though they'll have to come up as soon as the seeds sprout--not enough room). Buuuuuuuuut... I'll need to prepare an area to grow the seeds. Starting them on a windowsill is actually not a good way to get them light, despite being traditional (it makes them grow tall and spindly, rather than stalkier, and there's cold that seeps in through the windows even with the best of insulation). Starting seeds in a windowsill is doubly-hard for me because we have none that get direct sunlight! So I'll need to set up my own area for seed-starting... Which means picking a location (I'll likely have to ask my grandma if I can use her garage since we have no room here), setting up benches, getting ahold of some cheap fluorescent shop lights and setting up some way to have them just a few inches above the seedlings and with adjustable heights... I'd need a timer for the lights (those sell for cheap on eBay, though), and a seedling heating mat, since none of the potential areas to start seedlings have any heat in the winter. The seedling mat will likely be the hardest to acquire... Those things are expensive!
So anyways, to round this post off...
( Pictures of my garden, as taken a little over a week ago! )
ETA: Gah, I'm having html problems all over the place with this post...