Sprouts!

I planted my plan-in-advance seeds four days ago, and already I have some seedlings! Seems like broccoli is the quickest to germinate, the plants are already hitting the top of the "greenhouse." Dahlias, a few eggplants, and some zucchini have also started to sprout. This year I decided to plant more things indoors and earlier, to see if I can get the plants heartier before the intense heat hits. I also used peat discs this year, which I thought would be less messy than what turned out. But that stuff is holding onto moisture! Which means less watering, so I can just forget about it. Wonder what's going to sprout tomorrow...

Vertical Container Gardening

What a neat, space saving concept! Vertical planters, stacked up taller than me, a foot square, water flowing down, guided by gravity. And plants tucked into the corners of each cube. We saw this in Epcot, in their "Behind the Seeds" tour of their greenhouse. They'd be good indoors and out on the patio, like for herbs or strawberries. I'd bet they'd be a nice way to create a green space divider. You can buy the containers online from Verti-Gro but they're expensive. Need to figure out how to make them myself...

GreenSprouts

Welcome to my Blog, I'm excited for you to join me! While the move to TX from New England in 2009 was a culture shock and tough to say the least, it did afford us the opportunity to buy a house and with it, land. We have a small part of the yard in which to grow food and last winter we built a 4'x10' raised bed as well as put out several rows of containers for additional plants and a rain barrel to harvest water. We've also recently redone our kitchen (it was salmon pink with damaged raspberry counters when we moved in), mostly designing it ourselves. I also went back to school this semester to study culinary arts and am interested in exploring American culture's obsession with processed, low quality, cheap foods and finding alternatives to this.
"GreenSprouts" will document my attempts to develop my creativity while learning to grow my own food and flowers and cook.

I'm already planning for my produce garden for this year even though it's just January. Last year we planted in March, which was apparently too late to get started and as a result the heat interfered with fruiting. By the time September rolled around, the surviving plants gave a little fruit. By December we had picked about 450 tomatoes, several pounds of cucumbers, peppers, and beans, and pickled way too much okra for anyone's well-being.

So this year I'm starting earlier to hopefully spread it all out. I'm about to start seedlings indoors, order a few new kinds of seeds, and bug Josh to redo some of the irrigation lines in our raised bed. I'm going to try to grow tomatoes, okra, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, butternut squash, cantaloupe, onions, potatoes, raspberries, grapes, beans, peas, pumpkins, swiss chard, carrots, beets, eggplant, and a bunch of herbs this time around. I'm also looking for heirloom varieties and flowers to attract bees and butterflies.
Now I just need to figure out where to put everything...