FREE AT LAST!!

 Just pulled the family free from the wild tangle of shoots & plant limbs!  We've been trapped for weeks, surviving only on raw lettuce leaves and drinking what liquids we could squeeze from the enormous stalks!


The Army sent in troops to find us but their Hummer was devoured in seconds, the lives of the brave soldiers lost to the jungle that has taken over my house!  They even sent in a helicopter, but, alas, it, too, perished somewhere between the zucchini and the cucumbers!











Thank goodness Ronan had his skateboard or we would still be in there, pinned down by wild summer squash vines!  He was finally able to extricate his skateboard from underneath a mass of sugar snap peas and skated himself to safety.




Once out, he used a neighbor's phone and called in the fire department, who, with incredible talent and bravery, hacked their way through the greenery and freed us all.





Which begs the question: where DID Laura get that plant food?

More later.

Saturday, April 23: IT'S ALIVE!!

Okay, now these seedling/sprout things have really taken off.  I think it's the cucumbers that are almost pushing the plastic lid off the cubbies and I must say, they look a little like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors.  In fact, I'm almost positive I heard a faint "FEED ME!" coming from the kitchen in the middle of the night and this morning, the cat was missing.  More tomorrow.

The Sprouts

Okay, remember the yawn of the other day? Well, Laura and I fully expected to have to wait EONS for our seeds to become seedlings.  EONS!  But, much to our surprise (and delight, I might add), we saw the fruit (yeah, okay, pun intended) of our labors almost instantly.  Within 2 days of planting (so, that would be Tuesday) there were tiny sprouts peeking from the dirt!  Not every cubbie had activity but there was definite stuff happening in a few of them.  YIPPEE!!!  I called Laura immediately (we decided to keep the starter kit at my house, as I have good southern exposure) and she came right over to inspect our "babies".  Oooh, so cute!!!  We were as proud as any parents of newborns.

The Seeds

Sunday, April 16th.  We plant the seedlings.

We did a little tweaking on the garden plans and drew ourselves a map - this is so we would remember into which cubbie we planted each seed.  After all that planning, we weren't about to toss the seeds into our indoor planters without knowing which was which, right?  So, we drew ourselves a map (or plan-o-gram, if you will) and started planting.  Frankly, it was a little anti-climactic.  Really, the most exciting thing was adding water to the compressed soil pellets they gave us for each cubbie.  A few drops of warm water and these suckers started to rise like leavened bread on fast-forward.  Cool.  And just a little creepy.

Anyway, we stuck the seeds into the soil, watered them, and covered them with a clear, plastic cover.  Big deal, we now have 108 cubbies of dirt.  Yawn.  What's next?

(See, that's the problem with our generation - and I'm including myself in this group - we want everything to happen in an instant.  We get FAST food at a restaurant, we can microwave our meals in seconds, we save for nothing because we can buy on credit, we have information at our fingertips, we can talk to people whenever, wherever, and however we want, we text rather than write, and why waste time typing entire words when acronyms will do?  Our planes go faster, our cars go faster, our children have traded in their bikes for motorized scooters, even our parents have traded in their walkers for electric get-abouts.  No wonder the idea of actually growing our own food is both intriguing and frustrating.)

The Planning Continues

The day finally arrived, last Friday, April 15th.  Laura and I were Ready To Plant.  Or so we thought.  Turns out, we still needed to do a little more planning because some of our veggies required direct planting into the soil, while others needed to be pre-planted then transplanted into the soil.  So, back to the drawing board for us.  Fortunately, we found this amazing website that gave us tons of information about planting (how, when, how many per square foot, etc.) and it also included a drag-and-drop plan-o-gram for whatever sized garden we wanted!  The name of the company is Gardener's Supply Company and here is a link to the website: (http://www.gardeners.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-Gardeners-Site/default/Home-Show)

Once we planned out our garden, we realized we would have enough space to plant three separate rows of the same grouping of veggies.  That meant that we can make up the beds in the beginning and then space out our actual planting so that we'll have a "continuous bloom" of food.  (Not for us will there be the dilemma of harvesting 30 heads of broccoli and 250 tomatoes over a weekend!!)

So, for the record, here is what we're planning on planting:

BED #1:  corn, green beans, and sugar snap peas

BED #2: cherry tomatoes, leeks, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, and summer squash

BED #3: large tomatoes, brussel sprouts, cucumbers, romaine lettuce, and mesculin lettuce

BED #4: more tomatoes, green peppers, and more sugar snap peas

BED #5: oregano, rosemary, chives, cilantro, and basil

The Planning

Okay, wahoo! We're committed.  Now what?

This next stage involved some serious investigation and research.  We scoured the Internet, bookstores, and our local library for the best veggies to grow in this climate, the best way to plant, the various products to improve the soil, the necessary tools and equipment to actually work the soil, the very best heirloom seeds to plant into the now-rich-with nutrients-and-expertly-worked soil and the organic, miracle growth products we could purchase to make our veggies the ABSOLUTE BEST THEY CAN BE!!  After careful calculations, we figured our garden would cost us approximately Seventeen thousand, four hundred, fifty-two dollars and eighty-six cents.  Per month.  Hmm, onto PLAN B.

Plan B consisted of going to the nearest Home Depot and picking out whatever seeds they had there that sounded even remotely interesting.  I liked Plan B.  So did Laura.

Off to Home Depot and, $30 later, we came home with a nice handful of seeds for a variety of vegetables that our children may actually eat without threat of bodily harm or loss-of-tv privileges, some bamboo stakes, some earth-friendly twine, and a super-cool GET YOUR SEEDS STARTED kit with  108 cubbies for little, fledgling seedlings.

At this point, I absolutely MUST put in a plug for this amazing internet business, run by Gary Ibsen and Dagma Lacey called Tomatofest, the tomato lover's paradise (www.tomatofest.com).  They came highly recommended to me by a friend who has been harvesting his own vegetables in a plot similar to ours for 6-7 years now.  He raved about the quality of their product and their service.  I placed a small order from them and absolutely must agree.  Their customer service was top notch, their personal attention to detail was outstanding and the seeds arrived in plenty of time to plant in our GET YOUR SEEDS STARTED kit.  They even threw in a bonus pack of White Rabbit seeds for us to try.  (I can't wait!!)  At this rate, we'll have tomatoes coming out of our ears (or would that be corn?) but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.  For now, we're excited to get these seeds into the dirt and watch them grOWWW!!

The Plan

Our suburb has this fantastic deal over the summer: pay them $49 and they will assign you a 25' x 30' plot of land that they "turn over" for you in May and which you can turn into a veritable Utopia of Edibles.  (But act soon, because there's only 1 plot left!)

Yes, by the time we'd called the park district, all but one plot had been taken: Plot Number 3.  We were, understandably, a little worried.  What was wrong with Plot Number 3?  Was it in a flood plane?  Was it under a  crosshatch of electrical wires?  Was it the repository of a chemical dump, whereby the veggies were ENORMOUS yet anyone who ate them gradually developed a faint greenish glow and bore children with the propensity for extra digits and a third eye?  

We made an investigation of the proposed location of Plot Number 3.  On first (and second) glance, there appeared to be nothing dubious about the location (no glowing clumps of earth, no alien-like, green tendrils snaking heavenwards from mysterious crevasses), except, perhaps, a greater hike to the water pump and a tendency toward shade in the late afternoons.  Laura and I measured, examined, took notes (like we really know what we're doing, here) and then exchanged an identical glance, shrugged and told the park district we'd take it!

Future Site of Plot #3

The Ground - Up Close & Personal