Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The planting begins!



Yippee!!!

Thanks to the generosity of a very kind friend, we now have a lovely set of grow lights in our basement. This is a serious step up from my DIY seed starting center of previous years! I'll still be using that. But, now I can start twice as many seedlings indoor.

So, after sorting seed packets by variety and then planting/starting dates, ordering additional items and plotting it all out on the calendar, Michael and I managed to get the first seeds going over the weekend. (Pretty momentous since we had the stomach bug around these parts—ugh!) We started 3 kinds of basil, some herbs and some beneficial flowers. Next week will be tomatoes and peppers and the beat will go on and on from there. I love when we get to this time of year, when something (planting, preparing, harvesting) is on the calendar every week until late into next Fall. We'll be trying to push the envelop even more this year, with more food grown at home, and extended seasons on both ends. Pretty exciting stuff!

So, for this week's Independence Days Challenge update

Plant something Planted basil, chamomile, verbena, vining petunias, violas and yarrow. Cut back the herb garden and fertilized the asparagus and strawberry beds.

Harvest something Nibbled a few chard sprigs and some new kale leaves.

Preserve something Soaked and dried another batch of crispy pecans.

Waste Not Made seedling starting pots out of egg cartons and half-t.p. rolls with newspaper strip bottoms.

Want Not Picked up three more small Corning ware dishes with lids at the thrift store. Perfect to replace plastic-ware for leftovers in the fridge.

Build Community Food Systems – Attended the first meeting of the organic garden team at work.

Eat the Food – Used the last rutebaga in our Irish Stew. Made fudge babies with dried dates, pecans and cocoa (a good food storage treat!)

2 comments:

GIG said...

Cool set-up, Marie. Where did you put your growlights? I was wondering if you still use plastic for leftovers and lunches. What do you and Michael use for bringing your lunches to work? I've been trying to convert to mostly ceramic & glass, but when we travel (with a cooler and melting ice), and for messy salad dressings and such, we end up using the leak-proof Lock-n-Lock containers. I've heard of people being creative and using cute thrift shop finds for leftovers such as a glass candy dish with lid.

Looking forward to seeing your garden grow!

❧❧❧Janet❧❧❧

Marie said...

Hey Sarah,

We have the growlights in the basement and leave the flourescents on for the day and turn them off at night.

We do use some plastic for leftovers. We try to stick with the better plastics...but it is a bit of an oxymoron. For lunches we both use reusable thermal lunchbags and I've scored some great pyrex dishes at Ikea with removable rubber gaskets, and a set of Corning with plastic tops. I also have 4 wonderful Sigg boxes check out
http://mysigg.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=31
with rubber gaskets that are great for packing lunch. The thrift store finds are usually a little fragile for bringing in lunchboxes but great for the fridge. We also use a number of jars of varying sizes for soups, nuts, sauces, condiments and dressing, etc. Now the trick is storing all of our favorite lunch ware!

hugs to you and the gang!