“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.” -Alfred Austin
For all the planning I did and building the garden I still started my seeds a few weeks late. Thankful here in Zone 9a we have a very long growing season. Which I’m very grateful for because I’m the worst procrastinator :/
I was so excited to start this garden because it was finally all my own space. I didn’t want to go to the hardware store and pick the same vegetables that I don’t really like. So I flipped through catalogs and chose seeds that would work best for my cooking. If I was going to finally really do this I wanted to look at what I actually eat over the year, what I buy every week at the market, and how I wanted to challenge myself in the kitchen.
But that isn’t as easy as it might sound. There are so many things I would love to grow and more importantly what I have space and time to grow.
After a lot of research, I was planning on starting all of my seeds in red solo cups, but for my birthday my Stepmom thoughtfully got me these pods and seed start soil. So I tried both ways instead, which was a great learning experience. They both worked really well. I should have moved the pods to larger containers once the pods had sprouted, but that is how you learn, right?
I think moving forward I will use containers with a soil mix because they were less weak, leggy, and later transferred better to the garden. But the point is to learn and there is always next season. I don’t take any of this as a failure, you have to learn through experience. I’m grateful I can just go to the market and pick up what I want, but I don’t have to survive on my plot so this is to learn as much as I can.
Eventually I would love to be able to be self sufficient but it takes work and you have to have time to put into your garden.
