Planting the seeds...

A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust. - Gertrude Jekyll

Perhaps the best way to feel connected to your food is to grow it for yourself. There can be no replacement for the experience of nurturing a food from seed to plant to your table. I am excited to begin plans for my first organic vegetable garden. I am also very lucky to have a mother and a sister-in-law, who are both avid organic gardeners. Their advice will become invaluable to me! I have not inherited my mother's green thumb.

My property is beautiful, wooded hillside, and I love living here. However, it's not exactly prime gardening material. We have very little yard, and the soil is hard clay. When I decided to try my hand at growing food, I had to find a system that would work in very little space and poor soil. I've been reading Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew, and I've decided to try this method. I'm starting small this first year - a 4 foot by 4 foot plot. Following the square foot gardening method, though, this should produce a nice amount of vegetables.

As I go through the steps of beginning my garden, I will keep my readers updated on my progress (or lack of it.) I also hope to add photos along the way.

The first step in my garden adventure is to start my seeds. On my mother's advice, I bought a small plastic greenhouse designed for sprouting seeds. I had a lot of fun looking through all the seed packets at the store and picking out the vegetables to grow. The colorful seed packets contain the potential for so much good food! Keeping my picky 6-year-old in mind, I bought seeds for the vegetables that my family eats the most - tomatoes, sweet peppers, lettuce, and sugar snap peas. I also couldn't resist buying bulbs for red onions. I've planted my seeds in the little peat pods that came with the greenhouse. Now I just need to let the seeds of this garden teach me "patience and careful watchfulness." And trust.