Eat More Veggies!

Alanna over on A Veggie Venture just had a great post about how to eat more vegetables. I think it's really easy to grab something on the go and it might taste good, but not be great for you. And with so many delicious vegetables and fruits why not eat more?

I think the best way to eat more veggies is to get more connected with your food. If you don't have space for a garden (I didn't last year) try joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Knowing where your food is coming from and trying new veggies will definitely get you eating more. And if you know you have another delivery of veggies on their way you have some extra motivation to eat up!

If you do have a little room, even just a porch like me, try planting a pot with a veggie plant. Watching it grow, tending to it, seeing how awesome it is when seedlings come up and then get flowers and finally food is so rewarding. Oh - and homegrown just tastes so much better you'll really look forward to it!

5 Days Later

The seed packet days peas take 10-15 days to sprout.

I must have some seriously over-achieving peas.

It's only been five days!

Garden Center

Gayla over on You Grow Girl has a great blog. I loved her book Grow Great Grub, so I guess it makes sense I'd like her blog.


She had a post about her lithops seedlings. I'd never heard of Lithops so of course I had to check it out. They're amazing little succulents that look like rocks and then bloom. The "rocks" are actually the leaves.


So of course now I want to try my hand at succulents. An Ebay seller was recommended and I think I'm going to buy some seeds, but that means I needed the correct soil which meant a trip to the garden center. Such a dangerous place.
I found some amazing examples of succulents, but I'm hooked on the feeling of planting and then seeing a seedling, so I'll let you know what I buy and plant!

Flower Sex

I think I need to find my boyfriend a hobby.

In November I bought an amarylis bulb and planted it indoors. It bloomed right after Christmas and had two gorgeous red and white striped blooms.

I know after it blooms and the blooms die you're supposed to cut it back so it can regenerate the nutrients and bloom the following year.

But I was lazy. I kept forgetting to cut it even though it sits in the living room and I saw it every day. Almost two weeks went past and then I noticed something odd. Underneath one of the dead blooms (that fell off a few days later) was a large bulbous growth.

I noticed this while we were watching tv and mentioned it to J. "Oh yeah, I got bored and tried pollinating it one day."

"What? Can you be charged with forcible sex act with a flower for that? So you're a bee now, is that it? What made you decide to try that?"

"I was bored and curious."

In retrospect, I'm glad he tried it. Google revealed that an amarylis doesn't take well to pollinating itself, but if it does work you get this bulbous growth which is actually several flat black seeds. The pod will eventually crack open so you can get at the seeds.

I intend to watch this thing until it cracks and then plant the seeds under my over-zealous grow lights and start my own amarylis farm. So thanks for your boredom J!!

Blueberries

Along with the seeds came my blueberry bushes. My parents have two in their garden and I have memories of going out in the morning to pick fresh blueberries for breakfast. Back then I wasn't the biggest fan of the taste of blueberries, but luckily my taste buds have evolved. Another impetus for buying some blueberry bushes is the cost of blueberries at the grocery store. Fresh or frozen those little blue antioxidant balls are wicked expensive!! I'm not made of money, but I'd like to enjoy blueberries.

When I was ordering seeds I noticed that Peaceful Valley also sold blueberry bushes and it seemed like a great opportunity. Since they flower and produce fruit, it's important to get two bushes, so they can cross pollinate. And it's also important to get two different varieties. So I went with a miniature variety called Tophat that's actually made for container gardening, and I also got a variety called Patriot. It seemed fitting since I live in Boston, and it's also a very common variety that produces lots of blueberries. High yield is fine by me!

The bushes arrived in little bags, as you can see from the previous post about their arrival. We'd been expecting them (I may have been a little neurotic and been tracking the shipment several times a day) so we'd already gone out and selected large pots and soil from Mahoney's here in Boston. The pots had to be very large since we're growing entire bushes, but not so large that we'd never be able to move them once they were filled with soil. We picked a basic potting soil with the understanding that we needed to keep it acidic.

Blueberries are masochists, a bit like grapes. If you give them rich soil with lots of nutrients they aren't going to produce very good blueberries. They like to have a hard time of it, with acidic soil, not too much water and they generally have fairly shallow root systems. The best way to organically keep the blueberry soil acidic is to include sawdust. As it decomposes, it lowers the pH level of the soil, keeping the blueberries happy.

So we planted the bluberries, spread some sawdust around the top and gave them a bit of water. We're keeping them in our sun room, which isn't heated so they can finish out the winter. They need the cold and dark to feel like they're outside, so they'll be ready to grow like weeds in the spring. I'm not sure we'll get berries this first year, but we'll take good care of them and hope for some.

Sowing Peas

Since the seeds arrived it was time to figure out when I needed to sow them indoors for them to be ready for outdoors. Some seeds can be directly sown outdoors in the pot, but others are needy and want some time inside with a grow light and heat pad.

I'm all about pampering my plants, so I headed to Amazon.com to pick out a grow light and heat lamp. I didn't want anything huge since I'm only growing enough for my patio, and I didn't want a light that would suck electricity like mad - don't need the cops showing up asking why my house is causing a spike in the electrical grid... "Officer, it's just tomatoes and peppers, I swear!"

We also got seed starter mix which is a lot lighter than potting soil so that tiny baby roots aren't suffocated. Yup, plants need air just as much as light and water!

Grow Great Grub had a table in the back to fill out based on the last frost in your area (for Boston it's generally considered to be around April 15th). Then you work backwards on how long the seeds take to germinate indoors, how long it will take them to grow to a good size indoors, and then when they can be put outside.

Most of the plants we're doing this summer can't be outside until after the last frost, so we aren't planting much for a while, but there is one plant that likes the cold. In fact, this plant will stop producing food once it gets too warm. Peas!!

Not surprisingly, pea seeds just look like dehydrated peas. Using the instructions on the back of the seed envelope I planted, watered, turned on the light and the heat pad and put on the top to create a greenhouse effect. It increases the humidity and warmth. Time to let the seeds work their magic.

Tomato Update 3

Tomato plant 1/16/11.



Tomato plant 1/30/11.




Tomato plant 2/5/11.