I hadn't done any vegetable gardening in about a decade because when we moved to Iowa in 2010 we went away for half the summer every year so I wasn't around to take care of a garden in its time of greatest need. But I like the idea of being more self-sufficient and producing your own food, and Covid-19 motivated me to finally do just that. I was going to take a gardening class this year and plan things out to begin a garden in 2021, but a pandemic and economic crisis changes things, doesn't it? So instead I bought a book about gardening in Massachusetts and jumped right in.
I started with indoor seedlings for the first six weeks or so. I also had two hydroponic jars for basil and mint, and an indoor grow kit for strawberries.
Basil sprouts! How exciting! They were the first thing to sprout so they're special to me. 😘
The first cucumber sprout! {Can you see it? 😂}
More cucumber sprouts a few days later. They came up fast!
A few weeks in, there was nothing yet from the green peppers and strawberries.
💙💚💙💚
Success was coming up from the mint (in the jar) and the onion seedlings (in the egg carton), and of course from the two pots of wonderful and reliable cucumber seedlings.
Mint and onions (but never eaten together 😝)
The green peppers and strawberries remained shy.
My little indoor garden was on a sunny windowsill at the back of the dining room and it turned out to be a good spot for it.
Later in May I started bambino carrot seedlings in a big pot that I kept inside for the first few days.
At the end of May the plants started going on daily field trips outside to the back porch for a few hours to start getting used to being outside. They were growing well, including the green peppers--finally!
It was fun to begin a garden this way with seedlings indoors and then gradually start moving them outside. It was one of my favorite stages of gardening, nurturing their birth and newborn days! 👶
