Adventure #1: Sowing The Seeds

Spring planting is finally underway.
Micah and I put our first seeds of the season into the dirt today. I chose to use an empty egg carton to start these plants in, mostly because it was available at the time and it was free and very eco friendly, as the paper is completely recyclable. 

As you may have read, in my previous post, we built a raised garden bed, for our veggies this year. It was a super fun and easy project that you can get done in less than an hour and it only costs $30 to make.
You can read more and get the full directions HERE.

We started with 4 "Morning Sun" cherry tomato plants, 4 "Bread & Salt" tomato plants and 4 "Sweet Chocolate" pepper plants, all are heirloom seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co.

When picking my seeds, I kept a few key points in mind....

1. How much space will this plant need to grow?
2. Will this grow well in my climate?
3. What are other gardener's reviews of this plant?
4.  How long does this plant take to mature? 
   

I like to think of my garden as a living salad bowl so I chose my veggies (seeds) to reflect that. I chose to plant some nice leaf lettuce, cherry and full size tomatoes, red bunching onions and peppers.
{I will have more details on the lettuce and onions as soon as I plant them}

Morning Sun

I chose this plant for its sweet compact little fruits. I have had this variety from the grocery store and loved it, so I know it will taste even better from my own garden.

Bread & Salt

I chose this plant because, in the description, it said it was great straight off the vine with a dash of salt and that's how I remember the tomatoes from my childhood. I have very high hopes for this variety.

Sweet Chocolate

The reason I chose this plant is pretty self explanatory... Come on, Who doesn't want to grow chocolate in their garden. Yes, I know it's technically a pepper, but a girl can dream, right? Seriously though, we use multi color peppers in a lot of our dishes and I thought this would be a great addition.

I haven't had a real garden since I was just a little girl, but I can remember how much fun it was to tend to my bean plant my Mom let me keep in one of her 50 gallon whiskey barrels. I remember how proud I was to see all my hard work pay off and I hope to instill the same sense of pride in my kids and show them that raising a garden is a fun experience. Micah had a blast helping me sow the seeds and it was a great way for me to throw a little bit of learnin' in there too. I explained to him what plants need to grow and explained exactly what to expect and that it might take {what feels like} a long time for them to start to grow, but if he's patient that he would notice them growing soon. It's also a fun way to teach/re-enforce colors to little ones... and it's a great excuse to get dirty! What kid doesn't like that?!