My husband and I chose to celebrate Earth Day by starting a garden. Nothing crazy because we haven’t really had one before, but you know, a few things I know I would love to have around. Once upon a time when we were just dating, we planted a HUGE garden that had 60 plants in it. Epic. Fail. It was our first try, we planted it in a less than great spot and then we ended up moving. I think the key to being a great gardener is starting small. Plant stuff that is relatively easy to grow and easy to maintain. Nothing overwhelming.

What is so great about a garden? Lots of things. You get to do something for the Earth. Photosynthesis and whatnot, ya know clean some air. You also get to save time and money by not needing to buy vegetables at the store. Even better than saving time and money? They will taste better! “Fresh off the vine” isn’t a coined term for nothing. Growing organic also saves you in more ways than one.

We chose to start from seeds. Why? Oh, I don’t know. I like the challenge? We decided this time we would do some herbs and just a couple vegetables. I’m a fan of squash and Travis loves tomatoes. Two things that are easily found at a nursery should our seedlings not work out so hot. The only thing about that is I am trying to grow patty squash AKA white summer squash. It kind of looks like a pie. I can only find seeds for it and even then, I cannot find organic ones in stores. I did do an arbitrary google search and found some things but I chose not to pursue that idea this year.

To be extra uber incredibly green, we decided to skip those little dirt sacks you drop into water and watch expand to start seedlings. I saw an idea on the DIY network and thought it well suited me. Start seeds in an old egg crate. MAGNIFICENT I thought!! *Here I will share a tidbit about me. I keep “trash” lying around. You betcha. I might find a cool project to do and need that old olive oil bottle!! I have tons of toilet paper rolls, pringle cans, wine bottles, egg crates and other assorted randoms in bags on my desk. Someday I will make cool stuff out of all of it!* We picked up some organic soil (there sure is such a thing!) and organic seeds from a company called Seeds of Change that sells organic seeds at Home Depot. I grabbed some sunflower seeds because in our garden of fail, they were the only things hardy enough to survive. I decided they were pretty much fail proof and I could avoid any hurt feelings of fail by having them.

Pretty much all our seeds say to wait a week or two to allow seedlings to emerge. Some even say up to three weeks. When we planted our fail garden, I helped to speed up the process by putting a heating pad under them. Alas, I cannot find that darned thing this year so I guess I just have to wait. When you start seedlings, be sure to keep the soil moist. They’re fairly easy to get started. There are instructions on the back of every seed package, some say to start indoors, some say to just drop them in the ground. I chose to start them all indoors since we plan to container garden and I have yet to get such containers…

My little buds did not sprout in time for me to show all of you, but I will certainly get back to you when we do our transfers to containers!