Things a gardening newbie learned today
Jun 20, 2009 Love Your Veggies
- If you think you’ll be able to show up at Home Depot towards the end of June and find seeds, you’re in for a surprise.
- Bags of potting soil are heavy. Really heavy. And if they start to slip from your grip and you try to lift them up, they spill dirt all over you.
- By mid June, Burpee.com is done shipping tomato plants.
- The really pretty, huge, well-designed strawberry pot you saw in a magazine costs $600.
- Corn cross pollinates, and since you only have room right now to grow 6-8 stalks, you may end up producing 12 cornless cobs.
- No matter how hungry your kids say they are when you stop at the local hardware store to get seeds, look carefully at what you’re buying, because bush beans are not the same a pole beans and will not climb up the corn stalk.
- If you can’t find corn seeds, you may or may not be able to buy corn on the cob, take off some kernels, and plant them. I guess we’ll find out.
- When your husband says that he will be done with your planting tub in a week, ignore him and go out and buy containers right away so that you don’t miss planting season.
Despite all that, tomorrow I’ll be planting the tomatoes, the cucumbers, and one pot (half) of the corn. Corn is supposed to be planted in warm sunny dry weather, but that’s not coming to Brooklyn any time soon, so if I wait for that, there’s more chance that I’ll be harvesting corn in the snow. So, I’m going to plant half now in the 60-degree rain, and half in a couple of weeks in the sunny dry weather. We’ll see what happens. If/when the corn germinates, I’ll plant the beans and zucchini around them.
When I was in Chicago for the Love Your Veggies retreat, sponsored by Hidden Valley Ranch, I was raring to go. I wanted to hit the ground running with the planting as soon as I got back to Brooklyn. But the renovation, back doors, and ambitious husbands got in the way. This may not be my year for yummy corn and juicy tomatoes, but I’m going to try my hardest! What gives me hope is the memory of my sister wanting to plant tomatoes when we were kids. She cut open a tomato, put a dozen or so seeds on a paper towel to dry, and planted them. We all laughed at her. Until huge delicious tomatoes started growing.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
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Tags: gardening, Hidden Valley Ranch
I guess I was tired
May 1, 2009 Amy in the Morning, Love Your Veggies
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
I could get used to this
Apr 29, 2009 Amy in the Morning, Love Your Veggies
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
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Tags: Allyu Spa, Chicago, Four Seasons, Hidden Valley Ranch, Love Your Veggies, Uncommon Ground
Amy in the (yesterday) morning
Apr 28, 2009 Amy in the Morning, Love Your Veggies
Originally posted by Selfish Mom
I love my veggies!
Apr 7, 2009 Love Your Veggies
I’ve mentioned this once or twice on my morning videos, but haven’t written about it: I won a big contest from Hidden Valley Ranch! I entered the Love Your Veggies contest a few months ago, and I won! Me and nine other people, and I’ll get to meet them all in Chicago in a few weeks as part of my prize. We all get to go on a veggie retreat with a celebrity chef, Art Smith, and learn about growing and cooking veggies. The other part of the prize is $5,000 to donate to a community garden. I’m giving it to my kids’ public school, since they’re working on building a greenhouse for the kids.
I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to this trip. For one thing, traveling alone is a rarity these days. I’ve always loved to travel, from the cars to the hotels to eating out all the time. Being in an airport without kids is like walking around without a hundred pounds on my back. Plus, there’s a spa trip involved, and I love spas – double when I’m not paying. And the food! This contest was about yummy veggies, from Hidden Valley Ranch, so I’m expecting lots of deliciously-prepared ranch-flavored vegetables!
Of course, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t complain about it in some way, and the part I’m not looking forward to is making arrangements to be gone. I rarely travel without the kids, so there’s nobody to fall back on, no usual babysitter to lean on. The Ass, always supportive, is going to take time off from work to shuttle the kids around. Thank God for The Ass!
Part of the contest involved submitting a picture of a garden that inspires you. I was not being ironic at all when I submitted a picture of my Chia herbs (wow, second time I’ve mentioned Chia in one day!). My friend Amybeth gave me the kit for Christmas, and I’ve had a lot of fun watching them grow.
I waited too long to transfer them to bigger pots, but they seem to be doing mostly great now.
The basil smells amazing right after I water it, and tastes delicious. The parsley has more of a bite than any parsley I’ve ever bought from a store. The chives are delicious. The only dud may be the dill, which doesn’t really taste like anything yet. That was definitely the one that had outgrown its original pot the most, and the parts closest to the dirt are not green. I’ll give the dill another month, and if it doesn’t taste like dill, I’m going to re-plant it with some regular seeds and see what happens.
Here’s what they looked like a month ago when I first switched them to the bigger pots:
And here they are today:
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
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Tags: Chia Herb Garden, gardening, Hidden Valley Ranch, Love Your Veggies
