making babies

I passionately believe in people's right to feed themselves. Especially those in urban areas who do not realize just how much growing power they wield. There is so much to be said for eating food that you have tended and cared for from seedling to plate. This can mean many things for many people- from having a few potted herbs on your windowsill to having a full neighborhood "farm". That being said, I have tried several years running to have a productive garden. While 2008 was a banner year for cherry tomatoes and basil, and last year brought me a few strawberries and peas, my efforts overall have been fairly disappointing. I am hoping that changes this year and I thought I'd document my progress.

Drew and I decided to build raised beds this year. I'm also trying out a different part of the yard and picking a bigger selection of vegetables. And for the first time ever, I am starting some seeds indoors prior to planting!

I am starting my indoor venture with two types of tomatoes (cherry and Rutgers), eggplant, and green bell pepper. I was originally going to plant the seeds in potting soil filled egg cartons covered with plastic wrap. I stopped at Ace Hardware for the soil though and found these great mini "greenhouses". They were only about $8 each and are re-usable so I thought I'd try them out. They come with dried peat "pods":
After adding warm water, the peat expands creating plantable peat "pots" filled with soil.
Each pot gets 2-3 seeds. This was more of a difficult (and time consuming) task than I anticipated. The seeds are REALLY small!
The seeds are then lightly covered with soil and the containers are closed up with their greenhouse lids. This keeps the soil moist while the seeds germinate. I also labeled the containers so I know which seedlings are which. The containers are already fogging up which I hope is a good thing!
So the containers just sit covered in front of the window for 7-21 days until the seeds sprout. After that the lid will come off so the plants can get ventilation. Until then I'll just check periodically for moisture. But here they are in their temporary home! My hope is that in a few weeks we'll have some babies!
In the next few weeks we'll be fixing up the yard and buying materials for the beds. I was hoping the beds could be built this weekend but I'm not counting on it with our impending freak snowstorm.

Our other big garden/ home grown food news is that the city of Edgewater has approved us to adopt chickens! They are apparently writing new legislation regarding urban chickens as we speak but my hope is that they are merely laws to ensure the chickens are treated properly rather than limiting their ability to be kept. We are moving forward with chicken plans though including researching proper coops and taking an urban chicken class. So maybe even MORE babies in the future! We're excited!