Vegetable gardening may not be financially profitable during your first season
16.8 years ago kids
I was thinking back to my first vegetable gardening experience in suburbia a few years ago. After many trips to the local home and garden store I accumulated the following:
| Soil amendments (compost/peat moss/perlite) | $ 33.00 |
| Garden tools (rake/fork) | $ 16.00 |
| Organic fertilizer | $ 3.00 |
| Seeds and seed starter kit | $ 24.00 |
| Kid garden tools (shovel/watering can) | $ 5.00 |
| Miscellaneous | $ 10.00 |
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| Total | $ 91.00 |
In the end of the season we probably grew about $5 worth of tomatoes and fresh flowers but doesn’t even compare to the quality time spent with my daughter watering and as she would say “picking food” which made that season especially profitable.
Tags: compost, garden seeds, organic vegetables, tomato plants, vegetables
Starting my first seeds of the season
16.9 years ago germination, indoor seed starting
My two daughters and I could not take it anymore and had to get our hands dirty and start some seeds indoors. Cute to hear my 3 year old say in the dead of winter “Can we garden now?” when it is 20 degrees outside and 4 inches of snow.
Given that our last frost date is March 15th and I don’t have a good southern facing window I might regret the early start but I always have my grow box if the steps start to get leggy. I was also thinking that my grow box would be a decent way to start hardening off young seedlings with wind and temperature a little more in my control.
I normally start my seeds with netted peat pellets, but this year for environment concerns and because I am cheap I went with coconut coir. I must say I love this stuff it retains water very well, which is great for those little seedlings. The kids also got a kick out of watching the little brick expand to half fill my 5 gallon bucket after adding the 5 quarts of water. Now one lesson learned is to cut that block up into small pieces especially if you are not doing all of your planting at once.
I was planning on starting some cucumbers, lettuce, and tomatoes but apparently I didn’t save any tomato seeds from last year so looks like I am stuck with the local seed selection this year. I didn’t have any small pots around so grabbed some of my kids’ water cups and cut a hole in the bottom and filled them full of damp coconut coir and let the excess water drain and put them in a strawberry container which may work as a nice little greenhouse. If you look close enough you can see some little sprouts already starting from the lettuce in just one day. I also cut the top off a 2 liter bottle to top off one of my terra cotta pots which I planted lavender.
Tags: cheap, garden seeds, growbox, led, outdoor plants, strawberry plants, tomato plants, vegetables
