Garden Beginnings

Let's start with some food. I would like to mention how easy a delicious healthy meal can be! Here's what we had last night:

The last of our Chicken Italian Sausage, lime marinated carrots, and roasted Brussels sprouts. Aww yiss. For the sprouts I preheat the oven to 400. Trim the outer leaves off the sprouts, cut in half, then toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Roast for 20-30 minutes. Or even 40 minutes depending on your crispiness preference. About halfway through I cut the sausages in half and added them to the pan with the sprouts (which I at this point flipped). For the carrots I squeezed lime juice over them then threw on some olive sea salt and let sit while everything else cooked. Every now and then I would stir them to make sure the juices coated all the carrots. THAT'S IT! Yum yum yum.

Today I'm making a pot roast and trying something a little different with it, but I'll wait to post that recipe until I've eaten it and can report on level of deliciousness!

On my to do list today was some gardening. I want to have a green thumb and am plugging away each year trying to learn how to not kill plants. You know all those easy indoor plants that are recommended for black thumbs like mine? Yeah, I kill them regularly. I read all the books and all the blogs and could write a book on how to garden and grow things, but putting it into practice still seems to escape me. I do think I'm getting better, though. 

I didn't have a garden last year because we were moving and I didn't want to try and move a bunch of big potted plants right before harvest time. This year I thought it would be fun to try re-planting produce. I've read about it a ton of times but never tried it. I had some celery, romaine, and a couple green onions to start with. The romaine is doing well and the green onions are like BAM! I should have taken pictures earlier but didn't think of it. One of the onions we've already cut and used and it's only been a couple weeks!

Was a whole lotta nuthin but eaten lettuce when it started! Ruler shows 3"

Onion #1. Seemed to be struggling at first but now lookin' like food!

Onion #2. This one took off immediately! You can see the little leg behind it where we already trimmed it. About a week and it was at 9"! This one is going strong at about 7" 

The celery is struggling. It shows signs of being waterlogged (is rubbery and leaves are slightly yellowed) so I'm letting the soil dry out a bit and I might try re-potting it with more aeration.

Sad celery :(

My other re-potting today was a shoot from one of my wandering jews, Agnes. Now here's a plant that is a daily struggle in my world. I have two - had three - and any surviving that happens is pretty much in spite of me. They're not supposed to be hard!! I'm sorry Agnes. RIP Ruth. Lazarus, you feisty bastard, you. He was originally named Abe, but then I killed him. His pot sat outside for almost a year, I even planted some temporary basil in it at one point. Froze over in the winter, dried out in the summer heat. Then one day I'm out back working on my tomatoes when I glance over and...holy shit...is that a wandering jew sprout poking out of the soil???? HE LIVES!!! So I brought him back inside and renamed him. But anyway...the shoot fell off from Agnes whom I inherited from my grandmother. I stuck her in water for a few days and waited for 

This picture reminds me there were originally two shoots. One didn't make it.

roots to sprout. Once that happens you want to make sure you get it planted before they get too waterlogged. Here she is planted. Suggestions for names?

About 3.5" or so

Last but not least, basil from seed! We had some pretty impressive basil plants in our last garden. These seeds are left over from that so they're a couple years old. I started with a ragdoll test to see if they're still viable. I saw an awesome germination percentage so I planted them suckers. I went ahead and planted all the sprouts. Later I'll re-pot the strongest of them into larger containers so they have room to grow.

Each pot has about 5 seedlings