Life As Their Mom: We’re going to grow some veggies.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

We’re going to grow some veggies.

Last year we went all out and bought the Jiffy Professional Greenhouse Kit and planted pumpkins, squash, okra, carrots, and um, something else. We got all organic seeds and the big boys and I spent an evening getting it all set up. Then we babied it, and watched it, and watered it, and followed the directions to a tee.

Then we noticed the only thing that survived and prospered to planting time was the squash and pumpkins. But that was fine – we could live with that. Then we got these nasty black caterpillars that came and ate all our poor baby plants. To put it mildly, we weren’t too happy with how our little foray into gardening went, and it just reminded us why the only plants we have are our hardy bushes and azaleas out in our front bed.

A few weeks ago Bella found some seed packets that somehow ended up in one of the drawers in the kids’ dresser and ever since she has been begging us to plant them and make a vegetable garden. It’s all the girl talked about for days and days. But we really didn’t want to spend a ton of money on it again in case those nasty caterpillars came back. We had just finished a large container of eggs and it just so happened to be a biodegradable container – so we picked up some dirt this weekend and decided to plant us some veggies.

What you need -

seeds (we used carrots, lettuce, and watermelons)
potting soil (we used Miracle-Grow Organic Choice Potting Mix)
2 egg carton bottoms (ours we’re 2.5 dozen)
toothpicks
saran wrap

Directions -

The plan is after the plants get growing and about 2-3 inches tall to use a knife and carefully separate the compartments and just plant it all straight into the ground.

We aren’t the first to come up with this idea. As a matter of fact, the reason I thought to do this was when I was in elementary school our Mother’s Day gift one year was flowers we had been growing in egg cartons. But you can find other examples of this here, here, and here. And as a note – you’re going to want to keep something under this, I have a cookie sheet with 1/4 inch edges under mine, to keep the wet from ruining your windowsill.