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Grow Your Own

© Donna Dunn

Sometimes, it isn't just the prices in grocery stores that are scary -- sometimes, the actual grocery produce looks kind of scary, too.

In my neck of the woods, this past winter has seen some very scary prices for lettuce, most of which appears to have seen better days. So I've been inspired to visit my local garden store, pick up some lettuce seeds and soil mix, and am going to try to grow my own.

I know very little about gardening, although every year I do try harder and my backyard vegetable patch is slowly improving. So while I'm understandably a little wary about this adventure, I've found lots of excellent help online.

If you'd like to try growing at least some of your own produce and would like to learn more about nutritional values, Hopkins Technology can help you find the nutritional rundown of various foods, including vegetables. Using the USDA survey database, this type of search might be a good starting point if you've never done any vegetable gardening before, and can get you thinking about what exactly you may want in your garden.

Once you've been inspired, your next stop should be The Green Gardener. The article takes you through all the steps, from planting your seeds and nurturing your new plants, to hardening off your plants before moving them outdoors if you choose. If the growing season in your area is fairly short, starting your crop indoors before spring planting can be a very good idea. And if flowers, not vegetables, are your passion, you can even start your own annuals indoors, and save some money at the gardening store in the spring.

Even if you don't have the space for a garden patch outside, you can still enjoy home-grown produce by using containers to hold your crops. Container Gardening - Anytime, Anywhere will tell you what type of containers may work best for you, what type of soil mix to use, and how to stake up those award-winning tomato plants you're going to grow.

Of course, if indoor vegetable gardening is truly your passion (and I can see how that could easily happen), hydroponics may be something you want to try. It seems a little complicated and possibly very expensive to me right now, but websites like Jack's Hydroponic Info Page are doing an excellent job of taking some of the mystery out of the process.

For now, though, I'm just going to stick to my lettuce-seeds-and-flower-pot-in-the-window method of indoor vegetable gardening. And if it works out, then I expect I'll be trying it again next winter, on a slightly larger scale. (Probably lettuce-seeds-and-THREE-flower-pots-in-the-window.)