In the middle of this COVID-19 pandemic, I decided it was a good time to get started on my summer gardening.
While I have an over-abundance of houseplants, I don’t have much success in growing food.
As a kid, my dad always organized and planted a vegetable garden. Each spring as a family, we would place the seeds in rows he’d hoed and pat them in under a layer of red Island dirt.
Every seed got the same treatment. Beets, lettuce, carrots, beans – they were all planted on the same day, to the same depth while big seeds were placed farther apart than tiny seeds.
Then we waited for it all to grow. There was no watering, no fertilizing, just a load of manure in the fall and a till in the spring. He was a dairy farmer and had a lot of other things to do, but he always managed to grow lots of vegetables.
These days, my yard is very shady, and the ground is full of white spruce tree roots. I’ve tried planting beans and strawberries in containers, some greens in pallets but have had little success. It's partly because of the shade and partly, I suspect, incorrect watering or soil or something.
So all this brings me indoors.
I took over an underused nook in our home and borrowed my boyfriend’s grow light for the experiment. There were potting soil and small pots at home.
I picked up seeds on our last grocery run – during the quarantine I’m not keen on making any extra stops – ending up with $35 of Burpee seeds (Canada No. 1) in bright plastic packages.
I went with mostly greens and herbs, as well as lavender (because why not try?) green onions, hot peppers and nasturtiums (edible flowers).
Since I’m trying not to make the same mistakes as before, I read the instructions on the back of the package and was careful about how deep I planted the seeds and how much light they’ll need.
The nook with the plants is in a north-facing room and gets no direct sun, but has lots of indirect light, so I figure the bright grow light for six hours plus whatever twilight the rooms’ natural light gives should mimic an ideal garden plot.
All of the plants want full sun, so the grow light will be on “vegetate” for six hours a day as per the package.
I usually forget where I planted everything by the time it comes up, so I labelled all the pots, too.
According to the instructions, I just have to keep everything moist for the next seven to 14 days and I’ll start to see some tiny leaves!
Stay tuned
Alison Jenkins is a local journalism initiative reporter. She can be reached at [email protected].
