Gardening

Now that I'm sleeping at night and actually have energy during the day, I've picked up a new venture: gardening. My mom is an extremely gifted gardener, but sadly I was never interested enough as a kid to learn from her. My project this year is a square foot garden. I learned about this technique from a friend of mine in college who had just returned from a trip to Haiti where he taught people how to grow their own vegetables more efficiently. The standard method of vegetable gardening is to plant in long parallel rows, which takes up a lot of space and usually produces much more than a typical family can use. A square foot garden is arranged as the name implies, in squares. The idea is to plant one crop per square foot - then when that crop is harvested you plant a new one in that square and you can continuously have vegetables growing. I'm doing a 4'x4' one this year and I'm planting: tomatoes, cantaloupe, cucumber, carrots, romaine lettuce, green leaf lettuce, parsley, rosemary, basil, strawberries, green beans, and some flowers (nasturtium, sweet peas, and marigolds). I have planted a few of the cool crop seeds (the lettuce and carrots) and they are growing beautifully. I am really enjoying this so far. Who knows? Maybe some of my mom's talent is genetic.