I hope you enjoyed Part 1 and Part 2 of Starting a Vegetable Garden Cheaply and Easily from Dawn Smith with Crazy Organic Mama. I don’t know about you, but I certainly learned a lot about how to get a garden started from seed. Growing my own vegetables has been something I’ve always wanted to try but, well, how do I put this? Suffice it to say that Hubs doesn’t call me “Black Thumb” for nothing. If it weren’t for him, all the plants in my house would be either made of plastic or dead. Still, I wanted to give it a try so I talked Hubs into taking me to the home improvement store to get supplies. Here’s how it went…

 

 

Getting the Vegetable Garden Started

 

 

Rather than buy some fancy seed-starting trays, I started saving my empty egg cartons. They’re the perfect size for starting plants from seed. To prepare them I cut off the tops and poked a drainage hole in the bottom of each egg cup. I used the tops of the egg cartons as a coaster to place the cups in to keep water and dirt off of the window sill. I also marked the lid in order to show what is planted where. As long as no one rearranges anything we should be good to go!

 

 

 

 

Choosing What to Plant

 

 

I knew I wanted some lettuce and parsley but beyond that I really didn’t know what I wanted to plant. Looking over the selection of seeds was pretty overwhelming but ultimately I decided to purchase seeds for plants I could grow in containers on my deck. I didn’t want to overwhelm myself so I settled on 6 types of plants – lettuce, parsley, spinach, beans, zucchini and cucumber.

 

 

 

 

Getting Ready to Plant

 

 

The beans and parsley seeds needed to be soaked overnight before planting so I put them in a small bowl of water and left them to soak.

 

 

For the rest of the seeds I put some soil in each egg cup and planted the seeds based on the instructions on the individual seed packets. I watered the seeds and placed the planters in a sunny window in my kitchen.

 

 

 

 

Now the hard part begins – being patient and waiting for the plants to sprout.

 

 

2 Weeks Later-I Have Plants!!!

 

 

 

OMG, y’all! I’m GROWING stuff! I’m so happy to show you how everything is progressing so far. I’m especially excited about the beans. I’ve never grown beans before so I’m really looking forward to eating these in a few months. Hubs and I both have done a good job of keeping everything watered and they get plenty of sun in the window I’ve chosen to put them in.

 

 

 

In the coming weeks I’ll move them to larger containers and thin them out a bit. The rule of thumb where I live is not to plant outdoors until after Good Friday to avoid frost. I’ll keep everything in my kitchen until then, and will share with you when everything gets moved outside. Stay tuned…

 

Have you started a “save on grocery money” vegetable garden? I’d love to see how it’s going-please share in the comments. I’m really excited that I have a little bit of success to share and look forward to sharing more as the growing season progresses. If I can do this I ABSOLUTELY KNOW you can!

 

Be well and God Bless – until we meet again…