The Most Local Food Comes From…

…Our Garden!

Last night I planted the first round of seeds for this upcoming growing season.  I was accompanied and assisted by a new friend from Transition KW and briefly by my son (before he had to go to bed).  My new friend and I connected through a common interest and overlapping needs—I love to garden but don’t have lots of space, and she has lots of space but has no experience gardening.  Thanks to the gardening group that is part of Transition KW we have been brought together and will both mutually benefit!

I can be a somewhat obsessed gardener, often spending minutes (or hours) just looking at the plants really closely, searching for aphids (or worse offenders), worrying over slight color discrepancies amongst plants, or just gazing lovingly at the tender little providers.  I’m not sure what it is about a vegetable garden that makes me so happy.  I know that the food is absurdly local and that is a wonderful thing, but it’s not actually what I love about the garden.  I think I shall have to think about this more and try to decide.  But even if I can’t figure out why I love it that won’t change any of the facts—I love gardening and growing my own food, and it’s good for me and the Earth!

For this first seeding I planted three types of lettuce, two types of peppers, kale, spinach, a mild mustard (Mibuna), cilantro, and broccoli.  All my seeds came from William Dam Seeds .  This is my first time gardening in Ontario so I’m not sure how well I’ll do, but I will no doubt spend a lot of time watching these little guys grow!  They will begin by growing in my basement under a grow lamp that comes to me courtesy of my brother-in-law (more to follow on that setup as I get it set up!).

My favorite type of planter for starting seeds is a 10 x 20 cell planter.  It’s easy to organize and keeps things really simple at the beginning of the season.  Eventually the seedlings will have to be redistributed to larger containers but at the outset they all fit nicely into a small space.   I bought mine from Johnny’s (when I lived in the USA) but here in Canada Veseys has something similar.

Some helpful items are chopsticks for making holes, old kitchen knives for covering holes, yogurt containers for making labels, and a spray bottle for watering.