gardening

I woke up early this morning to get a great start to my day...going plant shopping with my mom!

Sal and I live in an apartment, so there are some things that home-owners/renters have the luxury of that we do not. For example, growing a large garden. Well, we are lucky enough to have a balcony off of our living room that gets lots of sunshine during the day! That means we can at least do some potted plants.

So today, I went with my mom to a gardening store to pick some out! :). We also went to Big Lots to find some inexpensives containers and supplies.

I ended up purchasing lemongrass, spinach, cherry tomatoes, green beans, red pepper, green pepper, cucumber, and two kinds of flowers (can't remember what kind at the moment) for a decorative flower hanger I have. I feel like I am forgetting something? Maybe not. I can update later when everything is sorted out (it's all at my parents' for now, I am planning on potting tomorrow at their house and then setting everything up since there is really nowhere to prep here).

There are so many other plants I'd like to grow, but since this is my first garden on my own, I figured this was a good place to start! Some key things I'd like to add are onions (sweet or green or both!), carrots, and lots of herbs. I was actually very tempted to buy a ton of herbs, but I don't have enough recipes and I didn't want to be wasteful. I just get very excited at the thought of cultivating this all myself that sometimes I feel as though I might go overboard... :-P. So I convinced myself not to buy tons of herbs yet until I have an idea of how I might use them.

I think I will really enjoy gardening. There are a bunch of reasons...I like doing things with my parents and they have been awesome teachers of things like this, it saves money, home-grown vegetables taste infinitely better, I can completely control how they are handled and grown (trying to be cleaner/organic/no chemicals), I can pick at optimum ripeness instead of what is offered at the store, I can share with friends so they can enjoy the goodness, it's relaxing, etc etc etc. I run the risk of screwing it up or just having a bad season because of weather or something, but I think it's worth it. I'm sure it's a very rewarding process and I look forward to experiencing my own harvest.