Home Garden

I’m interrupting my photo entries for a quick post about my home garden. As I mentioned in a previous post, I decided the other day that I wanted to try growing a few things on my patio. I used to help my grandma with her garden when I was a kid, and I have fond memories out in the back of her house playing in the dirt. My patio in Chilliwack is about twice the size as my patio was in Vancouver, so I’m definitely sure I have the room now to grow a few vegetables.

I swung by the garden center the other day and picked up a few things. First, I picked up some soil, since I don’t really have a lot at home. Then I picked up a few containers that are meant to be hung off your patio. I grabbed a pile of seeds, and some organic fertilizer (that’s based on seaweed – the way I figure it, if you’re growing vegetables at home, might as well grow everything organically).

I started most things from seeds, which given that it’s already May, might be a tad risky for some things. To take tomatoes from seed to harvest is somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 days, which puts the harvest in late August. To hedge my bets a bit, I picked up some seedlings as well (which are about six weeks ahead in terms of growth). I have a nice mix of cherry, sweet and roma tomatoes, the latter of which is the preferred tomato for things like pasta and salsa (you’ll see a plan emerging here).

In addition, I also have some onions, peppers, herbs, jalapenos, and lettuce growing. The astute observer will notice that many of those items can be combined to form great things such as salsa or nachos. While I’m growing these things mainly for fun, I would love nothing more than to make salsa and nachos with toppings from my little patio garden late in the summer.

Today is basically day three since I planted everything, and it was pretty exciting to see a bunch of new sprouts forming for the lettuce and the thyme tonight. Once things mature a bit, I’ll slowly transition some things out onto the patio (right now everything is resting on my kitchen bar). The lettuce will take somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 days, while tomatoes should start being harvestable in about 60 days or so.

I’ve started a Flickr set from my little home garden, and will update it with photos over the course of the summer. I also finally got around to setting up my solar panel on the patio tonight, so I’ll have around 60 Watts of power per day to use out there on something (almost enough to charge my laptop for an hour).