Plants! From seeds!

Last spring, we planted a lot of seeds. We planted peas, peppers, carrots, tomatoes, watermelon, cilantro, basil, dill, parsley, and strawberries. And flowers that I forget the name of. The strawberries and flowers I forget the name of were "grow kits" from the dollar section of Target. They did not grow, and I was not terribly stunned. Not much else grew either, to be perfectly honest. The tomato plants grew their first flower about a week and a half ago, but this is troubling, as we are currently in the midst of peak harvest for tomatoes. So I don't think they're going to make it. The peas seemed like they were doing great until they all just up and died for no reason we can discern. The peppers are hanging in there, but there is a difference between "hanging in there" and "actually producing something edible". The watermelon did not take to being transplanted, and the carrots never grew at all. No idea why.

We had better luck with the herbs. The cilantro didn't make it and the parsley did OK, but the basil and dill grew like crazy. So this means that I was able to walk out onto my porch, pick something, wash it, and EAT IT. Something that I GREW. FROM A SEED. Were you all aware of this phenomenon? Food comes from seeds? DELICIOUS FOOD. And even better, Annie revealed over Twitter that pesto is just oil and basil. I am ashamed to admit this as I sometimes claim to be a foodie, but I had never tried pesto and had always thought it was some mysterious concoction requiring pine nuts, but no! Oil! Basil! Done! So I made a bunch of pesto and if you add a little Asiago cheese to it right before you eat it it is unbelievably delicious. Pine nuts are completely unnecessary.

Compared to the list of things I planted, the list of things we harvested appears, to the untrained eye, to be feeble. And that's because you don't need to train your eye to see that it is clearly feeble. But this is only the second year we've attempted to grow food (Food! You can grow it! On your porch!), and I am pretty psyched at how easy the herbs were. And to be honest with you, I'm secretly relieved the tomato plants aren't producing. We are currently getting about fifteen tomatoes a week from the farm share. We cannot eat fifteen tomatoes a week; not, at least, if we are going to eat the rest of the fourteen tons of vegetables we are getting from the farm share. So if I had to preserve a bounteous harvest of our own on top of that, I might crack. (A fridge full of locally-grown organic vegetables silently rotting away is the hushed-up dark side of having a farm share.)

Jack also planted seeds this spring. First of all, he was actually the one to plant all the aforementioned vegetables if we're going to get technical about it. But he also planted sunflower seeds in April in school, and we transplanted them to the front yard when they got too big for the styrofoam cup.


Those came from teeny tiny seeds! SEEDS!

Good thing we moved them, wouldn't you say?