I tried my hand at growing food this year

And I think I succeeded.

The discussion began in late winter.  I don't know if you could even call November 2012 - March 2013 winter-like this year, as we had unseasonable warm temps and little to no snow precipitation.  I mentioned to the mister that I'd like to try growing food this year in addition to our CSA.  I've grown some herbs and cherry tomatoes in containers before, but with limited success.  I don't know what gave me the confidence to try growing food on a bigger scale. 

The mister and I began researching raised bed plans and seed sellers online. We decided upon a 4' x 8' dimension for our beds, but since we have a large male dog it needed to be at least 24" high, lest he try to raise his leg. (Most raised bed plans call for no more than 6" height.) And, given the amount of food I planned to grow, we decided that two would be sufficient this year.  We also decided upon a location that would allow us to build a third one if this year's "experiment" was a success.

The mister downloaded plans from the internet and began planning his supply list -- which seemed to go on forever, but I'm sure he views my ingredient lists the same way.  The mister and I agreed that we were going to use cedar instead of pressure-treated wood for the beds since they treat pressure treated wood with chemicals.  So, one very expensive trip to Lowe's for lumber (it was $200+), we had a pile of wood in the backyard and the mister got building.  Two beds were built in a day, and resemble the same size of a single (sleeping) bed you'd have in your home. 

In the meantime, I got to seed shopping. I'm very interested in eating/growing/buying food that are not GMO.  So, I found Botanical Interests online.  They sell both non-GMO and organic seeds and I bought a bunch of them--different types of lettuce, kale, tomatoes, broccoli, herbs, sunflowers, zinnias, chard, zucchini, cucumber, and watermelon.

I plotted out my planting schedule on a spreadsheet and purchased some seed starting kits to begin the garden.  I put the kits in a sunny spot, on our heater, so that the seeds would germinate easily despite the shorter days.   After a week, I had success with my lettuce seeds sprouting through.

It was working!  The picture above is of lettuce sprouts.  In order to get these sprouts into the raised beds, we needed dirt. So, the mister went over to our local landscape supply company to talk dirt with them.  They recommended a mix of screened topsoil along with aged mushroom compost to provide nutrients to the beds.  So, a few days later, we had 5 tons of dirt delivered to our house and the mister got to moving.  It was a terribly rainy day, but he was able to fill both beds and cleared all dirt from the drop zone.  He's the best.

Now that the beds were filled with good dirt, I started to evaluate my planting schedule and started to get some seeds in the ground. There are many that call for planting after the threat of frost (which is usually after Mother's Day in the mid-Atlantic); however, some hearty greens like kale and lettuces can handle a frost and keep on growing. I made sure to transplant some around mid-April and by the end of April I was already seeing success with the red leaf lettuce.

It wasn't all successful, but since I'm getting pretty long-winded, I'm going to continue this in a second post. To be continued...