My mom was the queen of gardeners. At her prime, she had 1,000 square feet of garden beds (not including walk-ways between them, nor the dozen or more fruit trees in the orchard). Then we moved away and she had to start all over.

I, however, have never been successful with growing anything since I moved away from home. With the exception of basil, which loves hot weather and doesn’t need much water, and therefore thrived in spite of my neglect the one year I decided to grow some in Texas. You could say I got gardened out in my growing up years!

But with food prices on the rise, as well as my increasing concern with non-organic foods (especially the dirty dozen), I have felt the need to garden. Unfortunately, the last two years circumstances kept us from being able to grow anything. And even this year we are getting a bit of a late start (the last frost was several weeks ago), but I figured we have to try something!

So I bit the bullet and bought 4 packets of heirloom seeds from Victory Seeds. Lettuce, kale, cilantro, and basil. The first two are cold weather crops, so a week ago I went down to the hardware store and bought some peat pots from their nursury and planted 6 each of those seeds. Or rather, my daughter planted them. She loved it! The other two prefer hot weather, so I’m going to wait until probably the end of May. Besides, my garden area isn’t quite ready yet, though hopefully it will be all tilled up sometime this week.

Here’s a close-up on the seedlings, taken Friday (5 days after planting).  I don’t have a grow light, but I have a skylight in my kitchen which seems to work almost as well. It keeps them from bending like they would in a window. The larger ones are the kale plants.

My plan is to also plant red & yellow onions and some sweet potatoes if I can find slips. It’s a bit late to grow my own slips (they take 6 weeks, and then 100 or more days once they are in the ground). Then in the fall I want to plant more lettuce and kale, and maybe some other cold-weather crops like broccoli.

Are you growing a garden this year? What are you planting?

This post linked with The Modest Mom; We Are That Family.