Gardening update

Ha ha! Fooled you! You thought I wouldn't have a garden this year, because I live in a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Seattle now, right?

Well, technically, I still don't. But the apartment building offers metal planting tubs on the roof deck, if you want one. I signed up for one (they're each about six feet long, two feet wide, about three feet high, already filled with dirt) and planted a few seeds each of kale, parsley, and carrots.

I haven't done anything to the plot since I planted the seeds--I figured I'd let the natural sun and rain cycle do its thing while I watched. I haven't watered or fertilized.

The seeds are coming along slowly--I suspect there's not quite enough sunshine--but they are definitely coming along. Maybe once summer gets here, they'll take off.

Summer's over

We're back from our week in New Orleans, and I'm already missing it. 85 degrees and sunny all week, amazing food, and best of all, I wasn't working. It's a bit disconcerting to be peeling off my sunburn when it's 47 degrees and raining outside.

I'll recap the trip for everyone tomorrow. When we got home, I realized that summer is indeed completely over. Not only are all the trees changing color here in New England (with nights in the 40s), but all my tomato plants are dead. So I spent yesterday ripping them out, saving all the green tomatoes for future use.

The container garden yielded a pretty good amount of tomatoes, considering they were in pots; I got a good handful of ripe cherry tomatoes every day for six weeks or so. The herbs were less successful; not sure why. Last winter's windowsill herb garden was also lackluster. I think I'll skip it this year, since we're still in a position where we may have to move at any second. I cut the last of the mint and hung it to dry.

Next year's garden? I guess that will depend on where we are (could be anywhere, really), and how much room we have. I'll keep you posted.

For the record, although I'm glad I didn't have to work as hard on this garden as last year's, I missed having 47,000 pounds of ripe tomatoes.

My first cherry tomato!

Isn't it a beauty? I'm hoping the next couple of weeks provide me with a bounty of cherry tomatoes.

Gardening update

I haven't posted for the last couple of days because there really hasn't been anything to post. I made ratatouille, ate some leftovers, combined my husband's leftover pasta with some white beans, zucchini, half an onion and some tomato sauce to make a sort of flavorful glop (not quite soup). Not the stuff of which great blog posts are made.

In the meantime, I'm getting green cherry tomatoes! Hopefully this means I'll have some to eat within a week or two. And have I mentioned that I love the smell of tomato plants on my hands?

Gardening update

There hasn't been a lot of gardening action this year. Just containers, and so far, at least half of the herbs I've tried to grow haven't. (Basil, sage, rosemary...) Not sure why.

Fortunately, the tomatoes are doing very well. I planted cherry tomatoes in my containers, and we'll see how big they get (since their growth will obviously be limited). The sad part is that I only have two, maybe three, containers big enough to hold full-grown tomato plants. The rest of my tomato seedlings will be donated out and given good homes elsewhere.

Garden bounty

My parents came to visit this past weekend, and it was a lot of fun. My mom brought me a tote bag full of goodies from her garden: several bags of young lettuce and spinach, a bag of mixed heartier greens (mustard, kale, chard), a bag of beautiful gold and white baby beets (none bigger than a golf ball), a few stalks of asparagus, a bag of cilantro, and a few baggies of dried herbs.

I spent yesterday turning all that into stuff. The spinach and lettuce became salads. I roasted all the beets, put some in the salads, and turned the rest into tomorrow's post. I'm working most of this week, so all those pre-made salads will really come in handy.

Gardening update: the tomatoes have sprouted!

I planted some lovely cherry tomatoes, which will go outside as soon as they're big enough. Also starting to show signs of life: peppers, dill, basil. All very exciting.

The outdoor spinach and mint are still going bonkers. Another couple of weeks or so and I hope to be able to move most of the indoor herbs outdoors.

Gardening update

Surprisingly, the outdoor plants are doing better than the indoor plants. Look how happy and green the spinach is! I'm getting fresh growth from the mint and the cilantro, as well.

The indoor herbs have about a 40% germination rate; I replanted some and we'll see what happens. If those don't sprout, either, then maybe I need to get new dirt. (Or new seeds.)

So it begins! 2012's container garden

Yesterday I planted most of this year's container garden.

As you may remember, last year, we were living in a house in the 'burbs, with a huge backyard. I turned most of that backyard into a garden, planting all kinds of things. I ended up with a bumper crop of tomatoes, but I had to kill 31 chipmunks to do it, and it was an awful lot of work. I also spent $760 on everything (seeds, weedeater, hoe, rake, shovel, pitchfork, buckets, hose, seed-starting lights and equipment, potting soil, etc.), and you know, $760 will buy an awful lot of tomatoes.

Of course, last year I didn't know that I wouldn't be able to put in a garden this year--those costs, especially for the gardening equipment, would have amortized out. This year, since we're in the city, in an apartment, I'm back to container gardening. Fortunately, I have a ton of containers, and lots of seed left over from last year, so my gardening costs this year so far are a grand total of $21.60 (for seeds and Miracle Gro).

I dumped out the old potting soil, mixed it with some fertilizer, and redistributed it amongst all the pots, with a sprinkle of seed-starting dirt. I planted spinach and cilantro outside (the mild winter means that hopefully I'll have a crop of spinach in a few weeks), and herbs inside: basil (regular and purple), parsley, sage, thyme, tarragon, rosemary, marjoram, dill, lavender, chives, oregano, lovage, sorrel, and purslane. I had a few stragglers from last year, puny-looking but still alive, that I hope to revitalize with Miracle Gro. If not, I'll replant those too.

I'm hoping my $20 investment will bring me hundreds of dollars worth of fresh herbs (and spinach) in the months to come.

Gardening update: no more garden

Well, that's it, folks. The Great Gardening Experiment of 2011 is officially over.

We move out of our house, beginning on Monday, so this weekend I'll be ripping out the last of the tomato and pepper plants. Everything else has already been harvested and ripped out, and I've been removing tomato plants as they die/stop producing. It's a shame, I think I could get a few more weeks out of the pepper plants if it doesn't get too cold, but oh well.

Here's my verdict: tomatoes were the clear winner. I harvested bushels, all different kinds, all exceedingly delicious. Herbs were the runner-up. Out of everything else, here's what I got:

Corn: 2 spindly ears, maybe the size of a finger. I don't think they got enough sun.
Squash: Several zucchini, 3 baby-sized butternut squash. They were doing well until Hurricane Irene, but all the water killed them off.
Green beans: A few handfuls' worth, nothing of note, and they never got very big. Not sure what happened there.
Kale: Lots of baby kale in the beginning; the groundhog ate it down to the ground in August and I pulled it up at that point.
Cauliflower and carrots: Lost to the rabbits.
Cucumbers: Several baby ones. Ditto Hurricane Irene (see squash, above).
Peppers: Coming along very nicely. None of the bell peppers got very big, but perhaps that's just because I've been impatient and have been picking them as soon as they get bigger than a golf ball.

Lessons for next year: Well, next year we'll be in a city apartment with no yard (okay, there is a yard, but it's a bricked-in patio), so it'll be all about the container gardening again. But I will expand the container garden to include tomatoes, more peppers, and more types of greenery. I'll also keep some of the herbs inside this fall, to try and keep the basil and such alive as long as possible.

Gardening update (warning: with death)

I've declared war on all rodents.

I discovered, just as the tomato harvest was coming in, that squirrels and chipmunks were devastating the harvest. They were stealing and eating as many green tomatoes as they could carry. So far I estimate I've lost at least 25 big beefsteak tomatoes and who knows how many cherry tomatoes, and that's just counting the tomato carcasses I could find.

I mean, just look at those big beautiful heirloom tomatoes up there. Those are MINE. That I've labored over since FEBRUARY. Those squirrels and chipmunks can SIT AND SPIN, and that's putting it nicely.

Here are the bullet points:

1. Squirrels and chipmunks will eat all your tomatoes.
2. Repellents, mothballs, cayenne sprays, and individually Ziploc-ing all the tomatoes will not stop the slaughter.
3. The only thing that works is to kill them.
4. Rat traps and Death Buckets work best for this. (As an added bonus, I've been getting some mice, too. The fact that there are mice around outside mean I will very soon be putting mousetraps back out inside the house.)
5. Death Buckets = fill a 5-gallon bucket about halfway with water. Float about an inch of black sunflower seeds on top. (They float.) Place a board running up the side of the bucket to the top. The chipmunks (and mice, apparently) will run up the plank, see the sunflower seeds, think it's a solid base, and jump in. Then they drown.
6. So far I've nabbed 10 chipmunks, 2 squirrels, and 4 mice. The tomato carnage has dropped precipitously (though it still continues).
7. Don't worry, I brought all the rat traps inside when children arrived. I've been relying solely on the Death Buckets since then.

Unfortunately, rat traps will not automatically kill squirrels--just slowly suffocate them. My husband, bless his heart, obliged by putting them out of their misery with several well-placed shovel blows to the head. That took a little piece out of both our souls. I was hoping to find a more, erm, efficient way to dispatch them, but in the absence of the rat traps, the squirrels are getting especially brazen. They chewed two big holes through a metal mesh screen to get inside the sunroom, whereupon they devastated the bag of sunflower seeds. They're also eating all the seeds out of the Death Buckets (even when there are, you know, bodies in there--ewwwwwwwww), and generally being a giant pain in the ass. I think I will have to put the rat traps back out, and just drown them after they're caught.

(And no, I can't humanely catch them and re-release them somewhere else. That's illegal here.)

The good news is that my cat killed a snake. My blind cat. Killed a garter snake. He was so proud of himself. He finally earned his keep.

The other good news is that things are finally starting to come out of the garden. Tomatoes, a little, but also zucchini and tons of herbs, including the long-awaited basil. The cucumbers and peppers are coming along nicely, I should have something from those plants soon, and the corn is starting to tassel out.

Here's part of the tomato garden, shored up with extra twine:

Here's part of the squash patch and some peppers:

More peppers:

A baby butternut squash!:

A baby pepper!:

Next year, to prevent this kind of wholesale carnage, I think I'll plant one big garden patch (rather than lots of locations all over the yard), plant onions all around the outside, and continue the trapping throughout the winter. If I'd known the chipmunks were going to cause such a problem, I would have done something about the exploding population a long time ago.

Other things I'll do: not plant so many beefsteak tomatoes. They seem to like those way more than the sauce/cherry varieties. Not plant cauliflower or carrots (I lost those to the rabbits first thing). Not plant so many peppers--it doesn't seem to get hot enough here. Plant more kinds of squash and green beans. Get a dog.

Gardening update

What I've learned about tomato stakes:

Good: rebar; 1/2" x 4.5', $2.98 each at Home Depot

Better: plastic PVC pipe, 1/2" x 10', $1.68 each at Home Depot (cut in half in five-foot lengths, so, 84 cents each)

Best: long sticks and twine; free!

I started using the long sticks method, as I had so much deadwood from the winter's storms; but I quickly ran out of usable lengths. (There are only so many 4 to 5 feet long, relatively straight sticks to be had.) As the tomato plants grew, I needed more, and taller. So then I starting using rebar, at $2.98 each (still cheaper than tomato cages, at $3.98 each). The rebar had the added advantage of being pound-able; I could simply untie the tomato plant, remove the stick, pound the rebar in with a hammer, and retie the plant.

But, then I needed more rebar, and my husband informed me you could only get it in bundles of 25. So I went looking around at Home Depot, and discovered 10-foot lengths of PVC pipe at $1.68 each. Cheaper than rebar, still straight and tall, still poundable.

Best of all, I can reuse all of it (sticks, rebar and pipe) for next year's tomatoes.

By the middle of next week, I should have one full-size zucchini and a handful of purple green beans ready to harvest, in addition to a whole bunch of mint. I've got basil coming in, lots of miniature butternut squash started, thigh-high corn, and a metric ton of green tomatoes.

Only a few of the pepper plants are actually growing. The rest are...not growing, but not dead. Not sure what that means.

The carrots and cauliflower I think I'll have to cede to the rabbits. Neither one grew back after the previous rabbit decimation.

I expect to have a veritable jungle once I return from vacation.

Gardening update

I have little green tomatoes now! (Little green Cherokee Purple tomatoes, to be precise; the other varieties are flowering but haven't produced any fruit yet.)

The herbs are coming along; the chervil and cilantro have already flowered; the rosemary and lavender are hanging in there (but they're growing so slowly, I may not have anything to harvest until next year); the basil is just starting to take off. I harvested the first few leaves of basil the other day.

Also, the borage has produced its first blooms.

Borage is fairly uncommon, but it's an edible flower. One of the few truly blue things in the plant world. And awful pretty.

Speaking of blue, I cut these off the bushes in the front yard. I don't know what they are, the previous owner planted them.

I also have a particularly pernicious rabbit. After a rainy spell last week, when it rained for three days straight, I came outside to discover he'd nibbled all my cauliflower down to the roots. He'd also decapitated most of the green bean plants and one whole squash plant. Needless to say, I was livid. When it's not raining, I can spray down repellent, which works--it's just that when it rains, it washes all away and I can't put more down. Let's hope we don't get any more prolonged rainy spells like that. As it is, I'm not sure I'll be able to get any cauliflower this year.

So if anyone has any rabbit tips, let me know. My grandmother volunteered this helpful information: "Just trap them under a box and club them to death. That's what I used to do." I'm pretty sure I don't have it in me to club a rabbit to death.

Unless, of course, I catch it eating my tomatoes.

A guest post on gardening

Check out my guest post on Get Rich Slowly!

Here's a slightly different version of the same post (basically, more pictures and different captions):

Gardening equipment is expensive.

But gardening itself doesn’t have to be.

This is my first attempt at full-scale gardening. This is the first year I’ve lived in a house, with a yard; previous gardening efforts were limited to containers of herbs, and the odd tomato plant, on windowsills or apartment patios. To complicate matters, it’s my first year living in New England, so the climate is new (and frightening). We had an intensely bitter winter, in which my backyard was buried under five feet of snow from January through the end of March; and then an intensely rainy and chilly spring.




The container garden tradition continues...



So I knew this first year would be an experiment, and I approached it as such. In February, I began collecting seeds (heirloom and/or organic when possible), with the idea to plant one or two of everything and see what took. Here’s what I bought:

Tomatoes (several different kinds, including Jubilee, Amish Paste, Cherokee, and cherry)
Peppers (habanero, jalapeno, Thai, cayenne, Serrano, and bell: green, yellow and purple)
Cucumbers
Green beans
Zucchini
Butternut squash
Pie pumpkins
Cauliflower
Peas
Watermelon
Corn
Kale
Arugula
Spinach
Swiss chard
Sorrel
Beets (regular and striped)
Mache
Carrots
Brussels sprouts
Leeks
Onions

(Some of these I won’t plant until late summer/early fall, like the beets and Brussels sprouts.)

And herbs:
Rosemary
Parsley
Cilantro
Sage
Tarragon
Oregano
Marjoram
Thyme
Borage
Nasturtiums
Dill
Basil (regular, purple, Thai)
Lavender
Mint
Chives
Catgrass
Chervil
Hyssop
Strawberries

Ambitious, I know.

The seeds cost around $100 total, although I got quite a few tomato seeds from my sister. I had a lot of one-time start-up costs; I had to buy a hoe, a rake, a shovel, a pitchfork (for the compost pile), a hose, and four florescent shop lights to start the seeds indoors. I also needed quite a lot of potting soil and seed-starting mix. I still had all the plastic containers from my various container gardens, which I used to start the herbs.

But I also learned what I didn’t need to spend money on.

Due to the climate, I knew I would have to start most everything indoors. (Because of the very rainy/chilly spring, I didn’t get the last tomato seedling in the ground until June 4.) I have a sunroom attached to the back of the house, walled almost entirely in sliding glass doors. It’s lovely in the summer, but bitter cold in the winter. I closed off the heating vents and kept it unheated through the entire winter. It was the perfect place to start seedlings (lots of light, out of the way), except for the cold—at least twenty-five degrees colder than the rest of the house, far too cold for delicate seedlings. I put a space heater in there for the seed-starting project—which promptly doubled my electric bill.

DOUBLED it.

So next year I’ll wait a few more weeks, until things warm up slightly, and skip the space heater.

I kept the florescent lights set on stacks of bricks, just above the seedlings, so I didn’t need to install shelving.



Note the variety of containers the seedlings are in...



And the repurposed silver dinner tray.


The bricks were free—the house came with two random piles of bricks in the yard. I bought special seed-starting kits, but quickly figured out that I had plenty of things around the house that I could re-purpose for seed starting. All of these things can easily be used, most of which you probably already have, all of which I used at some point:

Yogurt/sour cream containers
Egg cartons
Grapefruit and orange halves (eat the fruit first)
Bottoms of milk jugs
Paper cups (these actually worked the best of anything)
Toilet paper tubes (fold the bottom under to make a little cup)
Paper towel tubes, cut in half (see above)
Cleaned out food and coffee cans (any size)
Cleaned out soda cans, cut in half
Those plastic tubs mushrooms and lettuce come in
Plastic take-out containers
I even repurposed some random, lidless Tupperware.

(Just make sure you cut/punch holes in the bottom of everything, for drainage.)

Instead of drainage trays, I used box tops. Instead of row markers, I used a Sharpie and extra bricks. Instead of purchasing nine zillion tomato cages, I used sticks and twine. (All those winter storms brought down a lot of big tree branches; I simply went to the piles of deadwood in the back of the yard and stripped out large branches which I stuck in the ground, one for each tomato plant. Ditto for pea trellises.)



Exceedingly high-tech stick method; but the tomato plant seems to like it.

The previous occupants had left a small garden in one corner of the yard, maybe six feet by six feet. Obviously too small for everything I wanted to plant! But renting a tiller to plow up a section of the yard would have been far more expensive than I thought it would be. So I didn’t.

Instead, I took a hoe to the lawn and chopped out additional rows. For the tomatoes, I chopped out one hole at a time, in various locations around the yard. I filled in the vacant flower beds with herbs. I planted edible flowers around the mailbox. Every square inch of usable yard real estate was reappropriated for gardening; and when I’d filled in the edges, I chopped out grass and planted everything else in the lawn.



If I had my way, I'd plow up the entire lawn and turn it into a giant vegetable garden. Less grass to mow.


Now, maybe this method will work against me. Maybe lawn grass growing between the rows will end up stunting the growth of my plants. But so far, everything is growing really well. And the grass will grow back, if it turns out this method doesn’t work.

One note: it’s far easier to chop up the top layer of grass with a hoe, and use a trowel to dig up the dirt, than it is to try to dig an actual hole with a shovel. Grass is tough to dig through, but surprisingly easy to pull up.

The only other costs have been Miracle-Gro and rabbit repellent. My yard backs into a nature preserve, so it’s like Wild Kingdom out there. I’ve seen rabbits, raccoons, skunks, snakes, groundhogs, foxes, turtles, deer, and any number of birds in the yard. It also appears that I have an entire chipmunk colony tunneling under the yard. I can't shoot them (I live in the 'burbs) and I can't trap them (too many). So I have to coexist, somewhat uneasily, and hope they don't eat my garden. The homemade repellents (typically a mixture of cayenne pepper or hot sauce sprayed directly on the plants) didn’t prevent my cauliflower and corn from being nibbled. So I’ve been spraying commercial rabbit and deer repellent around the yard, and so far, so good.

Not including the $100 for seeds, I’ve spent around $600 on gardening so far this year. But of that, I think I can safely budget no more than $200 total for next year, for seeds and potting soil (and possibly more rabbit repellent). I won’t need to buy a hoe, shovel, pitchfork or hose again, and I know I can start my seeds without special seed trays and equipment. I also have a lot of seeds left over, which I can save in the back of the refrigerator for next year, cutting next year’s seeds costs down to probably $60 or so. (And frankly, I won't be planting all of that stuff again next year; only what's most successful this year.)

For the rest of this summer, the only reoccurring costs will be the Miracle-Gro (which I can eliminate next year, as my new compost pile will be producing compost by then) and more rabbit repellent (stupid rabbits).

Will the garden turn out to be more cost-effective than my CSA? ($475 for weekly boxes, May – November) That remains to be seen, but it’s looking good right now. If the rabbits don’t eat everything, and we don’t get a freak tornado or hailstorm, I should have a bumper crop of tomatoes and peppers. The green beans are shooting up, the squash is coming along nicely, and the container herbs are getting close to the point where they can be harvested regularly. I’ll be sure to report back at the end of the summer.

Gardening update

Look! My pumpkin plant has a flower!

And my tomatoes are coming along very nicely.

The container garden of herbs is just getting to the point where I can start harvesting.

So in general, it's doing pretty well. I finally got all the tomato and pepper seedlings in the ground; some of the pepper seedlings haven't done so well, but others have. Given the recent heat and more recent rain, the tomatoes are dark green and glossy. I replanted a row of beets which has already sprouted. I think I even have some volunteer potato plants out near the compost pile.

THIS is the part of gardening I like--the part where you've done all the actual work, and it's just a matter of waiting for the harvest.

Gardening update



Tomatoes, squash, and cauliflower seedlings. Note inventive use of lawn as grassy garden patch.


Rain. That's the update.

For about two weeks straight here in Boston, it rained. Every day was cloudy, grey and overcast (when it wasn't actively raining), and late May temps struggled to clear 60 degrees. For several days, there was standing water in the garden, because the ground was too saturated to absorb it.

I'm really, really pleased to report that it looks like summer has finally arrived. The forecast is rain-free and sunny for at least the next 10 days, and temperatures are in the 70s.



Early morning shot of actual non-lawn garden. Note vigorous kale in far left row.

 Which is good, because I still haven't transplanted all the seedlings yet. I've been transplanting the tomatoes, a few at a time (the ones I transplanted right before all the rain started are on the verge of dying--they're all limp and yellow, so I'm holding some seedlings in reserve to replace them, if the sun doesn't perk them up). The rest of the garden is planted (green beans, corn, cucumbers, etc.), and the early stuff (kale, peas, spinach) is finally showing signs of life.

I'm hoping to get the rest of the tomatoes and all the peppers transplanted within the next two weeks. I'm hoping that's not too late.


Tomato seedlings, in lawn.




More tomato seedlings, in lawn.



Containers moved outside and finally showing actual greenery.



Gardening update

The space heater is now gone.

Wanna know why?

It DOUBLED my electric bill.

That's right. One little ol' electric space heater, the kind most people have on or under their desks at work, running periodically to keep the sunroom at 65 degrees, doubled my electric bill.

So maybe those heating mats would have been a better bet after all. I thought to eliminate the cost of special gardening heating mats for seed-starting by putting a space heater in the sunroom, but next year I think I will just go ahead and buy the mats.

I can safely remove the space heater at this point, anyway. The seeds have all been started, and at low 40s at night/50s-60s during the day, an unheated sunroom won't matter.

In the interest of conserving yet more electricity, I also removed two of the four florescent light fixtures and just shoved those seedlings closer to the windows.

Some of the seeds, particularly some older ones my sister sent me, never germinated, so I had to reorder/replant those. The tomatoes are going gangbusters; the peppers are all coming along nicely; and I started the basil. I moved the large containers of cilantro, kale, spinach and arugula outdoors onto the patio, as they'll thrive in the cool temps (and I freed up much-needed window/sunlight room for everything else).

The outdoor garden is a little more worrisome. I still haven't seen any seedlings out there. By this weekend, if that action continues, I may have to replant. (Beets, peas, chard, kale, spinach, arugula, and cilantro.)

Gardening update; and things you can use to start seeds

I've now used a bunch of different things to start seedlings in, and I can now safely proclaim there is absolutely no reason to buy seed-starting trays, or tiny plastic containers, or tiny biodegradable containers. Or anything, really, other than seeds and potting soil.

Best of all, you already have all these things. Start saving them now, and next year you'll have a whole stockpile of seed-starting things to choose from. Just be sure to cut or punch holes in the bottoms of all these things, for drainage. (And clean them out first.)

Yogurt/sour cream containers
Non-styrofoam egg cartons, with half a cleaned, whole eggshell in each depression
Grapefruit and orange halves (eat the fruit first)
Bottoms of milk jugs and plastic soda/water bottles
Paper cups
Toilet paper tubes (fold the bottom under to make a little cup)
Paper towel tubes, cut in half (see above)
Cleaned out food and coffee cans (any size)
Cleaned out soda cans, cut in half
Those plastic tubs mushrooms come in
Plastic take-out containers
I even repurposed some random, lidless Tupperware.

You can also make cute little containers out of newspaper.

So far, I can't tell any difference between growing things in these containers and the fancy seed-starting kits. So it's a win-win: you don't have to buy anything special, thereby saving money, AND you keep all of these things out of the landfill.

My very own mushroom patch

I recently ordered a shittake mushroom growing kit from Fungi Perfecti. ($26, or 3 for $65.)

Kinda freaky looking, huh? My husband claims it's actually some sort of space alien, and it will eat us one night like the plant in "Little Shop of Horrors."

But look! It's growing shittake mushrooms!

For your money, you get the mushroom pod thing, which you put in a dark corner and mist with water several times a day. Within a week or two, it'll start sprouting mushrooms (like above). I'll keep you posted as to how many shittakes I get from this thing, and how long it keeps producing.

If this kit is successful, I'll try my hand at some of the other varieties they have. I love fresh mushrooms, especially the exotic varieties, but they're so expensive in stores. I'm hoping this provides me with a cheap, and relatively long-lasting, supply of shrooms.

Gardening update

I spent most of yesterday repotting the tomato seedlings. By the time I was done, I was simultaneously thinking, "Damn, this is a lot of tomatoes," and "I better have a bumper crop of tomatoes come August!"

Most of them look like this:

But I have a few that already look like this:

I'm so proud.

So far I've got cherry tomatoes, Cherokee Purple, Amish Paste, Pink Ponderosa, and Jubilee. I'm betting the cherry tomatoes are most prolific, but I'm hoping for some contenders from the other varieties.

Here's what the herb/container garden looks like right now:

As you can see, I have a lot of green activity! And my husband keeps complaining that it smells like "dirt" in the sunroom.

That's because I've essentially turned it into a greenhouse. Check out my exceedingly high-tech setup:

Yep, those are $10 Home Depot shop lights set on piles of bricks (free, from the mysterious brick piles in the yard that came with my house), with a space heater at one end (purloined from work). Not fancy, but it seems to be working. I keep the space heater set at 65, and the shop lights are plugged in around 16 hours a day (I plug them in when I get up, and unplug them when I go to bed).

When this is all over with, I'll do a post summarizing my gardening expenditures, and whether it was cost-effective at all. It's hard to tell right now, because I've had so many one-time-only expenses (hoe, rake, shovel, hose, lights for the seedlings, seed trays, etc.) which I won't have again next year. I'm also starting a compost pile, which will hopefully reduce the need for so much potting soil next year.

Temperatures here in MA are still way too cold for my liking--40s during the day, 30s at night--but I've planted some cold crops outside. Kale, spinach, beets, etc. No sprouts yet.