Gardening

The good thing about living in California is long growing seasons and this year I've thrown caution to the wind. I'm trying my hand this fall at gardening some greens.  I started by sowing seeds in egg shells to see how it worked.

Here they are after they started to sprout!

I did find that after they started sprouting, it looked as if they were quickly running out of room in their shells. I lifted a few shells up after a week of sprouting and the little white (healthy) roots were starting to emerge from the drainage hole in the shell. 

It was important to get my little seedlings in a new home. As luck would have it, I recently took an edible container gardening class at the Garden for the Environment... and Johanna Silver of  Sunset Magazine gave a very useful lesson. I built a self watering container garden. 

 

I went to home depot to buy some supplies, a black cheap ($2.89) planting pot. I drilled some holes in 8 places. Using a 1/2 inch hole bit I also drilled a hole on the bottom (top) for the watering spout

 

I found this "watering spout" in the plumbing section. Originally intended for an extension pipe for under sink plumbing, it included a threaded section. It worked out well for the purpose it was intended to do.

 Large Container (Hole Drilled about 2" below total height of black pot) I think the black pot was 8" depth, which would make the hole, which is really hard to see about 6" from the bottom.  

Shown here with 1 bag of  potting mix

This pot took 3 bags of 8 qt organic potting mix (potting soil is too heavy for container gardening) Since my seedlings were still a little young the 1-2" top level of soil I mixed in some seedling "jiffy" soil.

 The bane of gardening is weeding, so lets add a "weed barrier" (a.k.a trash bag). I trimmed it all around about 2" from the edge and tucked it into the soil.

 Here is an image of the planted seedlings in their pot. It shows the tucked in bag, and re-homed seedlings. I cracked the shells near the bottom, smooched them a little to fit in the X cut holes. I kind of ignored suggested guidelines to how close they can be planted, but I'm willing to sacrifice one or two to figure it out. Once the seedlings take to their new home, I was going to add some stones on top of the bag. I sprouted and planted Dwarf Kale, Neon Chard and Gai-lan.

As it turns out:

Peanut also likes to garden.