Hi Bloomers!
After showing you where we’re at this year with our seedlings, I thought it might be nice to show you where I started from my first year of trying to grow some of my own vegetables in my two small beds.
One of my dearest friends, Christine, had gifted me tomato, lettuce, zucchini and pepper seeds and a tiny kit of supplies to start my own seedlings. I put the baggy of earth she brought me into the paper cups she had added to the pack and dropped in my tomato, lettuce and pepper seeds and off we went hoping for a full grown tomato within a week!
Unfortunately for me, that is not how gardening works (which I learned pretty quick nothing happens overnight) and I did not wind up with a tomato in the next week.
When these tiny little seeds sprouted their FIRST signs of green, I immediately called Christine at 6am (she was not as thrilled as I) and said “this must be what God feels like!”
I, Alla Blooms, had created something from nothing! Surely this was your average miracle.
Although my seeds had germinated and sprouted, they were leggy, not doing well and eventually died off and did not become anything more than what you see in the photo above.
But my friend encouraged me to try again, and this time perhaps we could buy transplants that I would buy already started and tend to from there for my first try. We wait for the local nurseries to open, bought tomato and green pepper transplants, and she convinced me to have one more go at something from seed. We went with zucchini and cucumbers, something I could sow right outside and wouldn’t need to begin indoors.
And what do you know… THEY WORKED!
A little bit of trial and error, allowing myself to use transplants, advice from my experienced friend and we were growing food that we would soon be able to eat!
Numerous shout outs to the OG Bloomer, Christine! She always fueled my curiosity, helped me problem solve (pests especially, ugh!) and be confident to try new things and see if they’d work!
The biggest lesson I learned is that you never know if something will work until you try it and when it doesn’t work, you can always try again.
Be sure to try something challenging from time to time just to see what you might be capable of.
What’s something you want to try this year to challenge yourself in the garden or in your life?
I’m going to try to grow cantaloupe and more watermelons than last year (we had 4 teeny tiny ones).
Catch yah’ next time Buds!