The Farm

Part of my preparation work for moving to a sustainable lifestyle is understanding the growth and usage of various vegetables. It is necessary to learn how to live off the garden before I have to live off the garden. The technical aspect of gardening is not difficult, it is the nuanced tweaking that I am looking for.

These are some of the growth questions I am researching. At my altitude what temperature should I keep my starter soil? How much water does each plant need? How deep do you really plant a tomato seed? How long does it really take to go from seed to table? What do the young plants look like? How much grown room will I need? How much food does each plant really produce?

The obvious next step is what to do with the produce. How do I make spaghetti sauce? What is the best way to prepare green beans? How do I cook an egg plant? At what point can I eat the broccoli? How do I do canning?

Here is my approach. Every week a certain number of seeds are planted. They are planted in small plastic cups with holes cut in the bottom for drainage. They are stored under a heat lamp that cycles on twenty minutes out of every hour. After they have sprouted they are place on a shelf in a south facing window. Everything is watered daily.

The starter garden has the following items planted every week:

Beef Steak Tomatoes 3 per week
Bush Green Bean 2 per week
Peas 2 per week
Bell Peppers 1 per week
Broccoli 6 per week in flat
Green Onions 1 per week
Egg Plant 1 per week

The Beef Steak Tomatoes have been growing for about a month everything else was started last week. I did start some Green Beans and Peas about the same time as the tomatoes and they did not come up. My guess is that I planted them to deep. This round they were planted about a half an inch down.

The theory is that by planting every week you can have fresh produce throughout the winter. What I don’t eat can be traded or given away. I will keep you posted on the progress.