Several of you have said to me recently, via comment or email, something along these lines. You want to grow some food this year. You don’t know where to begin. You’re overwhelmed. You have a “black thumb.”

I know how you feel. Last year around this time I was determined to plant a vegetable garden, and I was very fortunate to have a dad who already knows everything about gardening, and who was more than willing to help me get started. But I know not everyone has that and it can all feel like there is just so much you don’t know. Let me try and help.

First, know that you are not late or behind. It is February. If you are just thinking about planting vegetables this year, then you are already doing exactly what you should be at this time of year. Now you can start thinking about it more seriously so that when the time comes (ie. when the weather and ground get warmer) you’ll be ready to go.

Work With What You Have

I think the biggest mistake people can make when they envision growing food is believing they can only do so with a huge plot in the back yard. They picture rows and rows in huge raised beds on a sunny acre. But most of us don’t have the capacity for that, nor do you need it in order to enjoy some veggie gardening. Can I just tell you I have no back yard? None. Zilch on the back yard. So when I decided to give gardening a go I had to figure out what I could do instead. The way to do that?

Find the Sun - Of all the components that are necessary to grow a plant, sun is the hardest to replicate, and most vegetables (not all, but most) need at least 6 hours of good sun. So start looking for it. Pay attention to where the sun hits as it rises over your property and how it hits your yard as it passes. What part of your yard gets the most light?

Maybe a small spot on the side of your house is the best option. Maybe you’re limited to the front yard. Perhaps your yard is shady but you have patio, deck, or balcony that gets great sun. Maybe you don’t have a yard at all but you have some really great windowsills that are always bright. It’s possible you really have no spot that gets 6+ hours, and that’s ok too. There are plenty of veggies and herbs that can do fine with less and that’s where you’ll put your emphasis. But you’ve got to get some light somewhere. I mean, unless you live in the deep woods or a cave, right? So just start paying attention to where it is as this is what will guide you to what kind of vegetable garden will work for you.

As you do this don’t disclude anything. Remember what I said about how you don’t need a big ol’ plot in the back? Containers are awesome and you can do so much more than you realize with them. Seriously. And don’t gloss over those areas where you already have plants. It’s really trendy this year to stick vegetables in with your annual flowers and perennials. In fact the March issue of Better Homes and Gardens just had a feature on this very thing, filled with lovely photos of lettuce planted along with pansies and tomatoes among marigolds. This is particularly important for those of you who are worried about what growing veggies will do to the look of your yard or “what the neighbors will think.” There so many lovely ways that food growing can be incorporated into your life, so don’t focus on your limitations right now, focus on the positive.

Find Your Zone - If you are new to gardening of any kind then you have little reason to know what zone you live in. Let’s change that. Your USDA Hardiness Zone refers to the average minimum temperature that your area sees in winter. This is important for a few reasons when growing plants: it tells you what you can grow in your area and when is a safe time to put your plants outside (this is what people mean when they talk about a “frost free date” - each zone has a different date of the last average frost. See, you don’t want to plant a bunch of vegetables outside and then have the temp drop so low at night that there is a frost because that will kill most of what you just planted. So when growing veggies you wait until after your “frost free date” has passed in order to be safe.)

So if you don’t know your zone, go find it now on the zone map at arborday.org. There are tons of sites you can use to do this, but I like this one because you can just type in your zip code rather than trying to stare at the map boundaries and guess. Go ahead and do it . . . yep, I’m still zone 6. The higher your zone the warmer your area is, and the earlier your frost free date will be. So, for example, all a ya’ll who live in Texas will be able to put your plants out earlier than those of us up here in the NE who are still buried in snow.

Ok, now go forth and figure out what you are working with. Spend some time observing where you have some decent sun and look up your area’s USDA zone. Get to the point where you can say to yourself “I’m in zone 5 and I’ve got a thin strip along the back of the house with great afternoon light,” or “That spot in front where I usually put the petunias in the summer could be good, especially in my wonderfully warm zone 7 climate” or “I have some space on the front porch that would be great for containers in my zone 4 abode,” or “Damn, I don’t have a yard at all at my zone 8 apartment, but I’ve noticed that window in the dining room is always so freaking bright it blinds us when we’re trying to eat!”

This will be our starting point when we come back to this little series of mine:) Next up, Field Trips and Day Dreams - this is where it will start to get fun.

It’s funny, just the other day I was thinking about this little guy.

Remember him?

I wondered where he was. How his parents were doing. If they were all . . . somewhere. Pessimistically, I figured they probably weren’t, and I was briefly, illogically sad about that.

This morning I finally got around to going out and refilling the bird feeder, which has been empty for days. It didn’t take long before news had spread among the bird community, and we had visitors dropping by with each passing moment. The boys and I sat and watched for a while.

Before long I saw something a bit larger swoop down right by the window. I asked the kids if they had seen it go by, but they hadn’t (they really didn’t know why we were still watching the birds anyway, as it was clearly time to play trucks). I watched it head up to a nearby tree and land, and I thought, “It couldn’t be . . .”

Could it?

And then it came down to its favorite spot, our crowded, crazy patio, jammed with toys and places to hide.

And strutted around like he owned the place. He’s been here before.

And then, look who else showed up.

Amazing.

It might take an outsider one morning of listening to my kids talk to figure out what interests my husband and I, and which of those interests have rubbed off onto our children. This morning when we sat down to breakfast Sam exclaimed, “Mommy, three of the irises are blooming!” I beamed with pride at his correct identification of the irises in my valentine’s day bouquet of flowers, three of which had, in fact, opened up overnight. I went on to identify for the boys the other flowers in the bunch and listened to Robby carefully repeat, “HY DWAYN JAH.”

Minutes later he was at the kitchen sink washing his hands and noticing one of our kitchen scrubbers, the one we used over the summer to wash the dirt off of our carrots from the garden, when he declared he wanted to “pick cawots from outside!” Seriously, I don’t think a gardening mom could be happier when there are morning quotes like this.

Once breakfast was over and it was time to get dressed though, the conversation took a bit of a turn. Sam was thrilled to get to wear his Flash shirt, and he then stated that he would really like an Iron Man shirt for his birthday. Robby said he would like a Batman shirt, and the two of them went on to debate the various strengths and weaknesses of the two. Iron Man can shoot lasers, after all, but we can’t overlook the fact that Batman is a detective, earning him points in the minds of both boys. Indeed, I think if Hubby had been home he would have also beamed with pride this morning over the deep conversation, perhaps reveling in the switch from flower talk to super heroes.

But just yesterday my husband “forbid” me to get anymore gardening books from the library unless I was first ready to return some. According to him these books and seed catalogs were “all over the house,” forcing him to go through and stack them up for me, which might have looked a bit like this (except that he left them haphazardly stacked at the bottom of the stairs!):

(And there’s my lovely valentine’s day bouquet.) Ok, now to be fair, that might be a lot of books. And I may, or may not, have another three on hold waiting for me at the library - I have no comment on that topic.

But can I just take us down the stairs and into the Man Cave of our house for a peek and ask: Does that mean that no more comic books can be brought into the house until you are done with some of these?

Hmmmm? Well all righty then. I may, or may not, be off to the library.

I love Trader Joe’s. Anyone who knows me in real life knows this to be true, most of all, my husband, who has to listen to me tell him how much food I got for some small amount of money just about every week. Or point out to him how many of their products are organic and not at all high-priced, or how kind the staff is there, or how family friendly they are, etc.

So when I was perusing the comment section in a post of Kelly The Kitchen Kop’s recently (this is a new blog for me), and I saw someone mention that they believed that the Trader Joe’s brand was completely GMO-free, I honestly thought it was too good to be true. (GMO is Genetically Modified Organism). Here is a store that has fair prices with a huge selection of organic items, great products, and now they are so far ahead of the curve that they are already GMO-free? That would be amazing and oh, so convenient!

So I decided to contact them myself to find out.

Here’s me:

I read today on a blog that all of the Trader Joe’s products
are free of GMO’s. Is that true? I hope so! That would make me so, so
happy. I love Trader Joe’s and do most of my grocery shopping with you,
so this would truly be great news.

Thanks,
Beth

Here’s them:

Hi Beth,

You read correctly. Any product with the Trader Joe’s label is
guaranteed to be GMO free. You can also view this statement on our
website.  http://www.traderjoes.com/static/lists.html

Thanks for shopping with us at Trader Joe’s!
Sincerely,
Tiffany
Trader Joe’s
Customer Relations

And that link up there (in case you don’t feel like following it (and I have no idea why I couldn’t find that page when I searched for this information myself (and this is now a TRIPLE parenthetical!)))  . . . ahem. The link up there assures us that the Trader Joe’s logo means “NO artificial flavors, colors or preservatives; NO genetically modified ingredients; NO MSG; and NO added Trans Fats.”

Buying organic is the only real way to know you are avoiding GMOs unless you are specifically dealing with a brand that says it is GMO-free. This is because companies do not have to tell you they use genetically modified ingredients and you can’t know by just looking at the label. And know that the use of GMOs is VERY common. For example, think about how often soy or corn shows up in some form or other in virtually every product sold in a grocery store (pretty much everything). And guess what the biggest GMO crops are. Right. But now you have at least found one store brand that you know will be without any GMOs, whether the product you happen to be purchasing is organic or not.

No, this is not an ad. I got nothing for free from TJ’s. “Tiffany” doesn’t even know I was going to write about this. I just find it to be that awesome. I love Trader Joe’s.

These are actually from the big snow last week. We have yet to go out in our current blizzard, which might be even more impressive.

“When I finished writing this, the thermometer outside my door read 18 below zero. I now know that spring will never come. I shall spend the rest of my life reading seed and plant catalogues, and books about gardens and the people involved with them.”

This is a quote from Jamaica Kincaid’s “My Garden (Book):” It is printed on a page along with the following sketch by Jill Fox:

If you are in my area, I don’t need to tell you that the view outside the window today is quite similar; we are literally buried in at least 12 inches of snow, and it is still coming down out there. So I can relate to what Ms. Kincaid is saying.

I don’t feel quite so lethargic about it though. In fact I’ve been looking forward to this snow. The kids love to sled, and I hope we will be out a good long while this afternoon, as soon as the wind is not so strong that the snow is coming down horizontally. It gives us the morning to spend indoors though, with bread baking and me at the stovetop browning bison for tomorrow’s super bowl chili.

In addition to the weather similarities though, there’s also the reading. I have a stack of gardening books and seed catalogs that I’ve been moving from the kitchen table, to the arm chair, and now to the stairs. There’s no point in putting any of them away as I glance over them many times throughout the day. (And this stack has grown significantly since I took this photo. SigNIFicantly.)

I’ve already placed my order for my heirloom tomato transplants from Seed Savers Exchange, as well as a few vegetable and flower seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. (More on why I ordered from these particular sites and what I ordered from them later.)

I also have a few little gardening projects going on inside the house, to keep me going.

Herbs - Basil, Sage, Dill, and Cilantro:

Bulbs - Tulips and Narcissus:

And of course my African Violet. Remember, I have a son who loves purple. He is literally requesting right now that his yogurt be put in a purple bowl.

Thank you all for responding to that last post - I really appreciate your input. It was nice to finally think through some of what has been on my mind lately, and I continued to do so as each comment came in and through the rest of the day.

The result is a rekindled excitement over blogging again. I think I just needed a rest and to rethink my reasons for doing it. At this time last year I was writing for four different websites. I spent just about every evening after the kids went to bed writing/blogging for those sites, and even quite a bit of stolen time during the day. Really, it’s no wonder I got a bit burnt out. And my blogging went from being something I could do when I chose to do it to an activity that had deadlines and even frustrations in some cases. So one by one I stopped writing for all of those sites except this one, my own.

And because it is my own (and as several of you pointed out in your comments), I get to do with it what I want!

I’ve decided I don’t need or want to start a new blog altogether. I don’t have it in me, and honestly I can’t let this one go yet. Instead I will just continue to write about the things I care about. As it happens, right now that includes gardening, cooking, growing vegetables, and trying to eat locally produced foods. All of these interests have stemmed in one way or another from becoming a mother and trying to take care of my family, from what I feed them on a daily basis to how I teach my children to care for our planet. So in my mind, it all still has a place on this blog.

As do the daily goings on with my kids, the books I am reading, the random stuff I am thinking about. When I thought about what a week of posts would look like if I actually sat down to write what was in my head, only one was a post about plants. On that list was also a funny quote from Robby, a description of my awesome stack of books I have from the library and a recent trip to a used bookstore, a brief freak-out over the fact that I am registering Sam for Kindergarten tomorrow (what?!), and, staying true to old-school Total Mom Haircut tradition, a self-deprecating essay on my poor mothering skills. Hey, I’m just keepin’ it real.

I also might have included some recipes for a recent dinner I made in which every item we were eating was sourced locally. I’m able to do this pretty often now, but I know it is one of those things that can sound daunting to people, especially when they first begin. So I thought I might start to include recipes like that as a regular feature here, along with information about where and how I got the ingredients, etc. Things like that get me excited about blogging again.

So for now, I’m just gonna keep on truckin’ as I’ve been for the four years since I started this little ol’ blog. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts, comments, and your time to read.