Garden Dreams
It was a pretty happening Thursday evening around my place. An attempt at honey-sweetened Dulce de Leche, a seed catalogue, and a steaming cup of Pero filled the night.
I am so looking forward to planting my garden! It won’t be long now, starting next month it’s on! I’ve been very pleasantly surprised to be able to pick collards, kale, mustard, and lettuce all winter and it’s just deepened my love of gardening.
Growing my own food appeals to me on so many levels.
I’ve always loved creating things; as a child I drew pictures and wrote poems, a little later on I started making dances, and as an adult I’ve added cooking, blogging, and gardening to my list of creations. Watching a seed germinate and grow is like magic every time and is so satisfying!
I am super thrifty and gardening is a low-cost way to get high quality food. Yes, it takes an investment of time but honestly I’m a pretty lazy gardener. The seeds go in, maybe I remember to water them, they grow, maybe I weed a few minutes a few times a week, I pick them in less time then it takes me to decide what kind of toilet paper to buy at the grocery store. Take those winter greens I’m still picking as an example; I spent about $5 on seeds back in September, it took 5 minutes to plant them, and now we eat the equivalent of $5 of organic greens every week.
Food from a home garden is inevitably fresher than you will find at any store and the fresher the produce is the more nutritious it is. Many studies suggest that produce loses up to 45% of it’s nutritional value in the time it takes for harvest, processing, transportation, and storage. Occasionally I’ll pick enough greens for a few days but I usually try to pick them right before eating, optimizing the nutrients (now if only I could keeps my paws out of the reduced veggie bins at Cville Market!).
I still have almost a month before I can put seeds in the ground so for now I’ll have to be content to daydream over seed catalogues…
