Greenfingered Goddess

It's been a while, but I'm back and with a ton of new recipes in tow - excited? I certainly am.  Since my last post I have taken my domesticated goddess skills beyond cooking and cleaning and I am now growing my own vegetables – yes from seed, which is tedious and monotonous until those little gems start sprouting into a new life – then it gets fun. I have also been getting my creative groove on lately in the kitchen and coming up with some new, exciting vegetarian, low carb/keto recipes to share with all of you – if I do say so myself, and I will be sharing some of these lovely recipes later on, because right now – I want to talk about gardening, and my new found love for it.

Gardening has definitely been on my to do list for some time, but as I still live at home – begrudgingly – I’ve never wanted to get started on something that would never look as good as my very own, home-grown vegetable patch surrounded by a crisp white picket fence and free range chickens– which I doubt I will ever have anyway, but a girl can dream – plus we don’t have a garden per se  – it’s a three tiered, pretty scruffy backyard that has a deck in the middle and a ton of wood at the top end and no dirt, or even grass– not much to go on right? I am also OCD so everything must look organised and to my standard otherwise I just lose interest pretty quickly – all that in mind I decided my obsession with courgettes and aubergine were starting to get expensive and I still haven’t come across  spaghetti squash anywhere, so I took the plunge and bought some seeds. I then realised all these vegetables needed a ton of room – like a vegetable patch - so now what? Well, luckily I have some giant pots already on hand and now all I have to do is wait for those little seedlings to grow into mature plants, and then I can plant them into those same giant pots - and hope that I don’t grow some sort of beanstalk in the mean time.  It all sounds so easy right? - and with a little patience, hard work and tender loving care, it is – and I’m going to show you just how easy it is by documenting the process for you all folks with no garden, who want to grow your own fresh, organic vegetables.

So...at the moment I currently have; Courgette, Aubergine, Spaghetti Squash, Jalapeno and Chamomile growing very well – I also have a nice herb garden basket, which I’m pretty excited about – I’ve always wanted a herb garden and now I have one – hehe.

The germination period of my vegetables was a bit of an experiment, as I didn't have any soil at the time and it was getting late into spring, and those seeds needed to start germinating in time for the last frost – so I made a DIY propagator, from a plastic mushroom container – I lined it with cling film and wet cotton wool – placed my seeds on the cotton wool and then covered with more cling film and the lid – it was really that simple, and it worked – all my seeds sprouted and are now residing in some soil, quite happily.

Courgette, Aubergine and Jalapeno Seeds - Day 1

 For my spaghetti squash I sowed the seeds straight into some wet potting soil, covered with cling film and let them do their thing – five days later they’re all sprouted and catching up with my courgette plants – beanstalk alert. 

However, two of the most important elements that seeds need in the germination stage - apart from being kept moist - is darkness and heat, and since my vegetables – apart from spaghetti squash –weren't covered with soil they needed to be kept in a dark place which was heated - so what did I do? I improvised of course and kept them in my boiler shed – it’s a shed outside where the oil boiler is kept, it’s also dark and very warm – perfect for germinating seeds – as soon as the seeds sprouted they then needed light to create photosynthesis – I remembered that from school - and so I had to move them everyday into full sunlight and then return them to the warmth of the boiler shed in the evening - this process has also helped harden the seedlings, for when I need to move them out into the garden full time.

Overall I am very pleased with my little experiment and can’t wait to see the outcome of all my efforts and more importantly, use them in my cooking– fingers crossed. 

So what’s the moral of my story? The moral is...  that you don’t need high tech equipment, or a beautiful vegetable patch to grow your own fresh, organic vegetables, all you need is a little patience, common sense and improvisation when you need it, and before long you will be harvesting the fruits of your labour. I have a long way to go before I get to that stage but I am hopeful for my little seedlings future. 

Stay Tuned... 

KetoStyle