Promises

The weather is finally promising that spring is no longer teasing us.  It has been above freezing during the day consistently now and we even hit the low to mid 50's this past week! We, like most everyone else in the states, are colder than normal this time of year and I've so badly wanted to start growing something....anything...

I read an article sometime this year that said you can grow new lettuce from the lettuce core and I thought, WOW, that is cool. So I tried it with my romaine lettuce core in February and low and behold, I started growing lettuce.  In a cup! Then in mid-March my honey and I went out of state and I asked my oldest kidlet to stop by the house and water my plants.  I forget to tell her about my lettuce start.. in a glass... on the kitchen counter..... not where my other plants are.

We came back to find shriveled up lettuce leaf starts sitting in a dry glass. (Insert sad face here).

BUT! I remember reading that we could do the same thing with celery too!!  So I finished up the few small pale green stalks of our latest celery stalk and immediately plunged the core into another clear glass container and filled it up with cold water.

And waited.

A whole three days.

Then amazingly I saw one tiny shoot come up out of the base of this cut off stalk. (Insert leap for joy here!)

Less than a three weeks later, this is what we have now.

Can you believe you can grow celery this way?  How cool is that?!!  I've never been successful with growing celery in the ground and here I am growing it in a glass!

 Look how pretty those leaves are!

So, with this new found burst of excitement (I'm so over the dead lettuce) I started a few plants. I can hardly wait to put them in the ground!

Here is Thyme.

Curly Parsley

And I made my husband fall deeper in love with me by starting Cilantro. He LOVES cilantro!

I'll be writing a book about cilantro in my future. "Men are from Mars... How Cilantro Brings Them Back to Earth"  I just need to approve that with my editor, but I'm sure it will be a Best Seller!

Here is a basil that I bought at the grocery store.  You know the ones you buy in the produce department that always look so scraggly, but you usually use them in one recipe and then they die?  Well, I potted mine in a bigger pot.  And guess what.... It didn't die!  I've used it a few times already and it keeps on growing (so far without those stinkin' white flies that always seem to haunt my house herbs)

It really seems to be thriving. You should have seen this when I brought it home. I wasn't even sure I'd get enough leaves for the one recipe I bought it for.  I think it was the runt of the litter.

Another herb I've had for over a year now is my Bay Laurel.  I bought it at a nursery last year, white flies and all (yeah, discovered that AFTER we brought it home). After many home remedy dousing's of alcohol and dish liquid, and all summer outside, I thought I had killed it.  All the leaves dried up (which promptly went into a mason jar for seasoning with later), I thought for sure I was done with it. 

But once again I was pleasantly surprised over the winter that new growth started to appear!

And now I have several new shoots starting all with a good amount of green leaves on them. I'm so excited. (insert happy dance here)!

I'll be starting my cold weather seeds outdoors soon, in the dirt. 

With the sun staying longer in the sky each day, these seeds give me a promise to start sprouting.

Stick around and see what starts growing. It all begins with dirt and some seeds!

And sometimes, a cup of water...

It All Begins With Dirt

When I first contemplated the name for this blog, I was trying to come up with something clever that would hopefully catch the attention of many while trying to indicate what one might find behind the title.  It All Begins With Dirt stems from my desire to get back to the basics.  From growing our own food to cooking with it.  So much good in life starts in dirt. Take for example....us!

In the beginning God created man......from dirt  Gen 2:7

God planted in the dirt - Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. Gen 2:7

And from the dirt all kinds of things grew both pretty and functional  -The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground--trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. Gen 2:9

And all those things that grew, he intended for us to eat. - "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. Gen 1:29

My personal belief is that he gave us the desire to garden - The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. Gen 2:15

With spring approaching, albeit not too fast this year, I am getting anxious to start sowing seeds to plant outside.  Spring peas, lettuce, kale and spinach, as well as radishes will be the first to make it into the dirt. And before long, we'll be able to eat those things we planted making way for the summer crop to be planted after that.

We don't have a large garden...yet.  Where we are at there are no fences to keep deer away. So every year I plan to figure out a way to plant more in the patio containers we currently grow in. These are large 12 inch deep planter boxes that range from 26 inch square to 72 " long and for what they are, we get strawberries, onions, green beans and plenty of herbs. We  grow tomatoes and peppers with so-so results and I've given up on growing zucchini or any other vine growing plant.  

I still am hoping for a fenced in garden area where I can let the ground be the container but where I can have a fighting chance at being the first one to harvest the produce it grows and not the deer, or the chipmunks, or squirrels or birds.  Wishful thinking I know.

With the produce that we grow, I will make meals and sides knowing where the produce came from, that there are no pesticides in them and the satisfaction paying a few cents for seeds which will more than pay itself back to us with less to buy at the grocer.

Our lettuce from June 2009

Stick around to see what will be coming good out of the ground and the good stuff I'll make with it.  I think it's time to start some seeds now.... this picture of our lettuce is making me want some more!  And to think, it all begins with dirt.