Notes on becoming a more self sufficient person

As part of my effort to make more things for myself and for my family, I am growing a container garden of veggies and herbs this year.  My yard only gets enough sun for a garden in the front and since I don’t want a veggie garden to be the first thing someone sees upon arriving at my house, I have decided that containers are the way to go.  Of course, first, I searched Pinterest and came up with a lot of creative ideas for container vegetable gardening.  I chose to plant in 3 window box shaped planters and then I found some recycled pails in the garage, a few holes drilled later and they make perfectly good growing containers.  About 3 weeks ago, I planted 2 types of summer squash, cucumbers, eggplant, 2 types of lettuce, spinach, basil and lavender.  When the squash and cukes start climbing, my plan is to have them grow up a piece of plastic lattice that I plan to place between the window boxes in pyramid shape.  The eggplant is in a large pot and I am going to try a tomato cage for that one.  Right now they are all starting to grow on the front porch to prevent heavy rain from breaking the small plants, as soon as they are big enough they will be moved to the back patio.  I can’t wait to start harvesting!  The lettuces and the spinach are growing quite fast and we should be eating our own homegrown salads in about another 3-4 weeks.  ***the squirrels got into the spinach and ate it all as you can see in the picture of the round container!  The squash only sprouted this week, I was starting to think that maybe the seeds were duds. There are still no signs of the eggplant sprouts.  When the lavender is mature, I plan to use that to make sachets and my own bath salts, scrubs and lotion.  Not only is this a project to see how much money I can save by not having to buy the things I can make or grow myself, I also want to see how self sufficient I can become in a modern day consumer driven world.  I will keep you posted and if anyone has any helpful hints about any of these topics please feel free to leave a comment.

just sprouting