Notes from a novice gardener: Kindergarden

Credit: Melissa Fraser

This winter I moved out of the apartment I grew up in and into a house. A house with a yard. A real live yard.

It has a small patch of grass, a perfect plot for vegetables, a few trees and bushes, and some extra space we’re thinking of growing an abundance of wildflowers in.

I had always wanted a garden, and now I have one. There’s only one obstacle: the extent of my gardening knowledge is laying in the grass eating raspberries while my grandma toiled away nearby.

But that’s why I’m here. This is my first garden blog about my first garden. It will be a document of the progress of our little patch in the world where we’ll grow—or try to grow—a few vegetables, some flowers and perhaps an herb or two.

A couple weeks ago, my roommates and I started some seeds indoors. Tomatoes, bell peppers, viola and a few herbs. After two days nothing had happened. We were sure we had done something wrong. My roommate Dave thought the soil we used from an old composting bin in the yard was contaminated and nutrient-less, and I was sure the grey clouds that wouldn’t relent had something to do with it.

But we covered our little seedlings with plastic wrap and gave them until the end of the week to clean up their act.

“It’s not going to be easy,” my roommate Dave told me.

But, it was. They sprouted, and they’re still growing.

Until it stops snowing in Vancouver and the final frost bids adieu, these little sprouts of green will stay inside. But what are these leggy roots I’ve heard so much about? And how do I keep my roots from getting so, well, leggy?