Home Grown - Organic Veggies - Week 1
- floatinglighthouse
- Jan 18, 2017
- 3 min read
Exciting day! Planted my first sprouts today! Organic home grown spinach, kale, lettuce, coriander, lavender, spearmint and tomatoes here we come!
I will post a how to based on the materials I had available, but the best part of growing your own food at home is you get to improvise... LOADS! So experiment, play, and enjoy the process of creation :)
So it's mid January, so a bit early, but in some ways the perfect time to start planting seeds INDOORS in the south of the United Kingdom. I live in Brighton by the seaside and I have south east facing large bay windows in my bedroom which get the first of the beautiful morning light. The light continues throughout most of the day with a mostly south facing facet of the bay windows.
From the Taoist view of the energetic cycles of earth, Winter Solstice is the peak of Yin energy rising, from then on it starts descending and the warmth and creative power of Yang begins to rise. It's been almost a month into the rising energy and despite a couple days of slushy snow a week ago, there's more sunshine every day and the days are noticeably getting longer.
Day 1 - 16-01-17
The first thing I did was look up via Ecosia (a search engine similar to and integrating google's functions, but with the difference that every search you make directly contributes to the planting of a tree) what the best procedure is for planting spinach and kale. These are two leafy green vegetables that I eat pretty much every single day, primarily in smoothies, but also in many many various dishes.
What I came up with from this search is that it's a good idea to sprout the seeds before planting, which ensures no potting space is wasted and also speeds up the first stages of growth. Without much more time spent on research I made the assumption that this could work for other kinds of seeds as well, notably tomato, lavender, coriander, lettuce and spearmint.
The method suggested by the web was to soak the seeds for 30-60 minutes, some even suggested overnight but I'm far too excited for this whole process to wait that long :P and then place on a semi-damp paper towel in a closed container. I've previously invested in a layered sprouting box so this is what I used. To make sure I could keep track of the seeds I was sprouting I photographed them while soaking with their respective seed packets.
After soaking them for about 45 minutes, i spread them out on each layer of the sprouter on the kitchen towel and let the water evaporate till the towel was just lightly damp. After 4 hours of drying, I closed up the layers by placing them on top of each other and left for 2 days in a DARK space that would range between 15-18 degrees centigrade.
Day 3 - 18-01-17
The lettuce and some of the kale have sprouted! I'm leaving the rest to give them some more time to sprout and I've chosen three of the middle pots to be all kale and then the large bottom long pot to grow spinach and lettuce in. Unfortunately the spinach hasn't sprouted yet, but I decided to sow a few nevertheless as they would definitely be going through the internal procedure having been soaked and in a moist dark environment for a couple days.
Here you can see 4 of the kale sprouts in a hole just under an inch deep dug out with the tip of my finger. After putting the sprouts in extremely delicately, not to damage the sensitive growth point, i covered them with a light sprinkling of soil from the edges of the hole and watered lightly using a water bottle with its cap pierced in a few places with a pin.
The same procedure was used for the lettuce and spinach seeds :)
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