Gardening. Apartment style.

Z loves to garden. Both sets of her grandparents have plentiful gardens that she loves to pick from. Z asks me quite often why we don't have a garden and I'm always sad to answer that we just don't have a yard. I've been promising her a trip to the ''garden store'' so we can plant some things of our own, and finally I fulfilled that promise. I wanted to pick out plants that were already started and were growing because I was unsure we'd actually be able to sprout some seeds on our own, but she wouldn't let me. We had to grow them from scratch! So we bought some seeds, dirt, pots and went to work.

Some seeds we planted directly in the pots. Others we used a starter type pot. For the starters I put them in the girls bedroom on their window seal knowing they would get great light in the morning and stay warm. Twice they were knocked down and yet are still surviving. They are quite strong apparently.

Our porch doesn't receive a lot of good light, but we do have some warm weather which I'm assuming has helped. We see some green coming out of the soil and that's a good sign.

Z has been thoroughly excited to watch these plants grow. This pot was planted with flowers. Two other sprouts were picked by Cici. I'm hoping she doesn't touch this one. I think I may stick a couple of other seeds in and see if we can get more sprouts.

Since we planted in the late summer, I narrowed down Z's choices as to what we could plant. She decided on sugar snap peas. These were the plants I started in their window seal. I have transplanted them into a larger pot (all three) and they have since doubled in growth. Not sure if we'll actually see snap peas, but it's been exciting to see them grow.

Here is our cilantro. It seems to be doing okay. Cici again picked one of the sprouts. Darn her! But I think she now knows not to touch them. Luckily she hasn't laid a finger on the snap peas.

I've also planted some container butter lettuce, and it seemed to be doing well. But now I can't get them to stand up anymore. I've either over watered them or they are getting too much sun? They are in starter pots in the girls window seal. Not sure what I can do. They are just droopy. I'm thinking of transplanting them into their larger pot to see if being together will help them. I'll also try a little fertilizer and see if that helps or not. I'll cross my fingers.

If this experiment of apartment gardening doesn't work, I'll at least know we tried and that it made Z very excited. I just long for the day when we can have a backyard.