I am finally, and unfortunately, back from my vacation with my sweetheart. With the weather being an average of 1 to 15 degrees we were basically huddled in the hotel room. I think we would be the only couple in the history of ever to bring an Xbox 360 with them on a vacation and just chill in a hotel room and play video games together in sweats. That’s just when you know you’ve met “the one”.
But all things aside I am finally back. On the car ride back I got inspired to do something great. Not just for me but for both my sweetheart and I (well… for us in the future).
I wanted to jump start my garden idea. I’ve always been able to grow a nice garden. That’s the perk of being a mama’s boy. It’s not just being there for your mother. It’s also learning a lot of how to do things to make yourself self sufficient. My greatest memory is helping my mom out in the garden. My dad as never happy about it because he would rather have me play soccer or go golfing. Then again he was a raging alcoholic who really didn’t care much for anything so who cares about him anyway.
My girlfriend and I were regretfully on our way back to our homes and due to my need of breaking the silence in the car I talked about a lot of “what if” moments. One of them was talking about house work. She mentioned how she loved that I know how to grow vegetables and other plants because it would be nice to rarely go out and buy vegetables. I thought to myself “when was the last time I actually grew something?”
I was just like every other person. Buying potted plants and being happy with the fact that it hasn’t died yet despite my animals chewing the leaves and me forgetting to water them every once and a while. See, over the summer when I was in the several month process of a break up with a witch, or referred in earlier posts as “the ex monster”, I was living with my mother at her townhouse south of my apartment. My ex monster and I lived at an apartment together, but despite the terrible things she has done to me and the torment she put me through I couldn’t find it in my heart to just kick her out. So I did what every guy with a heart would do. I let her stay there until she found a place to move into while I just lived with my mother. Eventually she would gather all of her things up and move out.
But during that time I was also gone for two weeks for a Marine training. I also had a beautiful garden set up in the back patio. I had gorgeous giant sunflowers that stood several feet tall, a few hanging baskets filled with flowers, potted flowers, two ferns, and other small plants that I thought looked nice. I was able to maintain them during the awkward “my ex is still living at my apartment” period. I never even had to see her or go inside. I just grabbed the hose from the back of the apartment and watered the plants, then left. (I wish I had a picture of it).
Back onto the subject at hand, I knew that if I was going to be a successful boyfriend (and if things go super duper well an awesome husband) I have to brush up my green thumb skills. So I do what I always do best. I sat my fat butt down and started using my best friend, AKA Google, and did some research. It’s wintertime here so there is no way I would be able to get all the things I need for a lush green garden. Adding to that I also still live in an apartment AND I am also thinking about moving out this summer. Hopefully in a house…
I researched what type of vegetables I can start growing indoors just as a fun little project and to brush up my garden skills. I had an onion that started sprouting that I put in a glass of water.
I also had a few garlic cloves that started to sprout as well.
That got me thinking “what other types of plants can I start growing inside and eventually put in a plastic bin that I can carry with me until it’s time to grow a full garden?”
Well fortunately we live in a world where most of your answers can be solved by a few simple words and a click of a mouse, and many many Twizzler candies to help fuel my brain, and the hunt for an indoor garden began. I found out so many things about certain vegetables. One website talked about the concept of a never ending garden. My onion and garlic cloves were a good start. Even though my onion still has its giant bulb I found out I could still use the green stem for garnishes on food and once the garlic cloves are ready I can plant them in a pot and let them grow into a garlic bulb and restart the process with another clove.
I then learned how to do the same with potatoes. I got my two favorite kinds (which are pretty much everyone’s favorite… I’m not that special).
I got a russet and sweet potato. Chopped the potatoes into halves and put them in a mason jar with water.
Then I read about the never ending celery stalk. Apparently once you use up celery you can place the base of the celery stalk in water and it will regenerate itself. So I did that as well.
Same with the base of a head of lettuce.
I made a Bloody Mary once and kept the jar cause it looked cool. McClure’s makes the best mixes if anyone was wondering…
I also read that if you keep the base of white onions (seeing a pattern here?) the same thing can happen.
It doesn’t look like much on top but raise the glass and you can see the roots starting to shoot out.
But lastly I also did the same with green onions as well. Same with the celery, white onions, and lettuce. If you keep the base it will grow again.
I kept the whole green onion because it looked nice. Plus I didn’t really know what to make yet. I might make an omelet soon and throw some green onion in it. I’m thinking about food currently and as you can see in this post I tend to steer off topic quite a bit.
OVERALL once everything is said and done and placed into their respected jars I realized it would make a great center piece in my back room. My coffee table lacked of anything awesome. Just a few coasters from a local brewery and my Xbox controller it looked like a college student’s table which I thought looked boring and dull. I rearranged all of them into something that will definitely spark a conversation.
More importantly it looks great!
I took that “do not enter” tape from one of our patrol cruisers. I don’t know why and I can’t explain my weird habits of doing things spontaneously.
So this is just day one of my long project. The exciting part is that I don’t even know if it will work or not and if it doesn’t then oh well. I guess I’ll just have to wait until I can find the space to make an actual garden. My ultimate end goal to this is to make a wonderful garden for my sweetheart and I to enjoy and dig into together. I am only working on vegetables right now because it’s just hard to start up fruits when I don’t have an immediate readily available place to put the seedlings down at. Plus if I am ever going to continue to make dinner for my love she prefers veggies over fruits. Might as well get my vegetable skills to perfection before I tackle growing fruit for myself.
I would definitely urge everyone to try their own little glass jar garden. It’s a lot of fun and fairly inexpensive to do it. As long as you have a container of some sort, water, and a sunny place to place them in you are good to go. Luckily my back room has two windows where the light can shoot right through the room so there is no lack of sunlight there.
Hopefully in a few weeks, or maybe days, I can give you guys an update on how its doing. But for now I can sit back and enjoy what I have accomplished. I think I was motivated to do this because it kept my mind off of realizing that my vacation is over and the constant time spent with my girlfriend is over as well. I miss her already…
And I am thinking about her again… Great… Back to being lonely…
Stay warm everyone! Just a few more weeks till spring! And if some of you guys live down south where it’s warm all year round, I hate you…
(Not really!)
Above and Below Average 