My first "harvest"

I’ll admit it.  I know very little to nothing about growing a garden.  I used to help my grandma in her expansive garden as a kid.  Some of my fondest memories with her are picking beans and going into the kitchen…”snap…turn…snap…plink…" into the bowl and move on to the next one.  She also had concord grapes and she would make home made jelly and jam.  I always wanted a garden.  But I have no room for one really so I’m relegated to containers.   I tried to grow lettuce last year.  It was kind of a disaster.  I never knew when to pick it, how big I was supposed to let it get, etc.  By the time I’d picked it, it had mutated into some jagged edged bear trap lettuce that was not pleasant to eat.  Sigh.

This year I planted several different kinds.  Don’t ask me what they are, I have no idea.  But they looked like they were asking to be harvested so I answered the call.  There is something about harvesting anything you grow yourself.  You feel kinda proud of yourself even if all you did was water it.  I found it amusing how I was treating it like gold.  You realize just what kind of cleaning measures go into your store or farmers market bought food.  Little spiders and unidentifiable bugs you’ve never seen before that tried to set up shop must be washed away.  Then spray it with veggie wash to get off the debris.  Wash off each lettuce leaf and dry them to be stored.  Funny how when you’re washing regular lettuce you don’t really care if a leaf goes astray and washes down the sink but you wouldn’t think of doing that with the ones you’ve grown.  You work hard to get those little leaves.  Even though you may only have enough for one normal sized salad or two puny salads, it tastes better than anything you’ve ever had even if by restaurant standards you might’ve not thought it was anything special. 

Grow your own stuff.  You know where it’s been, how clean it is and it’s the single biggest geeky gardener’s thrill you can get…even if you don’t consider yourself a gardener.

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