Wondering where I have been?

This week at the Green Phone Booth I share the story of how I hunt and gathered 17 pounds of free food.

With the seed catalogs rolling in, Melinda's new Growing Challenge could not have arrived at a better time. I missed the boat last year, but for those of you familiar with The Growing Challenge this year has a new twist: from Seed to Seed. All you have to do is plant at least one new crop from seed, grow it organically, and save the seed to plant next year.

I had every intention of doing this last year. I planted 24 plots of organic heirloom seeds, right under a line of Black Walnut trees. Yeah, it did not go well. Apparently, walnuts are toxic to plants. Shade + Toxins = Shopping at the Farmer's Market. This year I am armed with the All New Square Foot Gardening book from the library, a willingness to cooperate with Mother Nature, and a total disregard for the law*.

With all the effort I have been putting into reducing: reducing consumption, reducing packaging, reducing processed foods, reducing dependence; seed saving just makes sense. It accomplishes all of these in one fell swoop. I do not have to spend money every year to replenish my garden. I can reuse the seeds! No seeds to buy, no package for them to come in! I can replace trips to the processed food grocery store with a hop, skip and a jump to my whole foods garden. And, by preserving my bounty I am no longer at the mercy of escalating food prices or shortages in times of crisis.

I did manage to salvage some cucumber seed from my toxic wasteland of a garden. Assuming I do not spend my summer in perjury*, I will surely post on my misadventures in square foot/organic/heirloom/seed saving lackadaisical gardening.

*Don't ask, you could become an accomplice.

If you are interested in The Growing Challenge from Seed to Seed, head on over to One Green Generation and get yourself signed up!

3:00 in the afternoon and it is dark outside. Dark, cold, and VERY snowy. The picture above is of my garden. Well, the remains of my garden. Sadly, I never got a chance to clean it up before the snow came. Lifeless heirloom tomatoes clinging to their frozen cages. Peppers that were never meant to see snow. Frozen pumpkins still on their vine. Four more months of looking at this?


How depressing. But, just when I thought I was doomed to be a gloomy prisoner stuck inside this icy tomb, a miracle arrived in my mailbox.