Freedom in the Hills of New Hampshire

Gardening in New Hampshire is a lot harder than gardening in Kansas. In Kansas, you just went outside whenever it got warm enough, turned over some dirt, planted some seeds and then watered occasionally until you got a plant.

In New Hampshire, this process is complicated by a few matters. First, it doesn’t get warm enough to plant things that are suseptible to frost until May or June, so you have to start your seeds inside in trays or just buy the friggin plant. Secondly, if you try to just go outside and turn some dirt over with a shovel, the first words out of your mouth will be “f—-ing rocks!” They don’t call it the Granite State for nothing: every time you put your shovel in the ground, you will hit a rock. Sometimes it will be really small, other times it will be the size ofa table and you either get some dynamite and blast it out (unlikely) or work around it. This is why most landscaping in New Hampshire incorporates boulders. They had to do something with it. Aside from the rocks, you have the whole tree issue, which was also not a problem. Where there are no rocks, there are tree roots. There are also tree branches blocking the sun. Both must be dealt with. I get the feeling that farmers who settled in New Hampshire must have been really desperate, otherwise they would have never settled here to farm.

Because of these two issues, most gardeners in New Hampshire opt for raised beds. They buy dirt, build large beds above ground to put the dirt in, then tansplant the seedlings as soon as they’re big enough and the weather is warm enough.

Fortunately for me, I live in an apartment and don’t have to deal with these problems. Still, the husband and I want to have a bit of a garden. We want to try our hands at raising food. It’s been ages since I’ve gardened and I’m getting really tired of paying high prices for herbs at the grocery store, only to have them rot on the way home. I swear, they have some sort of built in sensor that says “Okay, we’re out of the store…turn brown now!” So, we’re going to attempt a balcony garden.

We have 6 window boxes which will be hung on the balcony, two containers on the ground, and four topsy turvey planters that I’ve heard work really well. We also have innumerable milk cartons that I’ve repurposed because I’m classy like that. But hey, whatever works works.

To begin with, I bought a few seeds (cilantro, parsley, basil, oregano, green onions, carrots and swiss chard) and planted the herbs in one window box to get them started. Then I knocked the darn thing over while shutting the blinds. I scooped all the dirt back in, but figured I’d better replant since who knows what happened to the seeds? A few days later, they started to sprout. A few weeks later, and I realize I have no idea what is sprouting since it good be the original seeds or the later ones. So I transplant out some of the seedlings to keep until I know what I have growing. Yesterday, I try some and realize that I pretty much have 8 plants of cilantro growing. A google image search told me that my basil had finally sprouted. So, I decided to take the sprouting tray we bought finally and try starting my herbs again in there, this time with labels.

In addition to planting herbs in the sprouting tray, we decided to try sprouting our tomatos and peppers in there, too. So, eventually we should have in our balcony garden Bell pepper, hot pepper, cucumber, big tomatos, plum tomatos, swiss chard, carrots, green onion and the herbs. Some people say start out small and see what happens. I say, start out big and learn from your mistakes!

If the bell pepper and tomatos don’t sprout or don’t get big enough soon enough (very likely, I should have started them in March), we’ll just buy the stinking plants. On the plus side, my swiss chard (planted at the same time as the others), sprouted yesterday. This means that the dirt is warm enough for swiss chard, which starts at 50 degrees but must not be warm enough for tomatos and peppers, which start at 70F. So I’ll be working to get that temperaturer up. Think happy, sprouting thoughts everyone!