Eat local!

I've never grown food before. I've always liked plants, but I've never grown food. Mostly because the food I liked to eat wasn't any sort of plant. Mom wouldn't let me raise cows. It's better that way.

So anyway, I've never grown food before. And I'm not sure that I am now, but at least I'm growing plants that might potentially one day make food.

A few months ago, I was checking out the Target $1 aisle. You know the one, right? The one with really cheap (as in, only $1) mostly useless items. Well, one day, I found food.

Well, seeds. Okay, fine, they were seeds. Actually it was more like a seed kit. There was a little package of seeds and a little dirt pellet (the one where you add water and then suddenly you have 8 times as much dirt as you thought) all in a little bitty pot. For $1.

So I decided to grow food.

I got two kinds: strawberries and tomatoes.

I planted each kind of seed and watered and waited. Eventually, the strawberry plants started growing, but they grew very slowly. Then the tomato seeds started to grow. And grow and grow.

Here's a picture of the kind of pot we started with:

I had six tomato plants growing and I eventually moved them to this:

The tomato plants kept growing and growing and growing. The strawberry plants, not so much.

Tonight, I moved the tomato plants to 5 gallon buckets:

Do you see the little bitty pot at the bottom? That's the one we started with!

After the tomato plants moved to the buckets, I moved the strawberry plants into the blue pot.

They don't look so good. Hopefully the new pot will be good for them and allow their roots to grow big and strong.

Okay, so now you've seen my plants. Now it's time for my confession: I have no idea what I am doing.

I talked to an employee up at Lowe's this weekend and learned more about my tomato plants. (side note: Every time I type "tomato," I accidentally type "tomator" and then I have to go fix it. EVERY TIME.)

What I learned:
1. My plants will probably die over the winter, even if I keep them inside.
2. If/When flowers bloom, I can just shake the plants and that should allow the girl parts and the boy parts to meet up and make little tomatoes. Don't ask me how.
3. My tomato plants should each be in a 5-gallon bucket. I have six plants. There was no way I was going to put each plant in its own bucket. I wouldn't have enough room in the house for them all. (I can't put them outside because I think Autumn would eat them. Actually, maybe I will put some outside. But later.)

So, as things progress, I'll keep you updated. And I might even give you some of my tomatoes, if I get any. Because I don't really like tomatoes.

Don't ask me why I'm growing them. All I know is that they were $1.