Want a Vegetable Garden? Dig It!

My kids had the best time yesterday, all for less than $10. The day started out with a free craft activity at the East Windsor , where they were provided free wooden planter kits that they hammered together. The store runs a free craft the first Saturday of every month at 9 a.m., and they're great fun. (For more on Home Depot’s Kids Workshops, visit homedepot.com.)

After the craft, we went to Home Depot’s garden center, where my daughters picked out seeds (peas, cucumbers and tomatoes), seed starting soil and some Burpee seed starting pots. For myself, I spent a little more money, and purchased a seed starter kit that comes with seed tray, soil cubes, a water mat and a plastic lid to get a greenhouse effect. (I figure I can use the tray next year.) I also picked up some dill, basil and sunflower seeds.

When we got home, I let my daughters fill their pots with soil, and following the planting directions (to get the correct depth in which the seeds should be planted), they planted their seeds. We set the pots in the planters, placed them near a sunny window and watered the seeds. Now, my girls are anxiously waiting for their seeds to germinate. The directions on the seed packets say the seeds should start to sprout in about 10 days, so hopefully, we will have seedlings in less than two weeks.

Once the seedlings are bigger and the weather is more suitable for vegetable gardening, we hope to transplant them to our garden. (I bought a cedar raised garden bed kit that I plan to set up soon.) If all goes well, the girls will be gardening all summer. (Otherwise, we will be at the garden store to buy starter plants for our garden.)

If you’d like to get planting, schedules for when to plant indoors can be found online. For instance, I found a guideline at www.almanac.com for when to start seeds indoors in Hightstown. According to the chart, we started our tomatoes a little late, our cucumbers on time and peas a few weeks early.

Also, apparently basil  and dill can be grown very easily indoors all year, and sunflower seeds are hardy enough that they don’t have to be started indoors.

So we’ll have to see how our little experiment goes.

Editor's note: For more tips on gardening, check Patch at 2 p.m. every day this week, or click "Keep me updated!" below.