Victory Gardens

It's Spring (yay!) and as I mentioned before, I decided to grow my own veggies this year. I'm growing them in containers because a) I live in a rental, b) for ease of pest and soil control, and c) to get the most out of the sun. It's been years since I've done any gardening and I must say, I'm enjoying it immensely. This year I'm growing cucumbers, butternut squash, zucchini, basil, red onions, green onions, snow peas, purple carrots, cantaloupe, and strawberries.I'm using a lot of pots I already had on hand, mixed with recyclable containers (my favorites being large plastic water jugs sawed in half--with holes drilled in the bottoms they do an amazing job and are deep enough for root veggies like carrots). The seeds were started indoors last month inside newspaper cups I had folded (easy to do and a great way to keep newspapers out of the trash--here's one of many online tutorials).
These pictures were all taken last month and everything has since doubled in size (except for the cantaloupe, which are taking quite a bit longer to beef up--to be expected as I don't exactly live in melon country). I accidentally left the cucumber seedlings outside one day and therefore lost about half of them due to the cold temps at night...but the few that survived seem to be doing great (Darwinian science at its best!).

This week it will finally be time for me to transplant the squashes and the hearty snow peas. Yum...I can already hear them sizzling on the grill...

I know a lot of people are growing Victory gardens this year, which is awesome. Self sustainability is a beautiful thing, indeed.