Why Plant Seeds?

I like to grow vegetables. I grow without chemicals. I use only organic fertilizer for my tomatoes and other plants, and I always use seeds, never store-purchased plants. I’m frequently asked why I choose to do it my way - to most gardeners it seems like a great deal of work.

The average home gardener buys most or all their plants from a home garden center, and they get plants ready to go and grown. These plants start producing fruit quickly and can give people a large yield. It is efficient for those who want to plant all of their garden at once, it’s easy and fast. Truly a modern miracle of agricultural economics.

So why do I grow all my plants from seeds? The easiest answer is price - it costs pennies on the dollar to grow from seeds. An average tomato plant, started in a hot house and grown to a height of a foot or more, costs about nine dollars. The cost for a pack of 50 seeds is typically less than a dollar, though there are more expensive varieties. I also purchase the starter soil, but that is fairly cheap, and I have many starter trays. My plants might never get as big as a store bought one, but I can grow dozens of plants that easily beat the yield of any single plant. By the end of most seasons, I get hundreds of tomatoes for a couple of bucks and a bit of hard work. It’s totally worth it!

Many home cultivators are a bit wary of growing large gardens. Keeping the patches free of weeds, well-maintained, and watered takes a certain level of commitment. It can be hard work and your muscles will feel it after a day taking care of your plants. I love that. I enjoy the physical activity and I like working in the dirt. I get sweaty and muddy, but I shower, and that goes away. The work I do in the yard stays. After weeks of effort, something happens that is hard to explain. One day you have barren patches of dirt and the next, like magic, little seedlings pop up to say hello. It’s a moment of both joy and anxiety. This tiny thing is your responsibility, and each day that it gets bigger is a small miracle. If you just plant an already grown plant, you will never get to feel that joy.

There is great joy from a garden that produces a vast bounty, and your store-bought plants will get you there much faster. So why be so down on going to Lowe’s or Ace? One word: fungus! Just one plant with fungus can kill a whole garden and I have gotten fungus from plants purchased from garden centers. I figure 1 in 20 have a disease that is dangerous to your vegetables. People think they over-water or take poor care of these plants, but the truth is that any mono-crop breeds disease, and all these plants are grown together in hot houses. One year you might get lucky, maybe two years, but eventually it gets everyone. I decided to stay away from store-bought vegetables and instead I save seeds. I take the best looking produce from my garden and I save the seeds to plant next season. I’ve had great luck with tomatoes and peppers.

Many seeds are just so cheap that we choose to buy different varieties each year. Zucchini, squash, beans, carrots, potatoes, and more; basically we grow what we like to eat and preserve. When our summer harvest starts coming in, it’s both a moment of happiness and of sorrow. We are all glad at the volume and we are really sad about the amount of effort needed to process all that stuff. Lucky for us it tastes really good and makes the effort totally worth it. Growing from seeds is cheaper so it allows for a larger garden where you can grow many plants and keep only the good ones. Cultivating a large area is good exercise and extremely rewarding work. The incredible joy of watching from seed to final fruit is an amazing process and can be fulfilling. Starting seeds protects you from large grow fungus and keeps your garden organic and free of chemicals.

Why start your garden from seeds? It’s only the coolest, healthiest, environmentally friendly, sustainably wonderful, and will change you for the better.

Why Plant Seeds?

I like to grow vegetables. I grow without chemicals. I use only organic fertilizer for my tomatoes and other plants, and I always use seeds, never store-purchased plants. I’m frequently asked why I choose to do it my way - to most gardeners it seems like a great deal of work.

The average home gardener buys most or all their plants from a home garden center, and they get plants ready to go and grown. These plants start producing fruit quickly and can give people a large yield. It is efficient for those who want to plant all of their garden at once, it’s easy and fast. Truly a modern miracle of agricultural economics.

So why do I grow all my plants from seeds? The easiest answer is price - it costs pennies on the dollar to grow from seeds. An average tomato plant, started in a hot house and grown to a height of a foot or more, costs about nine dollars. The cost for a pack of 50 seeds is typically less than a dollar, though there are more expensive varieties. I also purchase the starter soil, but that is fairly cheap, and I have many starter trays. My plants might never get as big as a store bought one, but I can grow dozens of plants that easily beat the yield of any single plant. By the end of most seasons, I get hundreds of tomatoes for a couple of bucks and a bit of hard work. It’s totally worth it!

Many home cultivators are a bit wary of growing large gardens. Keeping the patches free of weeds, well-maintained, and watered takes a certain level of commitment. It can be hard work and your muscles will feel it after a day taking care of your plants. I love that. I enjoy the physical activity and I like working in the dirt. I get sweaty and muddy, but I shower, and that goes away. The work I do in the yard stays. After weeks of effort, something happens that is hard to explain. One day you have barren patches of dirt and the next, like magic, little seedlings pop up to say hello. It’s a moment of both joy and anxiety. This tiny thing is your responsibility, and each day that it gets bigger is a small miracle. If you just plant an already grown plant, you will never get to feel that joy.

There is great joy from a garden that produces a vast bounty, and your store-bought plants will get you there much faster. So why be so down on going to Lowe’s or Ace? One word: fungus! Just one plant with fungus can kill a whole garden and I have gotten fungus from plants purchased from garden centers. I figure 1 in 20 have a disease that is dangerous to your vegetables. People think they over-water or take poor care of these plants, but the truth is that any mono-crop breeds disease, and all these plants are grown together in hot houses. One year you might get lucky, maybe two years, but eventually it gets everyone. I decided to stay away from store-bought vegetables and instead I save seeds. I take the best looking produce from my garden and I save the seeds to plant next season. I’ve had great luck with tomatoes and peppers.

Many seeds are just so cheap that we choose to buy different varieties each year. Zucchini, squash, beans, carrots, potatoes, and more; basically we grow what we like to eat and preserve. When our summer harvest starts coming in, it’s both a moment of happiness and of sorrow. We are all glad at the volume and we are really sad about the amount of effort needed to process all that stuff. Lucky for us it tastes really good and makes the effort totally worth it. Growing from seeds is cheaper so it allows for a larger garden where you can grow many plants and keep only the good ones. Cultivating a large area is good exercise and extremely rewarding work. The incredible joy of watching from seed to final fruit is an amazing process and can be fulfilling. Starting seeds protects you from large grow fungus and keeps your garden organic and free of chemicals.

Why start your garden from seeds? It’s only the coolest, healthiest, environmentally friendly, sustainably wonderful, and will change you for the better.

I Am Afraid

I can admit it, I’m afraid.  I watch my wife, my sons, guys I play tennis with, they act like they are not scared of about the current health crisis.  They talk about cancelled events, social distancing, and even impacts on each individuals daily life.  Each doing their best not to be fearful about what is coming.  Mostly people are shocked and emotionally overreacting, they buy toilet paper and chicken like the end of times are coming.  It seems that no one wants to talk about what is really going on.

The idea that this situation was created by a lazy world population and governments that have lost focus of people’s daily lives evades discussion and hate and fear take it’s place.  My life was disrupted after college and I have been trying to deal with a harsh world where my health and welfare were no concern to both family and the general population.  So I started looking at the world differently.  I watched in horror as the beautiful blue planet was ravaged by careless capitalists.  The pursuit of money became more important than kindness, the ecology, our food supply, personal freedoms, and more. 

As a science teacher in the 1990’s, I taught about the delicate food web and that all things are connected somehow.  I showed that what happened on the other side of the town, the country, and even the world has become more and more connected to our daily lives.  I knew a small number of individuals that shared my world view and they too adjusted their lives.  They traveled less, lived simply, gardened and grew veggies, and concerned themselves with the impact they had on the Earth. 

I changed, I adjusted, but more importantly, I became afraid!  Each cruise outbreak of disease, each record high temperature at the North Pole, and the time I got food poisoning, I became fearful of what was going on around me.  My parents didn’t care and eventually decided not to talk to me again.  For them, the years left were the only thing of importance.  The life of my children, or my future didn’t matter to them.  I was left alone, and everything promised to me was taken away.  This forced more changes in the way I acted and created a space around me, a distance that society kept away from me. 

Each crisis, I was glad my wife had a family that helped us or we would have been on the street.  We made the most of everything, finding the best and least expensive ways to do everything.  My work life was disrupted and I found it impossible to find work.  Simultaneously, my home was damaged by the flood that accompanied Super Storm Sandy.  The next three years were spent trying to get our flood insurance company to pay the claim.  We adjusted, and our lives shrunk again.  Each dollar got budgeted, and the lurking fear of foreclosure and financial ruin was ever present.  We were afraid, but we never gave up.

The arthritis in my hips became so painful that a hip replacement was the only answer.  I replaced the left hip, hoping the right one would hold up.  Unexpectedly, my attention to my diet, health, and fitness had an unexpected benefit, I walked out of the hospital less than 24 hours after surgery, and was playing tennis 6 weeks later.  The rehabilitation was incredibly hard and full of extreme pain.  I had moments of heart stopping fear that I would never again be fit or well enough to garden, play tennis, or do anything without pain.  Lucky that fear and I were old friends, so we worked together to work myself back to full health, and even superior in many ways. 

So I welcome the world to my fear. Now you know what I have been living with and you see what I have been talking about for decades.  The safe veneer of safety has been stripped and now you too are afraid.  Fear can’t kill you, it is a natural reach to danger.  America and the world is now in danger,  time to pull together and change things while we still can.  I bet for each of you to adjust to the new reality, we here in America are BROKE and even worse, we are a trillion dollars in debt.  WE CAN CHANGE!  I have written many blogs about things that individuals can do today to improve the ecology, the economy, and the community that you live in.  Use your fear, there is still time to do something!