Free Vegetable Seedlings At My House For The Next Few Days

It is known around these parts that I am frugal yet sometimes lazy. That explains why I have at least a hundred or so volunteer vegetable plants growing up in my vegetable garden right now. See, last year I had some zucchini, yellow squash and cucumbers growing in this very spot that I did not notice during harvest until they got so big they could hardly be ignored. Of course baseball bat size zucchini are practically inedible so I just left them to lay fallow in my field.

What happens when I do this is the next spring all the giant seeds that those monster vegetables produced voluntarily grow into  new plants. Now I have literally hundreds of seedlings growing in my beds. I have no way of knowing which variety they are, let alone needing so many plants. If I were to leave them most would die from competition for soil and water so I am offering these seedlings to anyone who would like to take their chances on some free plants.

I can’t promise you what you will grow, but it’s free so do you care? This is a perfect opportunity to teach young children about gardening. They can transplant the seedlings into a sunny patch of well-drained dirt at your house and spend the next 45 days betting on what kind of vegetable they will be eating.

I am not transplanting all these starters into pots, but a happy to put as many as you want into Baggies. Just let me know if you want to come over and take them. You would pay a couple of dollar a piece for these things at the farmers market; of course you would know what you are buying. Why not take a chance and plant a few of these free veggies. I hate to dig them all up and kill them. It goes against my very grain.

Free seedlings at my house, come one, come all, but please come soon!

Happy Earth Day

Every couple of days my computer puts a little reminder about some public holiday that is automatically on my calendar. I am sure that this is some setting I have ascribed to and now don’t know how to turn off. I like reminders, but I usually don’t need to be told Christmas is coming tomorrow or it is tax day. I think there have been plenty of other hints to alert me.

To top it off I get not one or two of these little reminder boxes, but at least four and they all come at the same time. For as smart as computers can be sometimes they are incredibly stupid, or at least the user is an idiot. Enough said.

Yesterday the four box reminders popped up and told me “Earth Day tomorrow.” Huh, a reminder I actually did not already know. Suddenly I was transported back to my childhood. I was about to turn nine when the first earth happened in 1970. Back then we called taking care of the environment Ecology. John Lindsay was Mayor of New York City and he took this whole thing very seriously even going out to pick up trash in the street of NY himself. It was a big job because back then NYC was full of trash and rats.

It seems like we have gotten control over trash in the streets, but we are not completely in control of taking care of the earth. We have just gotten better at hiding our trash. I try and recycle, but admit that I sometimes throw away a bottle when I am out in public rather than bringing it home and putting it in my recycling. I sometimes forget my reusable bags at home and when I get to the grocery store I realize they are all still sitting on my table in the garage.

So in honor of earth day I went out and bought arugula seeds and squash, tomato, cucumber and pepper plants to put in my vegetable garden. Not only is it the best way to use the earth, but also I will cut down on my carbon footprint by walking the few feet to my garden when I want food. I also will not need to recycle the plastic clam shells the store arugula comes in and no bags will be needed when I gather vegetables out of the garden rather than at the store.

If each of us planted just a few vegetables in our own pots or gardens it would cut down on the fuel used to move commercial vegetables from the farms they are grown in to the store and then to our houses. Lettuce and herbs are incredibly easy to grow and taste so much better when picked right before eating.

In case your computer did not send you reminders that it is Earth Day don’t feel bad, you are just better at calendar management than I am. But let me be your reminder to do something nice for our Mother Earth. You might also enjoy the fruits of your good deeds.