Growing at the Speed of Life - A Year in the Life of My First Kitchen Garden

■ A waterproof heat pad to slip under the seedlings, with a ceramic probe

that craftily takes the soil temperature and lets you adjust it to awaken the

seeds’ ambition to become a future dinner.

■ Trays upon trays of little black pots that nested into black trays, some that

drain and others that don’t. (Apparently some seedling plants benefi t from

the more humid environment of the nondraining bottom tray. Also, they are

less messy.)

■ Black Gold potting mix and a sack or two of Coco-Coir from Scott Titus,

along with his Intrepid organic fertilizer.

“Do you want to build it yourself ?” asked Charley. “You’ve got to be kid­

ding!” I replied, and I told him of a recent debacle with a fi ling cabinet I’d or­

dered from a catalog that promised “some easy assembly needed.”

A three-man crew arrived on site, and within 6 hours the greenhouse was up

and ready to grow. Had I chosen to build it, I just may have gotten it up... but I

am not confident that essentials such as doors opening and closing would have

been achieved.

For those of you with a more robust self-confidence (and more experience),

the do-it-yourself kit will cost you about two-thirds of my 6-hour wonder (al­

though you’ll probably have the expense of the foundation, which I already had

in place from the former pool).

But the greenhouse kit itself is only part of the investment. Creating this “un­

44 • GROWING AT THE SPEED OF LIFE