Warmer weather, budding flowers and the smell of charcoal in the air – summer is coming, which also means seasonal produce is popping up everywhere you look.
Between local farmer’s markets, community farms, rooftop gardens and produce delivery services, there are lots of ways to get farm-fresh food. But planting your own garden is perhaps the most convenient and rewarding way to do it.
Planting a garden can be intimidating, especially for first-timers. Luckily, you don’t need to be a farmer, or live near a farm, to reap the benefits of home-grown produce.
This is where Start a Garden comes in. Winners of PHA’s 2014 Innovation Challenge Hackathon, the Start a Garden team has created a website full of step-by-step guides and videos to learn how to do things like water plants the right way, prepare dirt for seeds and how to plant correctly.
In four easy steps, the site helps sort out what you can grow and tells you how to grow it based on what kind of pot you have available (even a red solo cup!) and the environment in which you’re growing.
For example, got a jar laying around the house? Here’s a step-by-step guide to what you can grow in it:
Step 1: Put in your zip code, chose “indoor” and chose “jar.”
Step 2: Based on a jar, our best growing options were radishes, beans or lettuce. We chose lettuce.
Step 3: We then had to decide when to plant our lettuce, and chose Saturday, May 9. Based on the stated growth window of 6-10 weeks for lettuce, the website said it will be ready to eat between June 18 and August 27.
Step 4: The final step gave us information about how to get started–planting, harvesting, when to water and common errors.
We love this tool – it couldn’t be easier to bring farm fresh produce into your home, no matter where you live!
What are you growing this season? Tell us in the comments!
