Wow, you guys. I am SO pleased (and giddy and encouraged and honored and a little choked up) over the turn-out and enthusiasm over this first project!

I’ll let results speak for themselves, but I do want to encourage you, before you scroll down, to receive everyone’s offerings with the same spirit of openness and camaraderie that we’ve held from the start. The tendency to self-critique or compare or one-up may be rampent all around us, but those things have no place here, and you know why?

Because this is just way too good to be tainted by all that nonsense. 

Home Work Results – Project #1

Becca and Susan, Tennessee — We live in a small apartment in the city but we at least have SOIL, right? So we decided we were going to think out of the box and grow something anyway. We made a compost pile, staked out a teeny garden spot and started our seeds in the only sunny spot we have. We also reclaimed, reused, and borrowed our way through the entire process so we have very little $$ involved…

Kate, Ontario, Canada — My son(3) and daughter(1) planting their first seeds together (tomatoes, peppers and a flower that I can’t remember the name of!)…

Katherine, Princeton Junction, NJ – Our garden project. The first veggies we started were carrots. My son still wants to plant cantaloup and kohlrabi seeds. Those will be next up!  I learned how simple this project can be. A small amount of work for a big lesson learned…

Martha, Tucson, AZ — Here are some of the tomato seeds we started. (Also started bell peppers, those are taking longer for 1st true leaves.) Some of the best sprouts came from seeds that I saved from the farmer’s market tomatoes in 2010. Maybe because they were grown locally??? Since it’s so hot here in the summer, I chose cherry tomatoes and mine didn’t get as big as expected, but my 3 yo daughter loved picking and eating them right in the garden. Yay!…

Karen, Austin, TX – Well, I don’t have anything growing yet but I got all the prep work done! I spread the compost and lay out the soaker hoses. My garden is in Austin so you probably already know that just getting the garden watered is more than half the battle! I’m planning to put the seedlings out there next week. Wheee! Off we go…

Adah, Mooresville, NC – I impulsively dropped these beans into the (now very wet!) terrarium on my desk in my classroom. It seemed like a decent idea at the time. Now it just seems very weird, but I did it with the homework assignment in mind, so I figured I’d share…

Andrea, North Dakota – My husband has been growing herbs for a long time in our home office (in an old fish tank) with a grow light. After reading your post, I decided that we should move the tank of herbs out of his office (where no one really goes besides my husband) and into our dining room so our boys (ages 2 and 1) can care for the plants and watch them grow. So we moved the tank and our boys LOVE the plants! Our 2 year old loves helping water them. We live in North Dakota and it is so nice to see some green during the winter (all we see is snow from about November to April).  I’m sending this even though I didn’t actually start growing anything- but because if it wasn’t for your post the plants would still be sitting in my husband’s office and our boys wouldn’t be having the experience they are having now- helping water them and just looking at them. We are also growing cherry tomatoes in a 5 gallon bucket in our basement under a grow light. Oh, I wanted to add that we get lots of compliments on our plant tank!…

Rita, near Portland, Oregon – Although I once pulled carrots from the vegetable garden on my great-grandma’s farm, I’ve never grown my own food. I want to start. I know nothing.
Decided we’d begin by growing ingredients for our own tomato sauce. That means tomatoes and some herbs. Haven’t even begun to learn what growing tomatoes means. Did buy some oregano (and peppermint) this week. The plants I bought are too big for the pots I had that I thought they might fit into. I’m calling it a start. I blogged about it just a bit today, as part of a different topic. {Love her blog, BTW – creative, honest, well-written.}…

Ruth, Missouri Ozarks — When my grandmother died each of her daughters, there are four, took a piece of her Christmas Cactus. My mother has now given a piece to me and I will pass it on to my daughters (and sons, if they wish).  I think this is such a beautiful gesture that way ties them to the past…

Dee, Virginia Beach, VA – I’m expanding my garden this year and adding a bed of medicinal herbs and flowers too. On my window sill at the moment are tomatoes, calendula, zinnias and asters…

Elizabeth, Austin, TX — Just started my first organic garden. I included pics from my seed sprouting (kale and a pepper sprout) as well as a pic of a carrot sprout in my raised bed and bean sprouts…

Gaetane, Rome, Italy – I really like the idea of ‘homework’, because it’s so easy to sit there at the computer nodding along, hitting Like, muttering ‘Yes! That!’, but DOING something concrete is what really sets the lesson, and reshapes thinking and daily being. Pic attached is of our terrace pot garden. We recently relocated from Canberra, Australia to Rome, Italy and are *sorely* missing our garden and community garden plots…. it’s taken almost 8 months to get into a space where I could organise to get some living green around us and it felt really, really good…

Ashley, Dripping Springs, TX –Due to the fact that I’m gardening challenged, I outsource that to our local CSA farm. (Per your instructions, I’m not going to beat myself up about this and am reminding myself that I’m good at keeping my family and our 4 dogs, 4 cats, 4 pigs & 1 goat alive — so at least I have that to hang on to.) Our family can walk or ride our bikes down to the farm where we can volunteer our time and pick up our fresh farm share.

I included a photo collage with some shots from our day helping at the farm. This week, my son helped set up an irrigation system with Farmer Ron while I worked in the greenhouse with Farmer Carol in prepping containers for tomato plant transplants, then worked outside and added fresh compost to the kale beds.  Once again, I feel complete now that I got to dig around the dirt and enjoy the beauty of the day. My son LOVES helping out at the farm, too. We also get a ton of satisfaction when we get to eat the stuff we helped plant.

I wanted to share the details of my version of this project in case you have any readers who might be gardening challenged, like myself. It’s been a great experience for our whole family. CSA farms ROCK! {Ashley has her own lovely, honest, life-against-the-mainstream-blog that I’ve been keeping my eye on.}…

Lydia, Santa Fe, NM — My daughter and I planted onion seeds a few weeks ago. They seem to be doing well despite the inconsistent watering. This is our first time growing a garden, so we are all very excited to see how it turns out!…

Leenie, West Virginia – Here is a photo of Clary Sage we’re growing. We’ve started lots of herbs but Clary won the prize for first to germinate and sprout the first set of true leaves. My daughter, 13 in a week, is using her new found photography skills to contribute in a wonderful and beautiful way to our venture as community herbalists. She says she is an herbalist-in-training but I consider her contribution to be equal if different than my own. We live in the beautiful Appalachian mountains in WV in a hand built home…

Jessica, Barcelona, Spain – We only have two pretty tiny balconies for growing stuff so we opted to grow ginger, shallots, calcots (local Catalan onions that have a garlic flavour) and lemon plants for deodorising the house. It is winter here and everything is off to a very slow start. I had to bring the ginger inside. The lemon seeds didn’t sprout at all and all the onions are doing quite well and I regularly lop the green ends for cooking.

I am delighted to have learned that I can grow so many things from scraps. So even though we haven’t had much “success” (which I am convinced is due to the cool weather) I have established a habit that will be lifelong. It’s so great to be able to propagate from scraps. I decided to choose the photo of the process rather than the lack of result because the experience was our favorite part…

Anka — Snow-covered greetings from Bavaria!…

Angela — Soooooo – it is February in Vermont, which means that things aren’t growing too well without a grow light. And since this isn’t the year for us to invest in grow lights (I think the college lights were confiscated)…and it isn’t even time to start growing things in the greenhouse yet…I grew some sprouts. I’ll step out on a limb in late March, I promise! I’ve got all my recycled toilet paper tubes ready to go, seeds ordered, plans made. I just need that sun to hang out for a couple more hours each day and then I’ll get started. Great idea to include all of us in a collective project!…

Moria — We have planted several kinds of lettuce, broccoli and 3 heirloom tomatoes…and they’re off (to a lanky start)…yay!…

Ines, El Paso, TX – We did it, Beth! My sister and my children (homeschooled by her) have been trying to have a garden for the last 2 to 3 years. I hadn’t worked before….until now. There are peas, onions, kale, squash, beans, etc…

Chloe, (my cousin), Plano, TX — …and then the dog ate um!  But the cool news is that my ceramics teacher and I are going to try and start a community garden. I’m trying to convince him that we should use biointensive methods:)…

Bev, Round Rock, Texas – I had trouble deciding on a food to grow, so I followed my passion and decided to send off for milkweed seeds for the Monarch butterflies and I receive them this week. I plan to start them this weekend. Muddy hands = happy heart!

As for my own project, the jalapeños are kicking butt (imagine that)…

The bok choy isn’t so sure what it thinks about Mexico…

And the pole beans are just plain showing off…

Now I just have to get some raised beds built, and may need to transplant to pots, temporarily. Given that we have a space for plants and seed starting now, we’re just going to keep at it, and continue experimenting with food scraps and sprouts, because it’s just so fun and easy! More than anything I’m just glad to have started, as that’s usually my biggest barrier.

Back to you, though…YOU oughta be proud of yourselves — look what we just accomplished, and all over the world!!!

My hope is that those who participated, as well as those who are now inspired by those who participated will continue to grow, try new things and keep your hands (and your kids’ hands) in the soil. You we are doing so much more than we know by getting dirt beneath our nails, turning our kids on to the magic of cultivation and encouraging one another in the process.

Many thanks to each and every one of you, whether you jumped in this time or not, and tune in next Friday for Home Work Project #2!

(Oh, and if some of you simply haven’t had a chance to send photos, I’ll gladly still accept and add them to the post. Also, if I botched anyone’s info or overlooked an entry, let me know!)