Do you ever have that moment when you venture out of your comfort zone, either willingly or unwillingly?

Christmas kind of got me into that… I had been chatting with my husband on how I wanted to grow plants inside over the winter to mimic the year round gardening experience we had in Florida. I sincerely miss my garden there and I keep thinking of all the leafy greens that are currently growing in Florida gardens.

Here in Virginia, we are going through winter, everything is dormant and even though the gardeners up here are thinking about their gardens, they go more through planning for outdoors than anything else.

The plan was that, on January first, I will be starting some cool weather vegetables, herbs, and some flowers. Then Mid-January, I will be starting my first peppers. We are also filling a lot of our beds with manure, topsoil. Leaf mulch etc. Which will need to continue to decompose till spring is here, in March or April.

So, now, I got an Aerospring hydroponic garden tower for Christmas. My husband had been doing research and found me this one. It has plenty of space for indoor growing.

My challenge: I have never ever grown anything in water other than perhaps an accidental tulip which already came like that. I have no clue what I am doing. First, I reached out to my trusted garden friend Mary from Mary’s Heirloom seeds, and just sent her a pic with help. She gave me some starters. I also typed in the system, and then looked up seed starting for this system. While some larger seeds can be started directly in the pods, the smaller ones need to be sprouted and started prior to transplanting.

I have some new growing trays on order and a heating mat, though I am just too darn excited to get started so I got my little yoghurt jars out and some paper towels, and decided to give the top of the fridge a try for the time being. We shall see how this pans out!

Growth almost always comes with growing pains so, I will be posting updates on both my failures and ofcourse I am going to share my successes as well. For now, let me get these seeds sprouted and then in a week or two, I will share as I set up and plant them in my new system.

The unknown is scary, change is scary, but learning new things is rewarding. Sometimes, being uneasy with a new thing is just fear of the unknown, and if you do not go through these feelings, you never get to explore and grow, so here we go! Grow with me in 2024!