In The Biginning...

So...my name is Cheri. I'm a 35 year old woman living in North East Oklahoma. I grew up in Orange County California, and my yard was about 10x10 growing up. Needless to say...we didnt garden. No one in my family did anything self sustaining...at ALL. We were the definition of consumer because that's all we did...consume comercial products.

I've always been one that has a hard time throwing things out. Some would say I'm borderline horder. Whatever. All I know is that when I know you can recycle something...I'll hold n to it until I get enough to take it down to the center and recycle it! Or better yet, give it to someone who does that to feed themselves. (we use to have a homeless guy come to our house and collect all the cans that I saved for him ;) )

So when I grew up and got my own house, I always would tinker in plants and try to grow plants and always wanted to start a garden. Well...lets just say that 10 years later I've only been successful with three plants. No joke. BUT...in my defense... I didnt know how to properly care for them! That was the missing key... knowing what they need and providing it or them!

So last year I decided I would buy some heirloom tomato plants from HSN. They looked good and the price seemes right...or so I thought...I feel pretty foolish now, but whatever... anyway, I ended up feeding them WAY too much, not polinating them (which I didnt know you have to do) and they ended up dying. $40 down the tube. (and they're still sitting in the pots from last summer looking sad... HAHAHA)

So this year I told my dad that I have friends helping me this time and that I'm excited to get my garden planted this year. No more container plants, these are going in the ground. We get on the subject of hydroponics (growing plants in nutrient rich water only, no soil) and he tells me he's going buy me the equipment for a couple containers and I can try them out. So I do serious research before I agreed to try it. It sounded good and seemed to yeild better crops, so I figured why not? 

My plans: I have two self contained containers coming (comercial ones) to get me started in learning, and we got a bunch of heirloom seeds. I am going to make at least 2 more larger containers, hopefully more, and do the bulk of my growing that way. I plan to do some under lights indoors and some outside in the sunlight and see which do better. 

I have I think 4  different varieties of tomatos, 3 bell peppers, sugar snap beans, 2 watermelons, 2 other melons, 3 carrots, 2 cucumbers, and 2 squash. ...I think that's it... and now that I wrte them down that seems like a LOT! lol But I have help like I said, and I plan to make it a comunity garden so people can come and work and help themselves! Since I live right outside of town it's perfect for that!

So all in all I'm pretty excited. I'm GOING to make it work this time. It's important to be to become self sustaining eventually, so this kind of is a MUST for that LOL if you can't grow your own food, you can't live!