I'm going to try something a little different in 2009, now that this blog has been left fallow for a while. Now that the soil has had a little time to replenish itself and the pests have died down a bit, we can start again … and maybe not torture that metaphor any more than strictly necessary.

There's lettuce in my light well. Or, at least, there are lettuce seeds in my light well, nestled in about 5 gallons of organic potting soil from the Sloat Garden Center. (The one actually on Sloat.) The soil is in a self-watering container made from 5-gallon buckets, made using the instructions from The Urban Homestead (rather than the really nice video I just linked to because I only just found it). My daughter was fascinated by this process, and not just the dangerous bits with the saw and drill.

The hope is to start growing a little of our own food, even though we live in a tiny apartment near the beach. Despite my urges to the contrary, I'm trying to start small, and build up slowly to more ambitious tasks. Tasks that might involve worm poop, or chickens.

We'll see if this is the start of something, whether the lettuces actually sprout, whether this is a late-blooming manifestation of my British gardening fiend heritage, and whether lettuces alone will feed a family when the zombies come. Probably not, on that last one. Better get some more buckets.