Sarah's Garden, week 2: What I've planted so far

Sarah's Garden is a weekly-ish column in which Sarah DeGiorgis documents her attempts to grow food in her sunny West Philly backyard. If you're going to try urban gardening out yourself, especially if you've never done it before, follow along through the season!

I usually start all my plants from seed:  not because I am a crazy person but because I like it.  Seeds grow ridiculously fast as long as they have lots of light and it's warm.  Unfortunately, with this extra-cold winter and my lack of grow lights, my seeds...didn't make it.  Well, the arugula made it (hardiest plant ever??) and now continues to grow outside:

But a lot of other stuff died:  radishes, swiss chard, and two kinds of lettuce.  So I swallowed my pride and went and bought some little plant starts — lettuce and peas.

Here they are on April 1st, when they were just planted:

And then they grew!  It is always maddening to me how slowly things grow in the spring so here is proof of the growing:

Lettuce is growing too, but I started with four and one just completely... disappeared.  It was like it was sucked back into the ground or something (actually it was pretty weak to begin with and died quickly  — another reason why I like to grow my own plants from seed):

So since my early seed attempts did not work this year I'll be buying more veggie starts (tomatoes, squash, peppers?) once it's warm enough for them — probably around mid-May.  In the meantime, I'll be fawning over my peas and lettuce and trying to keep the stray cats at bay.

Read more of the 2014 growing season's Sarah's Garden.