When I learned that I could grow a vegetable in my dimly lit, teensy New York City apartment with just a Solo cup and a few seeds, I felt overwhelmed. I love vegetables. I eat them for breakfast. My friends once gave me a crudité platter for my birthday instead of a cake.
The website StartAGarden let me take my love for vegetables to a new level. Catering to my specific living situation, the site graphed out the kind of produce I could grow based on my location, space and the type of materials I had on hand. I, for example, don't really have gardening tools. But this posed no problem. All I had to do was buy the seeds.
I started this experiment by using a Solo cup leftover from a '90s-themed party my roommates and I threw last week. Then I turned to the website. I entered my zip code and chose "indoors," because my apartment doesn't even have a fire escape on which I could secretly grow a vegetable.
Next, the website prompted me to choose one type of produce to plant, based on my previous container selection. As shown below, I had three plants to choose from: Brussels sprouts, turnips and lettuce.
To turnip town I went. Upon arrival, the site asked me when I wanted to start growing my turnip. I selected March 12, and the site then generated two dates: an end date and a through date. Since the turnip would take anywhere from 6.5 weeks to 13 weeks to grow, these dates informed me that I should expect the plant to turn up (see what I did there?) around April, and it should definitely finish growing by July.
Finally, the site produced an incredibly comprehensive "how to" page, complete with directions on how to plant and when to water (the below is just a sample of the detailed instructions). It even warned about common mistakes. I am confident my turnip will be perfect.
Find out how to grow your own plants by going to StartAGarden.org.
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