Let's Grow Vegetables from Seed

MAHA may be a great idea, but what you do at your house is more important for your health than what's happening at the White House. Growing your own vegetables provides food that's fresher and tastes better than store-bought and helps you get some fresh air, sunshine and exercise. If you grow enough, you can even can your own sauces and soups that don't have any franken-food ingredients.

My first time growing celery from seed.

Here in central Indiana, it's time to plant celery from seed since the average last frost date is 10 weeks away. In a few weeks, it'll be time to plant tomatoes. There are a couple of ways to figure out when to start various seeds where you live:

You can find out when it's time to plant things by 1) looking up your average last frost date, 2) getting a seed packet and looking at the instructions for starting the seeds indoors, and 3) counting backwards on a calendar by the number of weeks indicated.

You could also ask Grok (X's AI feature). I asked it, "when to plant celery seeds 46201" and it gave me not only the time to plant, but other tips on growing celery.

Make sure you have a sunny place to plant the seedlings once they're ready to go in the ground or in a pot. If you'll be planting in pots, get seeds that are labeled for growing in pots. You'll also need some seed starting mix (it's similar to soil) and a seed tray or some plastic or styrofoam cups with holes poked in the bottom for drainage, and a tray or dish to put them on to catch the water.

Moisten the seed starting mix in the bag if it's dry--it's hard to moisten it once it's in a seed tray. Fill the seed trays and gently press the starting mix down to remove any air pockets. Find the recommended planting depth on the seed packet and plant a few seeds in each cell. Put the seed tray within a few inches of a bright light. This one is $15; I've never needed a more expensive grow light. I use a timer to automatically turn my lights on and off. Keep the seeds moist but not soggy--a liquid measuring cup is perfect for watering them. If your seed starting mix has fertilizer, you won't need to add more.

Comments

Lowcarb team member said…

I hope everything grows well from the seeds.
It is always nice to grow your own vegetables if you can.

All the best Jan

February 10, 2025

Dana Carpender's Podcast; Dr. Davis on YouTube; Labor Day Sales

Dana Carpender, who's written several recipe books and other works on low-carb, has a podcast and is still writing articles at carbsmart.com. She's a terrific writer and amateur researcher (otherwise known as reading , as Jimmy Dore jokes ). I use her book 500 Low-Carb Recipes all the time and I'm looking forward to hearing more from her. I've embedded her podcast on my blog (click on the three lines at the top right if you don't see it, or go to Spotify or other podcast source if you're getting this by email). Carbsmart.com doesn't seem to have a blog feed, so if you want to see the latest posts there, you can sign up for notifications at their site. Dr. Davis has been putting a lot more videos on YouTube, so I've added his channel to the lineup. Click on the three lines on my blog if you don't see it, or go to his channel here . * * * * * Primal Kitchen is having a Labor Day sale-- 20% off everything. They sell high quality collagen powder, con...

Fermented bread and butter pickle recipe ft. L. Plantarum

After Dr. Davis said the other night that L. plantarum may reduce some of the effects of the herbicide glyphosate (which is everywhere), I'm re-running my recipe for fermented bread and butter pickles. Pickling cucumbers naturally have L. plantarum bacteria on them, and fermenting them with some brown sugar multiplies these bacteria. (Just don't use chlorinated water to wash them.) And if you're growing your own cucumbers, avoid spraying the fruits with Bacillus thuringiensis , or Bt (leaves and vines are OK). It's unclear what effect a big dose of Bt would have on humans. Another benefit of DIY pickles: no emulsifiers like polysorbate 80, which is a common ingredient in pickles. If you have GI problems, it could be from emulsifiers. These sweet-and-sour pickles are the tastiest I've ever made. There's just a little added sugar (some of which the bacteria will consume) and turmeric that gives the pickles their bright color. Special equipment Quar...

Cardio: A Waste of Valuable Dance Time

"I'd rather hold a girl in my arms than a football." -Joe DeCicco, friend and dancing fanatic Have you heard that it takes a woman 77 hours of exercise to lose a kilogram of fat? (For us Americans, that's half a pound.) That's according to a study cited by Dr. John Briffa .(1) The women who huffed and puffed three hours a week for a year ended up 4.4 pounds lighter than the sedentary women. That doesn't surprise me: my own weight loss involved a lot less exercise than what I'd been doing. I did no cardio workouts, just strength training . I had more time and energy for dancing, which is a stress reliever, helps keep me in shape, and it's a ton of fun. It's not expensive to dance (as long as you stay away from the studios). I've found excellent lessons at clubs where the teachers really care about the students getting it. Here in Denver, there are dancing clubs that are run by nonprofit organizations, where the prices are reasonable and...

Avoiding a Nightmare by Using Math

The answer lies in trigonometry. -Sherlock Holmes Don't worry if you never learned trigonometry--the answers here lie in arithmetic. Medical test results often come back positive or negative, as if the result were a certainty. Of course, there is the accuracy, but if the accuracy is 99% or so, what does that really mean? That you should get your affairs in order? Before you call your probate attorney, let's take an example from the book Calculated Risks by Gerd Gigerenzer. Let's say you're a 40-something year old woman with no symptoms of breast cancer. You have a positive mammogram. What are the odds you have breast cancer? Using some assumptions about test accuracy and rates of disease based on real data, the odds that you'd have breast cancer are one in eleven according to Gigerenzer. (If you were way off, don't feel bad--most of the physicians Gigerenzer tested were way off, too--and they had the data in front of them. Not that that's comforting in every...

Lousy Mood? It Could be the Food

Here's a funny AMV(1) on what it's like to be depressed, apathetic and overly sensitive. Note: explicit (but funny) lyrics in the video. Hearing this song brought a startling realization: I used to be emo, but with normal clothes. Sulking, sobbing and writing poetry were my hobbies. When I was a kid, my mother said that she wouldn't know what to do to punish me if I had done something wrong. And yet things got worse. Over a two-week period in 1996, my best friend moved away, I lost my job and broke up with my boyfriend. I lost my appetite and lived on a daily bagel, cream cheese and a Coke for the next few months. I had tried counseling, and didn't find it helpful; in fact, I found reviving painful memories was pointless. Not thinking about them, on the other hand, worked wonders. Later on, so did studying philosophy and learning to think through emotions instead of just riding through them. But what's blown away all the techniques is diet. Since I s...

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Search This Blog