Alex Heberling

I have a dream… of lettuce.

This all started the other night when I came across an article on dumpster diving.  I first read a particular article on the subject two or three years ago, in which an adult couple decided to go dumpster diving to supplement their store-bought groceries, and they got their spending down quite a bit by doing so.  (Try as I might, I cannot find that article again to link to it, but I would.)  That’s what first piqued my interest, anyway, and maybe every few months or so, another article mentioning dumpster diving would crop up in the myriad of frugality blogs I read.

But for whatever reason, the other night I was scouring the internet in a caffeine-induced haze, searching for accounts of dumpster diving like they were porn.  However, when I brought the subject up with Chris, he kind of put his foot down.

No dumpsters for me in the immediate future.

However, my manic energy has now turned to container gardening.

I hate buying produce with a passion.  I almost never eat it fast enough to get through it before it spoils, unless I buy for a specific meal I have in mind, like curry.  I inevitably have a horribly balanced diet with very few vegetables, because I just avoid the veg-angst and don’t buy produce at all.  But mostly, I hate having to buy lettuce whenever I want a decent goddamn sandwich.

Sandwiches without lettuce suck my will to live.

So I’m going to grow me some lettuce.

This is my setup, pre-potting.  I’m repurposing this blue bucket for a planter, and I got the seeds and seedling pots from Target, as well as a bag of potting soil.  The empty ice cream tub is my new container for used coffee grounds.  I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going to get holes drilled in the bucket for drainage or just use some gravel.  I feel like it would be a better idea to drill holes in the bucket, but to do that I have to find a friend with a drill they could lend me.

I’m starting out with three types of lettuce.  The Giant Caesar lettuce has a harvest time of 70 days, but the Black-seeded Simpson and Salad Bowl are both just 45 days, so I’m hoping to have baby lettuce leaves after about 4 weeks.

The only thing I still need is a grow light, so that’s going to be my next scavenger hunt before I start the seedlings.