The Home-Grown Project

For the last sev­eral years, I’ve planted herbs to use in my kitchen exploits—nothing fancy, just basil, chives, mint and rose­mary, usually—but I’ve always pur­chased rel­a­tively mature plants and pot­ted them in larger con­tain­ers. This year, I decided to try grow­ing from seed. After count­less trips to hard­ware stores and nurs­eries, I finally set­tled on a longer list to try:

• Genovese basil, to use pri­mar­ily as a pizza topping
• Mammoth dill, as a fla­vor­ing agent in my ongo­ing fas­ci­na­tion with all things pickled
• Chives, both gar­lic and traditional
• Flat-leaf pars­ley
• Rosemary
• Thyme
• Oregano

I started the seeds in early March, not long before I left for SXSW, in Planters’ Pride Peat-Free Greenhouse Kits.

Oregano in the green­house kit

Parsley in the green­house kit

A few shoots appeared before I left, mostly from the basil, but by the time I returned, the tray I’d used for the faster-germinating herbs—basil, chives and dill—were ready to be trans­planted. I used Planters’ Pride FiberGrow pots and MiracleGro Potting Mix, and now, almost a month later, they’ve almost recov­ered from my less-than-skilled trans­plant­ing job and will be ready to set out next week after the freeze we’re expect­ing mid-week.

Dill and chives in FiberGrow pots

Basil in FiberGrow pots

Which brings me to this: I was walk­ing through the liv­ing room while my grand­mother was watch­ing Martha Stewart a week or so ago, and one of the guests was Jon Traunfeld from the University of Maryland, who was show­ing off the Salad Table™, devel­oped by the Maryland Cooperative Extension and the University’s College of Agriculture & Natural Resources. It’s a free­stand­ing table/box made of lum­ber that allows grow­ing let­tuces and other veg­eta­bles in rel­a­tively shal­low plots from March to November. I’ve had prob­lems with rab­bits and other crit­ters in the past, so a raised gar­den was par­tic­u­larly intriguing.

I down­loaded the PDF instruc­tions from the University’s web­site, vis­ited hard­ware stores to price and pur­chase mate­ri­als, and finally got it put together and moved to the patio yes­ter­day. (I strongly encour­age you to visit the Salad Table page and read through the instruc­tion so what I’m writ­ing makes more sense.)

My mod­i­fied Salad Table™

In the inter­est of fis­cal respon­si­bil­ity, and my desire to fit every­thing I bought into my Prius, I had to make some changes.

• Because I didn’t want to bother with tin snips to cut the hard­ware cloth, I changed the dimen­sions of the table to fit the width of the alu­minum screen and the hard­ware cloth.

Screen and hard­ware cloth

• Instead of the 10′ and 12′ boards called for, I used 10 2“x4“x6’ studs ($0.88 each on sale) in build­ing the table, which resulted in a table that’s four inches wider, three inches longer, and 1.75″ taller than the PDF instruc­tions would produce.
• I was hav­ing trou­ble with the screws I’d bought to hold the wood together, so I used 8d 2.5″ gal­va­nized nails, which seem to be hold­ing bet­ter than the screws did.
• In the inter­est of win­ter stor­age, I made the legs remov­able by attach­ing them with 5/16“x3 1/2″ hex bolts.

Legs made removable

• To make the table more portable, I installed two rigid 2″ cast­ers on one end, and two 2″ swivel cast­ers with brakes on the other.

Casters

• Stability was an issue, so I added braces to the long sides of the box, attach­ing the 2“x4” studs with 5″ hex bolts.

Total cost of the table: $48.87 ($10 less with­out cast­ers, and that doesn’t include any seeds, grow­ing medium or fertilizer)

It’s sup­posed to dip into the mid-twenties later this week, so I won’t be plant­ing until at least Friday. I went seed crazy, and have about 15 vari­eties of let­tuce to try, from but­ter­crunch to radic­chio to Black-Seeded Simpson, plus red and gold beets, cherry globe and French break­fast radishes, spinach, col­lard greens, and purple-top turnips. I’ll trans­plant all the herbs into one of the sec­tions, and I picked up more seeds to start Thai basil, cilantro and spearmint. I’m work­ing on a plant­ing sched­ule based on planting-to-harvest times, so I have some­thing I can har­vest all sum­mer and fall.

I’ve never really built any­thing like this, and I’m tick­led with the way it turned out. I’ve also never grown any­thing from seed, so I’m thrilled that it’s gone so well so far.

I’ll con­tinue to post updates on the project as it pro­gresses. If you care to fol­low along, book­mark the site or sub­scribe in your favorite RSS reader.