Sino-Story #4: Window Garden

I come from a small city in America that offers homes with large lawns and personal gardening space. Large cities don’t usually provide such luxuries, yet it doesn’t mean urban-dwellers are excluded from the pleasures of home gardening. Indeed, the challenge of raising your own flowers and vegetables with limited space and conditions can be part of the fun of this sort of D.I.Y. project.

 
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The first step is to decide what you would like to grow. I bought some dry beans and fresh peas at the local super market, with a plan to sprout and plant them in my own window garden. I prefer growing vegetables, because I like eating the fruits of my labor. Legumes are particularly easy to grow, as you can sprout them in your home with nothing more than water and paper towels. I also made a plan to keep yogurt containers for a few weeks before starting, so that I would have some small vessels for planting once the project began.

 
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I kept the legumes wrapped in paper towels for a week, occasionally replenishing the water in the towels so as to create a moist environment for my new sprouts. Once things had started to grow, I purchased a small bag of soil (the only money spent on this project), and planted the sprouts into used yogurt containers filled with fresh soil. Finally, placing the containers in my window, it was only one week later that green sprouts began to poke their heads out of the dirt looking for warm sunlight.

 
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Come summer I should have plenty of fresh peas and beans growing just outside my kitchen window, as well as adding some beautiful green color to my view. The amount of work is very minimal, and knowing you can grow something yourself is a very satisfying feeling. I will update this post later in the year with some photos of the mature plants and perhaps some of the meals I prepare using my home-grown legumes!

 
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