You may recall a story I wrote a year ago about trying to grow some of my own food. I started with two bell pepper plants.

And got nothing. Zip. Only one small tiny pepper and the plants looked dead. WELL!

It turns out I didn’t kill my bell pepper plants like I thought. I ended up transferring a plant from a pot to the ground. I waited until recently to do so because I had kept it in indoors during the winter.

At first, it appeared things would go south. The leaves looked like they were dying, despite my best efforts.

BUT WAIT.

Not one, two or three but six. Yes, count them, six whole peppers are sprouting on one plant. My other plant, which is a bit smaller, has two and this is after I already harvested one large bell pepper just a few weeks ago.

Food. I grew my own food. Pretty darn cool.

Okay, I would starve if I had to just live off the few peppers that are starting to pop out but as I’ve stated before I could kill a cactus, so being able to produce a few peppers is, as Trump would say, HUUUGE.

Excited that I might actually have a green thumb, I went hog wild this past weekend and added to my garden. I’ve transplanted some basil and rosemary that I bought as small plants from Lowes into the ground. I also planted, from seed (which is how I started my pepper plant and is much more difficult to do) some lavender, Brussel sprouts, eggplant, lemon, cilantro, summer squash and zucchini.

I see a vegetable lasagna in my future. All grown in my front yard (unless of course they all fail to sprout, which is another HUUUGE possibility).

If I manage to produce a healthy, sustainable garden then I can move on to the next step – producing my own eggs.

Obviously, I’ll need to get some chickens first.

Hmmm…need to start thinking about how to keep the cats out of the chicken coop.

Are you a first time farmer like me? Send an email of your successes and failures to: pleon@coastalcourier.com