The first planting of spring...

So, Chris and I are over here in Ireland and though he is working hard at Google, I am unemployed.  I started volunteering at a couple places, but still had way too much time on my hands.  I needed a hobby.  I decided that hobby would be growing my first official vegetable garden on our balcony.  A while back I had started saving our egg cartons, but didn't have a particular use in mind until I decided to grow veggies.  I could use my cartons to start my seeds!  What a fantastic idea...but how would they drain?  I saved the cardboard part of the toilet paper/towel rolls as well, since they were the perfect diameter to snuggly support the individual egg molds, then I created a hole at the bottom of each with a phillips head screwdriver!  Let the adventure begin!

I was so proud when I finally got my contraption put together...it was perfect!  I was helping the environment two fold.  I'm reducing by reusing, plus I'm growing my own vegetables!

Introducing Vermeculite!  It looks like grapenuts, but is light as air!  I was told to mix this with multi-purpose compost mix for a healthy environment for my plants.  I didn't do any official measurements, but rather eye-balled what I thought were the proper ratios!

I added the compost mix (10x more than the vermeculite), mixed it well, then stirred in the feed water so the mix was saturated.

This is the tomato feed my local nursery recommended.  It's made with seaweed extract.  Though the liquid is really dark, the feed is extremely diluted.

I used cherry and "money-maker" tomato seeds, planting each of them in 6 segments on each side of the carton.

After I put the saturated mix in each segment, the water started to saturate the carton.  I had to add more rolls for support.

Lovingly stored for safe keeping...