If you haven't already tried growing things, I think it’s worth an attempt.
🌱 There's something pretty magical about planting a seed and having it turn into a living thing. (I’ve often wondered whether it could be therapeutic for would-be-parents and it also has some of the delights of those little mystery animal sponges that come out of capsules when you soak them in warm water.)
I particularly like growing plants that are edible (bonus points if they're things I can pop in my mouth while gardening, e.g. cherry tomatoes). Plants that totally overproduce like zucchini, or herbs that you can just trim now and again.
But even regrowing my scallions in water glasses on the windowsills for my next batch of Fermented Kimchi: easy, healthy, delicious is pretty delightful.
💐 Cut flowers are also nice, especially if you're willing to bring them inside or share them with friends when they hit their peak. (They can also be dried, which I’ve recently become more interested in for lower pressure bouquets.) And creating support for pollinators is a worthwhile endeavor that pays off with fun insect visitors 🦋🐝
See also Advice: Consider adopting a bin of composting worms to live under your sink.
If you’re interested in starting plants from seed (which I recommend for the proximity to that first miraculous appearance of life) Johnny’s Selected Seeds seems to be a reputable and thoughtful research-based provider — even Martha Stewart’s garden is sown with Johnny’s seeds. Here’s a guide to when to plant.
Here you can check your area’s “hardiness zone” which will help you understand which perennial plants should be able to overwinter into your location:
NPR made a cool explainer when the zones were updated recently:
A lot of edibles are annuals, so knowing your last and first frost date tells you how long your growing season is. Some plants mature quickly, some take so long that you may need to give them a head start indoors so that they will produce before they’re killed by the first frost.
If you don’t have a yard, you can still grow things in containers.
And even if you do have a yard, raised beds might be the way to go: better soil, more weed and pest protection, less bending over, easier to execute on crop rotation, etc.
I’m also pretty excited about “soil blocks” for starting seeds indoors. (And since a number of seeds need warmth (but not light) to germinate, I’ve repurposed my mini fridge and temperature control setup from Inkbird for Fermented Kimchi: easy, healthy, delicious and sauerkraut for germination since I needed to put a small heater in there for winter ferments—it might be perfect!). I’ll then keep them at room temperature indoors within a few inches of a full spectrum 5500 lumen LED shop light. (This one from Walmart is cheap and readily available and can link to others if I scale up.)
If you order seeds, I highly recommend storing them in a binder (you’re supposed to keep them dark and cool and dry, so maybe you can layer that on top, while keeping this organizational format — e.g. by putting the binder in a bin with silica packets or something)
These binder pages are perfect. They’re 3.5”x5” and hold 4 packets per page vertically. I have four different sized seed packets and all but the lumpiest peas fit just fine. (they also come in a pack of 100 pages, but that seemed like overkill for where I’m at 😅).
(I’d say about 15 pages with ~50 packets will fit in a 1.5” D ring binder. More pages or seed packets and I would consider sizing up, or separating hardy cold crops from tender annuals in separate binders)
If you’re in an area with a short growing season and didn’t get around to starting seeds indoors, look for local plant sales in addition to your local nursery. My co-op has one that brings in seedlings from a dozen local small farms and it seems like a good way to shortcut the process while also selecting for particular types of plants that are likely to be successful in your region.
Oh, and don’t forget about perennial trees and shrubs. Older generations in my family planted carefully selected fruit trees in the 70s and 80s and 90s and somehow I’m still harvesting them all these years later. 🍏
New favorite gardening object: foldable knee cushion. Significantly more comfortable than the gorilla grips one recommended by wirecutter (that one is dense, almost like a yoga block).
(Note: I found these on a list of the most “worth it” gardening purchases that this adorable PNW flower farming couple made)
Learning 👩🏫
📚 If you’re just starting out, I think I’d recommend checking out “The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible.” I have it along with a few others from the library, but this one is the best “just starting out” one; as an example, when talking about raised beds, he assumes that you’ll be slicing out some of your lawn, whereas these other books (that are more aimed at “market gardeners”?) think you might be interested in constructing a mobile chicken coop that you can move 100ft every week to evenly fertilize before the planting season 😅 The other advantage is that he dedicates a couple pages to each likely vegetable or herb you might be interested in growing, giving facts like germination and preferred growing temperatures, trellising, pest management, harvesting, recommended varieties, etc.
There’s also an adorable Irish TV show called Grow Cook Eat (streaming on Amazon Prime and YouTube):
Farmers are innovators. It’s like the startup community but without the ego and ambition, and people are reliably trying to solve their own problems (which is generally the hallmark of a good setup). E.g. this brilliant low tunnel design for extending your growing season without a bunch of hassle:
And if growing your own vegetables isn’t for you, try joining your local CSA for getting local veggies at their peak with less work, while supporting a more diversified food system.
P.S. even if you’re diligent about wearing gloves, if you’re like me, you are probably still going to get dirt under your fingernails. There are nail brushes, but I find using my electric toothbrush (with an old head) is very effective while also being very gentle on my fingertips (which are often tender after a long day in the garden).