And Next, The Thumbs...

There are a few food-related things I'm keen to do:

1. Eat better meat
2. Eat better dairy
   
3. Eat local organic produce
4. Grow some of my own food, including herbs for cooking.

I've already made a start on the first three. Today, I took a feeble step towards the last item. Bought a (local, non-chain, not that I think this matters *that* much) terra-cotta pot, some organic potting soil (complete, apparently, with things like bat guano!), and a little oregano plant. My compost isn't ready for prime-time, so I'm still buying potting soil. I hope eventually not to have to do that.

I have wanted to grow my own herbs and things like lettuce for quite some time. I've had a funny obstacle to this, though. Don't laugh -- I don't actually know how to harvest these things. I'm sure it's trivial, and my uncertainty would seem stupid if I'd ever seen it done even once. I've grown tomatoes and fruit in the past, and it's obvious how to harvest them -- just pick them. But with lettuce, do you cut off half a leaf? The whole leaf? Pull it out at the roots? And when is it ready? Do the leaves grow back? I just don't have any experience with these things. I guess I'll just find out -- nothing to lose. Anyway, oregano is what the local nursery had, and I certainly use plenty of oregano, so we'll see if this works, or if my thumbs are black.