From One Bell Pepper to a Garden

It started in the most unremarkable way possible.

I was making dinner one night, slicing up a bell pepper, and doing that normal thing where you pull out the seeds and toss them in the trash.

Except this time, I paused.

And thought:
Wait… could I grow more bell peppers from these?

I had no plan. No garden. No idea what I was doing. But I saved all the seeds anyway.

The next day, I went to the store and bought a little Jiffy seed starting kit. The kind with the tiny dirt pods in a plastic tray. There were 72 spots in it.

Since I fully assumed none of them would actually grow, I planted every single seed.

Just in case.

I stuck the tray on a table next to a window and, like any responsible new plant parent, immediately forgot about it.

A few days later, I happened to look over.

Every. Single. One. Had sprouted.

So now I didn’t have a failed kitchen experiment.

I had 72 tiny bell pepper plants.

And suddenly… I felt responsible.

There was this weird emotional shift from “this is a fun little experiment” to “oh no, I am now in charge of 72 tiny lives.”

I started checking on them every day.
Watering them.
Watching them grow.
Noticing how they leaned toward the sun in the window—and rotating the tray so they’d grow straight and get even light.

Eventually they got big enough that it was time to move them outside.

And that’s when I ran into a small problem:

I had 72 pepper plants.
And zero garden.

My yard at the time was basically rocks and grass. No beds. No soil. No plan.

So I had a decision to make:
Am I actually going to do this?

I chose yes.

Which sent me straight down a series of internet rabbit holes about raised beds, materials, layouts, soil, drainage, and approximately a million opinions about the “right” way to build a garden.

At first glance, it all seemed pretty simple and pretty cheap.

It was neither.

I landed on a very no-frills setup: 2×6 boards and some pre-made bricks from Lowe’s that the boards slot into. I didn’t have a big vision or a grand plan for layout, so I just picked a corner of the yard and built a single 4×4 raised bed.

Getting there was… a lot.

Moving rocks.
Leveling ground.
Getting the frame straight.
And then filling the whole thing with soil.

So. Much. Soil.

But finally, it was ready.

And I transplanted every single one of those pepper plants.

I added some automatic watering, crossed my fingers, and just like that…

I was a gardener.

I did lose a few plants to cats who apparently felt very strongly about my new hobby (that’s a story for another day). But most of them survived. And not only survived—they thrived.

I checked on them every day. I learned what “happy” plants look like. I worried about them. I celebrated new growth.