Grow your own... lettuce?

I mentioned a few entries back, that I wanted to really concentrate on sourcing where my ingredients come from and find out a history, a story or a background on my meats.  Well I thought the answer might be for my to get a little green fingered and grow my own food.  Whilst I can't start a mini farm in my little yard I can use the space I currently have, while I wait for my allotment allocation, to grow a few veggies or something resembling an edible product. 

Obviously, I'd have to start small as up to now the only thing I've ever been known to grow is mold in my room at University.  Its a shame really because my upbringing involved being around a lot of home growing, in particular my grandad took me to his allotment where he grew raspberries, strawberries, carrots, onions, peas, broad beans, potatoes; both new and larger varieties and an array of salad ingredients and in truth this doesn't cover the other things he has grown over the years. 
Essentially, he could grow enough to provide meals, fair enough they would be minus meat, but they could provide meals from their allotment alone. 

This sustainability is an essential part of not only knowing where your food comes from, the bottom of your garden in this case, but it is vital for us to play a role in our food preparation right from seed. 

So I've started with lettuce; can grow within two weeks, is easy to plant, can be put into my yard and was the only thing I really trusted myself to grow.  Would you believe that after two weeks I could see little green shoots and I'm not sure what my neighbours thought when I was jumping around after having actually being able to grow something.  As you can see I need to leave it a bit longer before using it but its looking healthy right now.

I'm not suggesting that I'm helping sustainability just by growing my own lettuce because its really a big task and you have to be prepared to make big changes if you are to encompass what we mean by sustainability.  These changes could be sourcing British produce, growing your own food, having an allotment, not using plastic bags or purchasing food with immense amounts of packaging and that's just the start. 

So I'll let you know how I get on but hopefully this is just the start of my talents.