bounty

[cellio]

A week before Memorial Day -- so, a bit over two weeks ago -- I bought some seedlings and put them into pots.

Tonight, I changed dinner plans because holy smokes some of that needed to be harvested. I made a vegetarian larb for the first time, because one of the over-achievers was Thai basil, which I got for the first time this year to see how that would go. Didn't expect it to outpace my regular Italian basil!

Pictures behind the cut:

The Thai basil has filled out quite a bit even though that's only a 6" pot. (I know, it should be bigger -- ran out of bigger ones. It came in one of those 3" cups.) Next to it is rosemary that's doing ok; don't know why it's leaning in like that, but eh, whatever. (That's in an 8" pot.) Behind the two of those is an 8" pot of Greek oregano that I've already harvested a bit from (for one meal a few days ago). Finally, bought on a whim and in a 6" pot, is English thyme. The thyme has been kind of slumped over all along; I'm using the little plastic ID card to prop it up some. The seedling didn't cost much more than a single bundle of fresh thyme at the grocery store, an amount I'm planning to use this week, so I figure anything else I get from it is profit.

Last year I planted cilantro but it didn't do well; it got tall and spindly and didn't produce a lot of good-quality shoots. The Internet says it wants a deep pot; it has more of a root system than I thought. So I tried again this year and put it in a 10" pot. It was just a little thing in the center of the pot two weeks ago. Now, not so much:

(That was before tonight's harvest.)

Rounding out the herbs are sage, Italian basil, and sweet mint. (You can't see it in the picture, but the mint is raised a bit so it can drain. That's my only non-self-watering pot, but mint can handle less-good conditions.)

Cherry tomatoes did well last year, and we seem to be off to a good start this year:

I grew mini-peppers two years ago (disappointing yield) and banana peppers last year (good, but I like them more than Dani does). This year I got another large pot and a regular (not mini) sweet red pepper. I'll be curious to see how many I get. The plant seems happy so far:

I wanted chives but there were none to be had. The tags on the strawberry plants claimed they were good for containers. That surprised me, so I consulted the Internet and found the claim that they don't actually need much depth and a pot would be fine, so I figured ok, let's experiment and see how much fruit it produces.

I don't know what that one tendril is about.

I'm not planning to post frequent pictures like I did the first year I tried this. That was a learning year and I was chronicling progress. I expect the week-to-week deltas to be comparable. I'll probably post when I get my first harvests of the fruits and vegetables.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

Grow little garden grow! \o/

[hudebnik]

I started a bunch of two varieties of basil (Thai and Holy) from seed in egg cartons two months ago. A few of the Thai basil germinated, but failed to thrive long enough to be transplanted into anything larger. The holy basil did better, and I transplanted half a dozen of them into the front yard before leaving on a week's vacation (I didn't think they would survive indoors that long without watering) in mid-May. But I think they were too tiny to put into the ground, and there was no sign of them when we got back.

So I started some more Thai basil, and some more holy basil, from seeds in egg cartons, and some of each germinated, and again the holy looked healthier than the Thai, so I transplanted the holy seedlings into 3" pots indoors, where they continued to do pretty well... until a few days ago we noticed upturned soil in some of the larger indoor pots, as though Something Had Been Digging in them. And the next day the basil seedlings were all decapitated. We suspect mice, of whom there is ample evidence elsewhere in the house, but they haven't previously ravaged our potted plants.

Meanwhile, we bought four potted Thai basil plants at Home Depot and put them straight into the front yard. They're still alive and healthy as of yesterday.

The strawberries we put into the front yard last summer have produced a single-digit number of fruit so far, and the squirrels are probably getting some of the fruit, but they're also putting out lots of runners ("that one tendril" in your photo), which is fine because we wanted them as a ground cover as much as a food crop. Strawberries really prefer to propagate by runner than by seed; if you put another flower pot next to the existing strawberry pot and let the runner fall into it, you'll shortly have another independent strawberry plant. Unless Something Digs It Up, as happened with some of ours.

[cellio]

I don't seem to have whatever it takes to start from seed successfully. "Whatever it takes" is probably a combination of skill, inside space with good sun, and persistence. I skip ahead to buying seedlings, which I'm much less bad at. I'm sorry to hear about your early basil attempts and especially your invader.

Thanks for the clue about the strawberry! I'm curious, so I might try that -- put a pot full of soil next to the runner and see what happens.

[hudebnik]

Based on our experience so far this year, we also "don't seem to have what it takes to start from seed successfully" :-)

Although I put some pole-bean seeds in a planter-box in the back yard, ignored them for a few weeks, and now they're climbing up the trellis, a foot high.

I've gotten the best germination results by filling the bottom half of a clear-plastic egg carton with dirt, planting seeds in that, and watering it every day with a few spritzes from a plant mister in each compartment (this is gentle enough to not disturb the seedling once it starts trying to root). The top half of the egg carton acts as a greenhouse, keeping humidity in and predators out. (When I used a clear-plastic egg carton on which I had cut the top half off, so it sat loosely on top rather than hinging, Something got in and dug up the seedlings.) Then I transplant seedlings into a larger (e.g. 3" or 6") pot, and then Something digs them up. I could probably prevent the latter (and keep humidity in) by tenting a plastic bag over the whole pot, as I do when I'm going on vacation.

[hlinspjalda]

I'm mostly a brown thumb, but I use peat pellets for starting from seed, and they work great.

[cellio]

Well, you've done it successfully in the past -- so it's not that you don't have what it takes, but that you're now playing on a higher difficulty setting. :-)

Thanks for the tip about the plastic egg carton and its greenhouse effect -- not something I would have guessed!

[thnidu]

Envy! But I live in an apartment and have no yard... and anyway I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be up to regular care of the plants.

[cellio]

I never thought I'd be able to grow actual food -- i.e. have plants that survive long enough to produce food -- but the pandemic and disrupted supply lines led me to try the experiment and it turned out to be doable. If you have a patio or balcony that gets decent sun, you could try a couple potted plants and see what happens.

I don't have a lot of full-sunlight outdoor space and the sun moves over the course of the summer, which is a lot of why I want containers. Also, kneeling on the ground, or the sidewalk next to the ground, to maintain beds is not my idea of fun. I'd like to be growing more types of vegetables than I am, but I think other varieties would mean I'd have to up my game and set up raised beds or something. (The Internet told me that there are varieties of cucumber that can be grown in pots, and I was looking forward to that, but that's another thing that was not actually in evidence when I shopped.)

Some herbs can apparently be grown on a kitchen windowsill, if your kitchen windowsill gets the right kind of light, which mine doesn't.