Recently in Culinary Herbs Category

I took the ziploc bags off of the rosemary cuttings tonight because I noticed that the cuttings were starting to grow mold.  That's not good ...

One of the cuttings also seemed awfully loose in the dirt, so I don't think those are going to work out. :(  But we'll see.

Two weeks after I started the cuttings of lavender, tea, and rosemary, they're still upright and green, and one of the lavenders has begun to bloom!

I have not needed to add water to them yet; they're all still covered by the ziplock bags.  As I hoped, the same water evaporates and condenses and is apparently keeping the plants happy. 

I have no idea if they've actually formed roots or not. :-/

I've been trying to post these pictures since Sunday afternoon.  So without further ado and no photo editing, here they are.

This is the long view of the raised beds before I cut the fabric and planted lima beans, chard, squash, and zucchini.

Here's a close-up of the stakes I drove to keep the boards from bowing.  And I also plan to tie bean poles and tomato trellises to them.

These are the cucumber buckets.  (They're former kitty litter buckets with drainage holes drilled into them.)

This weekend was extremely productive - my family and the plants worked very hard! ^_^

The daffodils finally bloomed Saturday.  This is the first one.

Several more daffodils bloomed over the course of the day.  I think you could almost sit there and watch the blooms open.  If you didn't have other things to do - like, say, build raised garden beds.

This is what the garden area looked like before we started.

My parents brought me a truckload of planting mix.

On one of the three trips to the hardware store, we bought a wheelbarrow and compost.

The first hard frost of the season happened on December 1 at my house.  I think there were probably lighter frosts that took out some of my herbs, but on 12/1 I actually witnessed the frost on the ground and it killed the tulsi. 

But it didn't kill the dill.  I have a dill plant that reseeded from last year, and it survived the frost and is happily going about its business being silvery-green and fluffy.



One morning, I noticed to my horror that there is wire grass growing in the Tulip Fortress.  It appears to be poking through the ring I left uncovered by landscape fabric so that the tulips can grow through it. On top of that fabric-less ring, there is still 2" of mulch on top of the dirt that the stupid wiregrass had to grow through.  I also found a piece growing under the landscaping fabric that I wrapped around the post of the mailbox and secured with a piece of wire.  Argh!  So I guess I'll have to keep weeding that flowerbed.  I was hoping to avoid that.

The fall greens and garlic appear to still be doing well, but I hoped they would be bigger by now.   I'm ready to eat them!

Carrots, taisai (bok choi) and garlic

The squash are squished. :(  I'm not certain what killed them.  I noticed that they started looking a bit droopy, so I started watering them.  One of them perked up for a little while, but it eventually succumbed as well. 

The first of the Lolipop tomatoes might be ripe now.  They weren't quite ripe yesterday, and I haven't been out to check on them yet today.

The zucchini plants are blooming, but I haven't seen a zucchini yet. 

I think one of the cucumbers died.  I thought it had revived itself, but it looks pretty brown again.  The other one is not climbing up the bamboo pole.  It is latching on to the grass that's growing around it, but I think that maybe its little tendrils are too small to wrap around the bamboo.

The watermelon is about the size of a volleyball now.

I pulled one of the Kyoto Red carrots yesterday.  It's tiny.  I think there are two problems: The dirt is too full of clay for the carrots to grow through, and I didn't thin them out so they're growing too close together.  I hated the idea of killing some of the seedlings, so I didn't do it.  I could try moving the seedlings like I did with the mustard, but that still doesn't solve the dirt problem.  I think I might have to grow my root veggies in containers until I improve my garden soil to the point where it's not so full of clay.

The volunteer tulsi is growing along in the front flower bed and it smells wonderful. ^_^  I also discovered another re-seeded dill seedling in that bed, so there are two now.

I think it's time to harvest the garlic - it has bloomed, and it's starting to dry out, so I guess that means it's done. (I hope so, anyway!)

A quick update because I realize that it's been a while:

The Lolipop tomato has little tomatoes and is blooming.  Some of the other tomatoes are also blooming, but I can't remember which ones!  I'll be able to tell once they start to ripen. 

My mom hooked us up with a lot of zucchini, cucumbers, and tomatoes. (Hi, Mom!)  She also gave me two cucumber plants and two tomato plants.  One tomato is dwelling happily in a bucket on the front porch, the other is in the ground with the other tomatoes.  One of the cucumbers didn't make it. :(

I have at least one watermelon in the works.  It's about the size of a tennis ball.

Now, about the volunteers ...

I had to do an intervention on the front of my house.  Muscadine vines were literally curling around the front door.  While I was out there making the front yard less wild, I yanked some weeds out of the herb bed.  I kept thinking that I smelled tulsi.  I smelled a handful of the weeds I was holding, then compared one to the one tulsi plant I have this year.  Apparently last year's glorious hedge of tulsi reseeded itself.  The little dudes are only about three inches tall.  Unfortunately they're right at the front edge of the bed, so they have to be moved.  While mowing grass a few days ago I thought I kept smelling tulsi, now I'm certain that I did.  It's probably growing in my front yard.

While looking around, I also found a volunteer dill plant. Yay! I love dill!  And I seem to have very little luck growing it.

My poor tomatoes are still tiny.  Like less than six inches tall tiny.   It's the middle of May!  I'm starting to wonder if they're even ever going to get their stuff together. *sigh*  Maybe I should squirt them with some worm poop.  That'll fix 'em. 

According to my gardening journal from last year, the tomatoes had blossoms on them in mid June.  *chews on fingernails*  I really hope the tomato plants produce some actual tomatoes, because my copy of the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving arrived today, and I really want to can some tomatoes!  (And I've been daydreaming about fresh caprese, too.)

Everything else is coming along slowly, I guess.  Even the potatoes have even stopped their explosive growth - they've looked pretty much the same for the last few days.

The beans are growing.  About half of them have sprouted so far.  Maybe the others will come along soon.

I wonder if the leaves of the squash plant are a little too pale.  Hmm.

I also wonder if the mustard will ever get to be an edible size.  It's nearly summer!  There were little slugs hanging out on the mustard plants today.  Do slugs eat mustard greens? 

I still haven't transplanted the shiso. That's definitely on the to-do list.  Transplanting the shiso and planting the onions, that's what's next.  After some weeding, of course.

I took pictures of my little plants when I got home today.  I need to take pictures under full light conditions because my camera and I cannot get our stuff together to take pictures in shadow. But I won't be seeing my garden in full light until the weekend after next.  (It's shaded when I leave for work, and shaded when I get home.  And I'll be out of town this weekend.) 

Here are the very sad Lollipop tomato seedlings. Sad, sad!

The "volunteer" shiso seedlings and the garlic are much happier. This is not all of the shiso sprouts - there are a lot more in other pots nearby.

After the sun set tonight, I sprayed my poor seedlings with a mixture of soap and olive oil in water.  I used an old Body Shop Vitamin E sprayer - it does a great job of projecting a fine, heavy mist.  It's a 3.2 oz bottle that I rinsed thoroughly.  I squirted a drop of Method soap onto the end of a chopstick.  Since it's such a small amount of water, I didn't want to over-soap it, so I got a look at how much I was putting in by seeing it on the end of the chopstick first. I glopped the soap into the spray bottle, then I repeated the process with the olive oil.  Then I shook the bottle and sprayed the plants with it.

I hope that works!

The parsley, cilantro, and leeks are pretty much all dead. :(  I think the combination of the white flies and the sun did them in.  Next year I've got to segregate the sun lovers (the tomatoes and peppers) from the more delicate seedlings, apparently. 

I still haven't figured out if I have carrot seedlings in the garden, or just weeds that conveniently look like carrots.

No sign of the potatoes yet.  I dumped some water on them tonight since it hasn't rained lately.

The mustards are happily growing along.   The ones I didn't move are a lot bigger than the ones I did.  I guess messing up their little roots set them back a bit.  But, all of the ones I moved are still alive.  :)