Window greenery

The herbs in the window are now doing quite well.  When we got back from our trip, I was expecting to find them all dead, but our nice cat sitter had watered them without being asked.  Lucky plants.

The parsley is positively running amok.

The basil I am carefully and sternly pinching back in the hopes that we'll have some nice bushy plants instead of the stilts we had last time.

The chive, singular, is looking pretty nice for a chive, singular.  

The coriander is suffering terribly because it's in a small pot that I didn't water enough.  The good news is that as soon as I'd taken this picture (honesty, full disclosure and all that) I did water it and water it well.  Hopefully it'll stand up again (as much as it does, anyway) shortly.

I have a dream of setting up time-lapse photography on the windowsill to document the plants reaching for the sun.  I turn them when I'm home, and a quarter turn every day leads to dramatic results.  They are such neat things!

On the windowsill

The sprouting report continues with some not very up-to-date pictures:

The solo chive is ... OK, I guess?  Actually, the sweary one noticed a new shoot this morning, so we've got chives plural now.  I think it's all from the same seed, though.  

The basil really is fine.  It's not growing like wildfires, but it is chugging along contentedly.  Some of the sprouts seem to be producing their first true leaves.  It's slow going, though. 

The coriander is as leggy as all get out.  I suppose that is a risk of growing it in a not-sunny season in an east-facing windowsill and generally being non-tropical.  Hopefully the stems will be able to support the growth.  Many of the coriander plants have true leaves now; I am waiting for the second burst of leaves before I start pinching them back to discourage this legginess.  

The coriander plants flop all over the pot.  It makes it hard to turn the pot (to prevent the plant(s) from leaning in one direction) because they grow braided together.  I haven't worked out the best solution to the problem (except maybe to give up on growing coriander from seed).  

Finally, the windowsill-full of plants continues to be, shall we say "of interest" to a certain carnivorous member of the household.  She hasn't been caught eating them, which is good.  On the other hand, she does give them more attention than they merit, which is bad.  She can't possibly enjoy the flavour of chives, basil and coriander.  Cat food wouldn't smell the way it does if cats liked herbs (and this cat absolutely slavishly loves her cat food).  Her interest is a mystery.  

Sprouting report

Unfortunately, I still haven't got around to taking pictures of the sprouts.  The small pot I think has basil is positively bursting with sprouts.  The small pot with chives is actually the small pot with chive.  It's a good chive, but a couple more are required to make it a viable herb source.  The big pot of parsley, into which I put a few other-herb seeds for fun, is showing some (presumably) basil and some probably coriander.  There's no coriander anywhere else.  

I am very interested by the success of the coriander in the already-occupied pot.  I know I put some seeds in their own pots.  I wonder if coriander likes friends.  Or if the big pot gives it a better view of the tiny, weak, winter sun. Whatever the reason, the sprouts in the parsley pot represent a greater number of coriander sprouts than I have seen in all of my previous attempts to grow coriander from seed, combined.  

I have been looking at seed catalogues and thinking (droolingly) about the summer.  It seems like it might already be time to start broccoli, if we're going to do it.  

Up, up, up!

The seeds from last weekend have started to sprout!  I suspect it's the basil that's popping up so eagerly, despite the snowstorms and our not-very-warm windowsill.  One small seedling pot is alive with little green duckbills and another seedling pot is showing some of those little bent white swan's necks that come before the leaves make their way out.  The second pot might be the chives, but I thought they took longer than that to sprout the first time.  

No sign of other things yet, but I'm not going to cover the pots because I am so encouraged by the dudes who haven't been coddled coming up that I think maybe we should be selecting un-coddled only.  

I have to say that one of the huge advantages of having started seeds last year (and let's be honest, in terms of impact in the garden, there wasn't much impact so it's a good thing I can see an advantage somewhere else) is that I now have a better understanding of which seeds behave in which way.  Knowing that coriander doesn't sprout much is useful.   The first garden we tried to grow included a planterful of coriander and when it failed, I thought the planter and the position and all was flawed.  Now I know that it's the coriander and I can put that planter back up and fill it with marigolds and it'll be fine.  Hooray!  

In other news, the pace of the leaf-yellowing in the new parsley seems to be reducing.  It's still happening, though. 

Parsley update

The old parsley is fine and plentiful.  It's not quite plentiful enough to provide us with parsley for, say tabouli (which we're having for dinner tonight) but it'll do for a garnish pretty much every night.

The new parsley is in its new pots but still distressingly producing yellow leaves.  Or rather, its old leaves go yellow distressingly.

I don't know what it is.  I wonder if the folks at the market sold me a bum plant (gasp).  

No sign of seedlings in the other pots, of course.  I should cover over the pots to make 'em greenhouse-y.  

Winter Indoor Gardening (with apologies to my father)

I did, finally, get around to re-potting the boughten parsley.  I suspect that it's an old, old plant.  It's got positively carrot-like roots beneath.  There were a few plants squished in together and growing into each other, which I ruthlessly cut apart.  There was nothing for it.  They couldn't be expected to keep going as they were.  The leaves on the sprigs were going brown at a quite alarming rate, which I took to mean that there just wasn't enough room for the roots.  

Anyway, I spread the new parsley around and as I did so, I looked at my culinary herb seeds and decided that there would be absolutely no harm in giving them a go.  So, I popped a few seeds in a few pots (including some in the parsley pots) and hopefully in a couple of months we'll have a healthy indoor garden.  

We got rid of everything but the parsley we had before now because it had acquired little friends.  I suspect the mint was really to blame.  There were insidious little webs all over the bottoms of the leaves.  Let's hope the new batch do better.   The seeds were: basil (which did amazingly well in tiny pots), coriander (which barely germinated at all when the seeds were new, so I don't know what I think will happen this time), chives (also not keen to come up), and mint (which I think took a long time, but then did come up before I neglected them and they all died).  

My plan is to put some of the annuals outside when the summer comes.  The mint is most definitely destined for the outside.  I have a dream of putting mint in the difficult little triangle to the left of our front door.  I think a nice-smelling, aggressive as all get out plant will be just right for that sad patch.  I'll even spread out some compost for it.  But not much!  I don't want its roots to break through the house foundations.  

For shame

I'm using the blog as a motivator (I hope):  I got a parsley plant on Saturday with which I intend to supplement the old one.  The old one is such a success that I'm starting to feel bad about harvesting its stalks ... only a few junior ones remain.  Anyway, I need to put the new one in a proper-sized pot (or two) and that apparently will only happen if I give myself a good kick in the pants.  

*kick*

Finally!

Yesterday (August 23), I finally got around to putting those herbs I got on July 26 into pots.  I am so lazy!  Just in case you thought it was only the blog I was neglecting; no.  I have been uniformly negligent.  

Anyway, only the red basil had expired.  The parsley had been doing so well in its tiny pot that I even harvested some one night for use with dinner.  

Now I have an indoor parsley plant, for use with dinner any time.

I also have an indoor mint plant.  The mint was looking pretty leggy after its time in the tiny pot.  I have pinched off all of its tips in the hopes it will bush out.  

They will make good company for the basil.  

This is the basil grown from seed, still undead.  I haven't re-potted it.  I do sometimes remember to pinch back its tips, but for the most part, it grows up.  

Herbs

I don't know what it is, but every summer we get to just about this time of year and I see the herbs for sale at the farmers' market and I think that I urgently need lots of herbs.  Lots.  They usually sell them for 10 for $20 and I usually think that 10 is just about the right number.  

On Saturday at the market, partial sanity caught hold and I only got 3 herb plants.  I haven't put them into the ground yet and I'm not sure that I have the right places for them.  But they're all things that I like and in principle I want around in growing quantities.  

There's red leaf basil.  This is an annual anyway, so it might as well just go into a bigger pot and sit on the back steps.  I'd need potting soil, but I think I can manage a largish potsworth.  

There's curly parsley.  I only sometimes manage to use a full bunch worth of parsley.  I like it enough to make sauces with parsley as a main flavouring, and I do love me some tabouli.  However, a lot of parsley has gone off in our fridge over the years.   I think it's time for us to have our own little supply of "just enough" in a pot indoors.  Also our own supply of more than enough greening up the outside world.  I think this batch will go into greening up the outside world.  I have been getting a kick out of growing things from seed.  I'd like to try it with parsley.

There's mint.  I like spearmint.  I like a sprig of mint on a dessert.  I like mint tea.  I think that a couple of bits of mint in rice, potatoes, and peas makes things nice.  I like lamb and sometimes mint sauce with lamb is an absolute necessity.  I like ice water with some lemon slices and a few mint leaves buried at the bottom.  

The mint is the big challenge because I know that it can take over.  Look at it!  It's already busting out of its pot.  It's an aggressive plant.  Well known fact.  I've read about burying pots in the ground to contain it.  Perhaps I'll try that.  Our winters are too wintery to imagine that things might survive in a container out of the ground, but perhaps I can have mint next summer if I just plant the mint in a pot and plant the pot.  Here's hoping.