Herbs Update

My herbs continue to grow in their starter bed. Actually, the above picture features the cherry tomatoes which are growing very well. All of the little bundles germinated and I'm trying to decide when to thin them out and when to re-plant them in a bigger pot. 

Since it seemed like it would take several months for the seedlings to be big enough to be of much use in the kitchen, and since we were inspired at the garden store last weekend, we picked up a couple of ceramic containers and some herb plants that are a bit bigger. 

Now I have two little pots of herbs sitting outside on our patio!

The first one features two types of thyme and two types of oregano. 

Thyme

Oregano Number One 

Oregano Number Two

The second features marjoram, savory, and sage. 

Sage

Marjoram

Savory

So far I haven't been able to find any tarragon plants or seeds. I guess I'll just have to keep looking. I absolutely love tarragon though and would love to have a little plant of my own to use. 

I just hope I can remember to water them all! 

Growing Herbs and a Special Project Update

Above is one of our "outdoor kitties." They are the neighborhood cats who have lived around our house for several years. There are two of them, a brother and sister and they look almost identical except that the sister is smaller than her brother. Our neighbor calls them "Alpha" and "Beta" but I usually just call them both "gray kitty." It's not a very romantic name, but they don't seem to mind. I try to feed them each day and they seem grateful. They are much more affectionate that I would expect them to be and they love it when I have time to play with them. 

My herb seedlings seem to be doing well. A few days ago I moved them downstairs to a windowsill where they can get more sunlight. Tomorrow Woodley and I plan to go to the garden store to pick up some containers and potting soil so that we can transplant them when they are ready for that. It will be so exciting to be able to pick herbs from our own little garden. I do hope they survive!

I did spend some time working on "the blue room" yesterday. I definitely didn't finish but I did manage to make some progress. It has been a steadily worsening mess ever since Christmas. As I dug through it yesterday (attempting to reconnect with the carpet underneath it all), I realized that it is made up of several things: wrapping paper (Christmas and general), gift wrapping boxes, crafting supplies, and memorabilia from our wedding and celebration ball last year. My goal is to organize the wrapping supplies into two separate groups: one for Christmas wrapping and one for year round wrapping. Then I hope to stumble upon an organizational scheme for the crafting goods and memorabilia. Eventually I want to scrapbook and box up the special items from our wedding adventure. (I will have to blog more about that crazy year-long journey later, probably as I am organizing all those little bits of paper). Once it is all orderly and organized I hope that Thursday can be my crafting day! Currently I have several projects I want to do: a simple skirt, a ballgown I started before Woodley and I even had started dating, and several quilts. 

Well, it's not perfect, but at least you can see a little more floor! 

But for now, I'm off to Zaz's house to watch girly TV shows and learn more about the fine art of cross-stitching! 

~ElizabethRose

Seedlings!

It has now been 6 days since I planted the seedlings and they are starting to pop up! So far I can see little bits of green in 9 of the 36 bundles. It is very exciting! 

Here are some tiny thyme plants. It looks like there are way more than 3 plants here so I'll definitely need to thin them out before too long. I had tried to plant only 2 - 3 seeds per bundle, but the thyme seeds were so small that I think a few extras were added. 

Here are the cosmos. They came up the earliest and are by far the biggest. It's become a little bit of a problem because I can't put the lid properly on the container anymore because they are too tall. I'm thinking about taking these two bundles out and holding them somewhere else where they will get more light. That should also allow me to replace the lid on the container. 

It is so much fun to see them poke their little heads out of the soil!

~ElizabethRose

An Herb Garden In the Making

I love to cook with a variety of fresh herbs and I've been thinking for some time that I really ought to try to grow an herb garden since it is very expensive to continuously buy fresh herbs at the grocery store. However, I don't have much experience gardening and frankly, I find the idea a little scary. I suppose it is because I didn't spend too much time gardening as a child and I don't really feel as if I know the correct steps to go through to get the desired result. 

Since I couldn't quite motivate myself to go out and buy the things I ought to have to start my herb garden, I asked my mom for some supplies for my birthday last month. She came through beautifully and sent me a book about her gardening, a deck of little cards with tips about herb gardens, and some packets of seeds. That was definitely the motivation I needed to get started. 

About a week ago, Woodley and I dropped into our local Smith and Hawken to pick up some pots and soil. We probably should have gone to our local nursery, but we happened to be at the mall so S&H was the only gardening-type store around. They were very helpful though and I felt like we got a good supply of things to start with, even if it was a bit pricey. 

Here are some of my seed packets that I'm starting with. I decided to focus on the ones that could be started indoors before being transplanted to the garden. Especially since I haven't quite decided where I should try to transplant the seedlings to. We have several garden spaces around our house but they are a bit overgrown and we'll need to dig them out a bit before planting things in them. 

For my first potting experiment, I decided to start with some kitty grasses that we had bought for Leila. I decided we should put them in a big pot since I didn't want her to tip a little pot over while she was trying to eat the grass. 

Here are the grass seeds on top of the soil. I hope I put the right amount in. I guess I'll just have to wait and see! :) 

The final kitty grass container with soil covering the seeds. It has been 2 days so far and I haven't seen any little grass shoots poking up. They should start coming up sometime around the 3rd day though so I have high hopes for tomorrow! 

To help with our seedlings, the folks at S&H recommended this Jiffy-7 Greenhouse 36. It has 36 pellets of peat soil that you can use to start seedlings. Then, once the plants are big enough, they are easy to transplant to the garden. It seemed like an easy way to start and since it only cost $10 we were excited to try it. 

Here's how the peat pellets looked when I first opened them. They were very dry and small. Since it was an absolutely gorgeous day, I decided to take them outside to do the planting in the sunshine. 

Above is the Jiffy greenhouse before I added any water. 

And here it is after I added the 4.5 quarts of warm water. The peat pellets are just starting to fluff up. 

I waited for about 5 minutes and they continued to rise up. It was pretty fun to watch! 

Here they are, fully fluffed up with the water. Some rose a little higher than others and I decided to add a little extra water to a few of them that seemed extra dry. 

The next step was to loosen the netting around the top of the little piles and to dig up and fluff the soil a little bit. 

After fluffing the soil I planted about 3 seeds per peat bundle and gently covered them over with the peat soil. I did three for each type of herb and also included one type of tomato and three Cosmos. 

Above is the finished greenhouse. Now all there is to do is wait and gently water them! How exciting! 

So that I don't get confused about the different plant types, I made myself a little chart that shows me what is in each peat bundle. My collection includes: parsley, dill, 3 types of basil, sage, thyme, oregano, and marjoram in addition to the cherry tomatoes and the cosmos. I'm going to have to look for some tarragon seeds because I'd love to have some to cook with! 

Here is the finished greenhouse in our dining room window. It isn't supposed to get direct sun so I think this will be a good place for it because the window is in a little nook and is usually shady. When the seedlings start coming up I'll move it outside so they can get the right amount of sunlight. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping it will work! 

~ElizabethRose