Herbs, Salads, and Potting Begins

The salad garden bowl I planted on Feb 1st is beginning to come up, in the spiral shape in which I seeded it. It's sparse right now, but lovely!


I'll be planting another one on March first. In the meantime, I've been busily putting together an herb garden. Like Bullwinkle, every year I say "this time for sure!" and by the end of the year I have only one or two herbs left standing. They don't germinate, or they crowd each other out, or they dry out or get too wet. I give up! Sort of.



This year I'm buying 3 - 4 inch potted herb seedlings and putting them into containers. I'm going to site the containers appropriately for the sun levels rather than clumping different herbs all into one pot in full sun. I'm going to set up a separate timer feed from our faucet to automatically water them, with differently sized drippers for plants with different water needs. And finally, I'm going to HAVE FUN doing this.



The first part of having fun is using brightly colored pots! Yay! (above, Italian Oregano in red dot pot)



Also, choosing colors that will work really well with the mature plants, like this Biergarten Sage in a rich sky blue pot, and a Grey Garden Sage in a deep apple-green pot.


I have more herbs to pot, and will post updates as the potting continues. It's a good idea to visit the plant stores like OSH and SummerWinds every week, as new herbs are available and early ones are sold out. When I was in OSH last week, they had lots of Stevia, which I didn't find yesterday after deciding I wanted some after all. :-) SummerWinds had many Italian Oregano plants but no Marjoram, and this week I found Marjoram. Etc.

I still need (well, WANT) some of my old stand-bys: Spicy/Fuzzy Greek Oregano (Dittany of Crete), Tarragon, Savory (Winter or Summer is fine), and maybe a PepperMint as I have Chocolate Mint and SpearMint already. I'll have to ask my fellow MG's about sources for or cuttings of some of the other flavored mints, like Pineapple Mint, that are marvelous for adding to summer lemonades. Bye for now! Much to do!