June 2nd, 2006

So I’m gardening a lot more this year than last. My parents put all kinds of flowers up in the front yard, so there are pretty annuals out there to go with the perennials. I am still fighting the honeysuckle pretty vigorously in the back yard, but everything I’ve hacked down thus far has really opened the yard up. I should have cut back this aggressively last year too, but I didn’t know any better. Meanwhile, I’m pretty pleased with the herbs this season. Catnip, mint, sage and lemon balm all came back in their containers, and they look really good. Well, the sage looks a little lopsided, and I might try to take some cuttings from it and make more sage that’s not so top heavy. Handling cuttings is an advanced gardening technique to a novice like me. I love the sage, and this year it’s blooming! Also the mint looks surprisingly scraggly, but I have faith in it. The lemon balm wants a bigger pot, and I thought about planting it in the yard for all of fifteen seconds, then I read it was very invasive, and decided to keep it in its existing pot. It’s not like I actually use it for anything but looking at. The garlic chives survived the winter because I brought it indoors, and it looks good too.

As for new herbs, I bought a small basil plant at the grocery store and it’s not doing so well, which is disappointing. I never got any basil to grow last year either (though I only tried from seed), and it’s hands down the herb I use most. I got a small cilantro plant from a nursery near here and it’s doing astonishingly well (also blooming!) and I’m thinking of taking seeds from it for next year (yet another advanced gardening technique). However, the cilantro I planted from seed this year is just as puny as the one I tried to grow from seed last year, so I’m going to have to figure out how to grow them from seed between now and then.

I wanted to put a raised bed in the yard, but the botanical gardens says they can’t deliver my recycled plastic lumber until August, so I just used the patch where I intend to put the raised bed next year. In it I have planted: four tomato plants, two watermelon plants and three cucumber plants. Three of the tomato plants are flowering.

I’m looking forward to eating things I grew with my own hands.

For those of you who don’t like the day in the life posts, I’ll be putting up a review next.

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