You know, this is what I get for telling Kip that I “never” update on the weekends. Saturday blogging is becoming kind of a thing around here, huh? I couldn’t help it today — I spent the whole day doing something ineffably cool. Are you ready? I don’t know if I can share this without exploding; maybe I should take a breather.
.
.
.
Oh, screw it. I STARTED A GARDEN TODAY! A real, honest-to-goodness, things-in-the-dirt kind of garden. Right now it looks like this:
Please to be ignoring the ugly bench thing.
See that? It’s basil, rosemary, peppermint, and three kinds of tomatoes. Three kinds of tomatoes. Also, I prepared my ginormous yard’s soil to receive some grass seed on the morrow. (What? Dirt makes me kind of archaic.) Also, I started preparing the area that is going to be my flower bed.
I have such big plans, and I think they’re actually going to be carried out. I’m going to get more herbs, and maybe some peppers, and some cucumbers if I can talk my landlord into allowing a trellis, and some basket flowers to hang from our back porch ramp’s railing, and… oh, AND. The sky is the limit here my friends, and if those tomatoes die (as I am sort of desperately terrified they will), then I will PLANT NEW ONES. Oh, that’s right, I said it.
Excuse me. I need to go swoon amongst the herbs.
sarawr.wordpress.com 
yeah, it’s usually boring in the blogoshere during the weekend.
We planted pepper and tomato seeds and I’m waiting for them to start sprouting . . . I told my husband the porch was too cold . . .
AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was so sad that you don’t post fifty billion times a day like certain other people in this conversation (cough), BUT THEN YOU DID!!! Post once! About plants!!
I, too, have had my hands in the “dirt” of late. Technically, it’s more hands on the weeds, but same general principle!
I love, Love, LOVE being able to go out to our window box and clip some basil, thyme, rosemary, and/or parsley to stick in my salad. Salad is kind of boring (when one eats mostly salad & 3 times a day) UNTIL YOU SPICE IT UP!! Technically, that might be “herb it up.” Whatever.
I hope you have tremendous success with your garden, my friend. What an excellent endeavor.
P.S. I think the bench is cute.
tomatoes do like a little fertilizer, but only a little; other than that, the only thing that will kill a tomato plant is underwatering. A tomato is basically a vehicle for making lots of water taste better than it did.
The fact that I might get to eat some of those tomatoes is really cheering me up this morning, thank you.
My concern with (some of) those tomatoes is that they might not have enough space — I have four plants in one of those pots, and unless I can get another couple of pots and some more soil (or, alternately, some good fertilizer for our ground soil) soon for transplanting, they’re going to be mighty crowded. Container tomatoes are a bit different from in-ground tomatoes, in that they need more space and more fertilizer. Fertilizer isn’t an issue with my most excellent soil and the milk treatment, but space is at a premium right now and transplanting is going to depend on how fast those plants root out and how soon I have the cash for more pots/soil/whatever. ALAS! However, even if that one pot fails me, I still have two others.
I sometimes forget how unrelentingly you consider things and that the person shepherding those tomato plants = Connor’s mommy = girlx = other instances of I-think-till-my-hair-curls.
I wish you could have seen the table full of tomatoes we picked from M’s mum’s garden one year. I hope yours are bountiful.
If the rain stops, we’ll be out in our garden tomorrow – it’s breathtaking at the moment with bluebells, irises and apple blossom. We will probably be hacking at it rather than planting though – we have a huge prickly almost-tree thing with poisonous sap that M won’t countenance for a moment longer as there is to be a small child around. Which is a pity, for the plant, but also for the fact that it is the only bright spot in our winter garden – brilliant yellow flowers in the dead of winter.
I’ve been wanting to start an herb garden for months. I always want to make recipes that call for fresh herbs and then get demoralized by having to pay $3 for half a teaspoon of fresh rosemary. Seriously, rosemary bushes must be worth like $10,000.
All the more reason to start an herb garden.
Oh man, I am so jealous. I have been wanting to learn to grow things and keep getting annoyed by the fact that we do NOT have a yard of any sort. Maybe I will have to get planters. I mean, you’re so right. Even if they die, I can plant them again.
Any tips for someone who killed basil? I tried growing it in my dorm room and didn’t have much luck.
For basil: Lots of sunlight, water every couple of days (not too much — damp like a wrung-out sponge), and decent fertilizer. Also, make sure you’re keeping the leaves cut back well — basil’s a “pick and grow” plant, meaning the more you cut or pinch off, the better and faster it’ll grow. I bought that basil plant on Saturday, potted it, and started pinching off leaves the next day. Huge basil leaves are delicious on sandwiches and whatnot, but you actually want to harvest them when they’re young or mid-sized.
Excellent! Thank you so much!
(Now it’s obvious to me why my basil died. Basil does not belong in dorm rooms with very little light! Why did people lie to me and tell me it would grow in a dorm room?!?)
Oh, randomly, speaking of like, things that die. Jesse and I almost barbecued a mouse yesterday evening. But we didn’t, actually. We lit the grill and all of a sudden this tiny mouse streaked out like greased lightning, sat on the edge for a few seconds, panting and looking at us in this wounded, accusatory manner. Then it ran off into the bushes. I’m still completely traumatized but thought you would appreciate the story.
Moose: Rosemary is in fact a low, dense bush and one of the growin’est things evar. We have one in our front yard and, to keep it under control, we have to chop away about two-thirds of it once every couple of years. Get yourself a potted seedling, put it where it’s got some room, and stand back.
We have a few rosemary bushes. Two are practically trees now (stand back indeed, scruffy!) and the other one is still a baby. Moose, you can break a few sprigs off someone else’s bush and plant them (and cross your fingers) and one or two will usually grow. That’s how we got three bushes from one. They like sandy soil so you can dig sand into your soil when you plant the rosemary if it’s not right.
Don’t plant the sprigs; coat them in rooting hormone and stick them in water for about five days first. Man, I love rosemary.
[…] I’m excited. Last year’s paltry little container garden went from this to this with a side of this; this year’s garden […]