Wednesday, February 23, 2011

I'd like to grow herbs.

I am fascinated by plants but I've never been successful at growing them myself.  I would've had a fabulous tomato plant in the summer of 2009 had the stem not snapped almost in half on the way home from potting it at a friend's house.  See, I didn't even know how to pot it myself, so I made sure to get help because I really wanted to succeed.  Then it tipped over on the way home and hit the dashboard, almost severing the stem.  It was still a little bit attached though, so I wrapped some embroidery thread around it and a colored pencil, to help it stay together, and put it out on the balcony.  It proceeded to grow into the tallest tomato plant I or my gardening expert friend had ever seen, so I had high hopes, but it produced probably a total of three green (and almost immediately rotten) tomatoes.  I'm not sure what all went down there, but I'm thinking it had something to do with the handicapped stem.

So anyway, there have been a plant or two I've been successful at keeping alive (I count that one even though it was hobbled) but overall I don't do well.  I'm apparently good at succulents because the two little ones sitting on my kitchen windowsill are trying very hard to grow out of the tiny pots there in, but I don't want them to because I wanted small succulents, not big ones.  One of them doesn't even have any roots, it was just the top of a plant set in a coffee cup, and it's growing!  I don't know how that works, but whatever...

I had a basil plant last summer that died almost immediately.  I had it out on my balcony here in Oakland.  I'm not sure what happened.  The lady at the plant store (nursery?  see, I'm not even good at the lingo) said it would love the balcony, but it hated it.  I'm not sure what I did wrong.  But I'm determined to try again.

So does anybody have any herb growing tips?  I'm going to put them out on a table behind our kitchen in this little alleyway we have between us and the next building.  I'm hoping that's enough sunlight.  I figure they'll get good sun for at least a couple hours a day, when the sun is directly overhead.  Most of the time they'll be in the shade, though.  I guess my other option would be to line them up in front of the house, but that's farther from the kitchen, and it seems convenient for them to be close.  We do have a currently unused planter out there though...hmmmm.

*thoughts percolating*

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