Although the weather has been gray and rainy, inside and outside my apartment there are signs of spring. I've been keeping a close (maybe obsessive) eye on my little egg cartons and am very pleased to report that several of my plants have germinated.
Here are the times to germination so far:
Basil: 5 days
Chamomile: 4 days
Thyme: 4 days
Sage: 5 days (although there is another that hasn't come out yet)
I'm a little worried about the parsley and chives; none of them have come up yet and I only worry because the seeds are a few years old. I wonder if I need to buy new seeds. The catnip hasn't come up yet either, but that was for Tony and he has no clue so it's fine. Today, I poured some boiling water over more parsley seeds and will try to plant them tomorrow. Can't hurt I think. When I looked back on my old notes, I saw that I had planted the parsley previously in August, when it was quite warm, so it could be the cooler temperature is keeping things a bit slower.
Since cilantro grows a long taproot, I moved my little plant into a recycled milk carton (8 inches deep). Hopefully it will thrive, I love cilantro and it's been the one plant that's been rather hard for me to grow. I plan on drinking a lot of milk and collecting these cartons as I think they will be useful to maintain all the herbs individually. So excited about the basils though, and everything else!
Update (03.31.11): ACK!! I think I must have mixed up my cartons when I was planting the seeds. What I thought was cilantro was actually nasturtium, what I thought was nasturtium was swiss chard and today I found the cilantro. Thank goodness the seedlings look quite different from each other. This means I must quickly finish off the rest of my milk so I can move that real cilantro...
Update (03.31.11): ACK!! I think I must have mixed up my cartons when I was planting the seeds. What I thought was cilantro was actually nasturtium, what I thought was nasturtium was swiss chard and today I found the cilantro. Thank goodness the seedlings look quite different from each other. This means I must quickly finish off the rest of my milk so I can move that real cilantro...
Meanwhile, things are growing quite well outside too. I love these little pink sprouts that have appeared. I wonder if it is lolla rosa lettuce? I'm finding them so cheery and utterly charming. I'm probably supposed to thin them out, but I don't really have the heart to in this case. So I am just going to let all the lettuces fight it out themselves and hopefully it will work out for the best.
Hey looks good! are you sure tony's not pruning the catnip on his own? Riley helped himself when we were trying to grow some. The catnip was unable to keep up.
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