Windowbox Gardening.
Hello how is everything. Today I'm going to talk about gardening. Basically I'm knitting a fine gauge sweater that fits me atrociously and I'm in the process of sewing a handbag out of **upcycled** pajama pants which takes planning to get the print all lined up with such a limited amount of fabric. I've been cooking a lot, some failures and some successes but not photographing it and this week the herbs for my herb garden have sprouted. I've never grown anything before - even in kindergarten when you plant a bean in a styrofoam cup mine didn't even sprout - so this is very exciting for me. I planted sage, thyme, parsley, basil, dill and cucumbers (for making pickles!!) and I purchased peppermint starts from Portland Nursery because they don't even SELL mint seeds.
I planted the seeds last week in cups I had left over from my anniversary party. Basically, and nobody has reacted positively to this, but I dumped all the seeds from the packet in the respective cups and covered them in potting soil or whatever. It's a Darwinian approach to gardening. I assumed the seeds would compete with each other for nutrients and water and only the strongest and best seeds will prevail, giving me the strongest plants.
Until it gets warmer, the plants are growing on my windowsill, which I lined with maxi pads to absorb the water drainage. My windowsill is too narrow for a tray, plus I don't have a tray. Pads are perfect because one side is adhesive so you just stick them on to the windowsill and fold the tabs over to secure them, and they'll keep my plants dry, protected, and confident.
So far only the sage and the parsley have yet to sprout, and those can take between 14 and 21 days. The thyme was the first to come up but the cucumber seed is my favorite to watch because you can look at it in the morning and in the evening and notice a change.
Thyme
Basil (looks a lot like Thyme)
Dill
Cucumber, my favorite thing to watch grow!
I installed a window box onto my railing which took three tries and tens of dollars mostly because of the windowbox brackets. First I ordered a really expensive windbowbox holder online that failed to specify it was for 2"x4" or 2"x6" railings (my railing is 1.5" x1.5" square) and the difference was really too great to put a shim in it. THEN I went to Portland Nursery and they sold me a really cheap set of brackets that I destroyed trying to adhere it to my railing but it wouldn't have worked anyway. THEN I went to the hardware store and got a cheap window box holder intended for 2x4 or 2x6 railings AND spent an extra $2 on two bolts, two wing nuts and two washers to secure the whole thing in place and basically I could have saved myself a lot of trouble. The bolts are long enough such that they won't cause my window box to tip over when it's full of dirt and the whole thing is flush as can be against my balcony railing even though it doesn't look it in the picture because of the angle of the sun and the extra bulk of the wing nut.
28 February 2010