These are some vegetables and herbs I harvested to cook with today. Parsley (from May’s starter), green peppers (grocery store seeds from a pepper), thyme (from seed), green onions (regrown from grocery store.) The tiny peppers are more bitter and less sweet than full-grown ones, but otherwise fine.
I started a half-tray (20 cells) of DMR basil seeds, and 17 of them grew enough to be transplanted into 2.5″-square pots. Here they are. Same mix of Hardware Store Potting Soil and perlite as I used for my last seed starts. The trays I use for seedlings are pretty cheap on Amazon.
It’s October, and it’s going to frost sometime soon, and the sunlight is getting dimmer and shorter, so I moved most of my indoor plants to the only south-facing window in the house. From the left: Dill, sweet basil that did not succumb to downy mildew, two green peppers in one pot, and the sage I bought in may that’s still growing in its little protein jug.
I bought some seeds, and planted chives, cilantro, fennel, and oregano. The soil was a mix of “potting soil” from the store and perlite. I accidentally bought the world’s biggest bag of perlite because I didn’t know how much 4 cubic feet really was. Think about 4 cubic feet. It’s not big, right? Wrong.
I pulled some peppers off and ate them. They tasted normal. Since I started these inside, with not much light, in poor soil, with irregular watering, and did not transplant until after they had been rootbound a while, they didn’t grow very big or grow very many peppers. But they tasted fine.
Non-downy-mildew-resistant basil grows really well in full sun. If it weren’t for the mildew, it would be a great idea. Can you spray them or something? I don’t know, this is The Plant Bitch, not The Plant Expert.
I transplanted the rosemary start into a 1-gallon pot. It’s doing well. I took a few clippings and rooted them in water. They look like you’d imagine. Same plant but less of it.
The pepper blooms got pollinated and grew into a few tiny peppers.
I put a few sage clippings into water and waited for them to root. Great, now I have more sage. Who does this help?
You can see the beginning of blooms on the peppers. The blooms turn into flowers, which have both pistils and stamen (I’m pretty sure, it’s been a while since I studied plant biology) and the plant can self-pollinate between blooms. Also, some neighbors grow peppers, which may also pollinate them.
I put some green onions in pretzel rod tubs and set them outside too. They needed more sun, and they grow a lot faster outside with full sun in the summer. You can see that I’ve already ripped pieces off and eaten them. It’s food, I’m allowed to do that
The rooted basil is doing okay, because it’s not outside.