Spring is in the air!
The weather keeps fluctuating here between beautiful and cold. That's Kansas for you.I am very ready for Spring. Garden-planting-fever has hit me in full force. I'm planning to start a deck garden this next week with some lettuce and herbs in planters. It's still a bit too cold to dig up a plot in the backyard, but I'm anxious to start with something.
Anyone else planting anything right now? What are your favorite herbs to plant? I'm still deciding what all I want to plant this year. I know one thing, I can hardly wait for fresh-picked tomatoes!
posted by Crystal Paine at 4:28 PM
16 Comments:
I decided to plant my flowers from seed this year. It will be a big money saver! In PA we can not safely plant flower plants until the end of May. I am going to start the seeds in egg cartons about the first of April. I'm going to work with my boys on this and use it as a school project. I want to plant a variety of pastels with splashes of red. I ,too, can't wait until spring!!!!!
Ruth, PA
Hello,
I really like lemon thyme. It really does smell just like lemon and requires no attention what so ever! I use it in teas, soups and in chicken dishes. It is also good fresh in salads.
We just planted our square foot gardens yesterday, I would really
like to add a couple of additional boxes for strawberries, and perhaps one or two for potatoes, but I haven't decided for sure yet.
We planted salad "stuff": spinach, cucumbers, radishes, onions, green onions, lettuce, 2 heads of cabbage, tomatoes, and I threw in two watermelon plants and two gourds to decorate with in the fall.
The day before we planted caladium bulbs...if the truth be known, I'm probably most excited about these..they always make the yard look so nice.
As for herbs, we are growing chives, basil, thyme, rosemary (which smells so nice added to a winter fire), lavendar (this on is my favorite), and garlic.
I'm hoping that some of the herbs can be infused into things like lavendar laundry or body spray for Christmas gifts, but we'll see!! :)
I too, have caught the Spring bug...I very much enjoy seeing my little plants grow.
I love to plant lots of herbs in my flower planters so that when I water my flowers it smells so good! Some of my favorites are:
Lavendar
Mint (lots of varieties like chocolate and mexican)
Pineapple Sage (smells like pineapple)
Chamomile
Lemon Balm
Too cold here still so I'll have to wait a bit longer....
We are heading towards winter here in New Zealand, so I'm looking forward to using rosemary and thyme in soups and casseroles - yum!
For summer salads, my two essential herbs are basil and mint. Parsley is great too.
If you love garden fresh tomatoes, you MUST have basil! I don't know what the climate is like in Kansas; if you have cool summers you can grow basil in a pot on a sunny windowsill.
Happy growing!
Eugenie
Spring! Spring! It is my favorite time of the year I think. :0) My daughters and I have planted dill and a few flowers so far...all from seed growing in the kitchen window. My beloved husband likes my homemade crock pickles and dill is awfully expensive so I thought we would give it a try. We will plant in our square foot garden this weekend. We are in south Texas so we should be safe against freezes. I enjoy reading as always!
Mrs. Klause@www.clothedwithscarlet.typepad.com
We are planting out tomatoes, basil & marigolds this weekend, and our citrus trees are in bloom, wafting their marvelous scent throughout the neighborhood. It's springtime for sure out here!
I know what you mean about the weather: here in NJ it was 80 degrees one day, and the next day (yesterday) we had snow, sleet, and ice. The 80 degree days gave me spring fever, and I am itching to plant my little garden! We live in a townhouse right now, so we don't have too much yard, but I plant herbs in pots on the patio (basil, parsley, oregano, sage, thyme, rosemary, cilantro) and a small vegetable garden (tomatoes, lettuce, zucchini, peppers, spinach). I love gardening!
My garden this year is in planters, too. I've got radishes out right now, and everything else is inside: peas, butter beans, peppers, tomatoes, and some herbs. I'm starting small this year -- this is actually my first attempt at my own garden.
As far as herbs go, I'm trying for mint (for tea), basil, rosemary, and lavender. I probably will only *use* the basil and mint, but I love the smell of lavender and rosemary is very hardy and good to have around.
Yay for fresh food from your own backyard!
This year will be the first time ever that I plant a garden. I'm going to use the square foot gardening method like Tracey. I'm hoping to start with 2 beds. Is this too much/too little, anyone with suggestions? I work full time so this will be an early morning and after work project! I too have Spring fever as Crystal mentioned-the Spring cleaning has started, but I cant wait for planting flowers and a garden! Sometimes I think it might be nice to live somewhere with warm weather year round, but I dont think I would appreciate the temperature and sunshine as much as living in a place where you experience every season to its extreme!
We have tilled our garden area and after we buy some organic compost and dried molasses to throw in there we will hopefully begin planting next Saturday! Yeah! We will be doing tomatoes, lettuce, yellow squash, zucchini squash, pickling cucumbers and hopefully cantalope (sp?). Our strawberry plants from last year have come back nicely and I'm excited to see what they do this year.
As far as herbs go, we will do chives and basil probably. I still have cilantro growing out of control from last year and our rosemary is in a planter and huge! I didn't realize you could add it to a fire! Anyway, that's it!
If you are thinking about doing some container gardening, consider Earth Boxes. They are pricey to buy, but my sweet husband found a pattern online and we made our own for considerably less, and without much work. We used a couple last year and were shocked at how much greater the yield was on our tomatoes and peppers. Plus, they can be moved to a better spot when the heat of the summer sets in (we are in South TX).
For herbs I love basil and dill for canning, and mint, rosemary, and oregano for everything!
Re:Dts wife
More about square foot gardening...
I thought two boxes were a perfect start for my family.
Because there was very little weeding, I could take the hose pipe outside and run it to the garden (the book, btw, says not to do this!) and let it run while I was getting a start to my day inside. We have an ever growing family (PTL!) and it would be hard
to have to spend a great deal of time working the boxes.
Aside from the watering, you do have some time involved in running the plants up a trellis system (depending on what you are growing) but not too much, and the
return on vegetables makes it very worth it!
My husband and I both agreed that two boxes would be a nice start for us, but before the end of the summer, we ended up adding two more beds, measuring 2'x4'. This year, I would actually like to add another 2 2'x4' beds and 2 4'x4' beds...hubby, seeing how well they did last year, seems to be excited about adding them...so I would say "go for it". You won't regret it!
Tracy
I agree with Eugenie that basil is a must to have with tomatoes. It also makes absolutely delicious home made pesto (lovely and summery!).
Tomato plants were great for our toddler last year, and I am hoping that we can grow them again this year. We had the small cherry tomato type, just planted in grow bags next to a sunny wall, and Hannah just came along and ate them whenever she fancied (mind you, we didn't have many left over for ourselves!!).
Another vegetable we found easy to grow (ie. it pretty much grew itself without our intervention...always good for novices like us), is courgette (?zucchini in US??). We found that we got loads from just two plants, and it was great made into soup, or in salad. In fact we forgot to pick one and it ended up a huge 6 lb courgette which looked like a marrow, and it made enough soup to feed 20 people!! Maybe I should have put this in Frugal Friday!!!
Karen (UK)
My peas are in the ground and I'll start my tomatoes indoors last week in March. A friend and I zre splitting the seed packets of some really yummy heirloom varieties. Then I'll soon be doing deck planters of lettuce and later on kale and other greens and then some squash and green beans and such in the garden! I can't wait! I really hate having to wait until after the last frost to plant too much outside. I want to build hoop houses over our beds, but since we're not sure if we're going to sell or not in the next year I'm waiting until next summer (if we stay that is).
As for herbs, I'm doing a box on our deck of them so that they're easily accesible from the kitchn (will start them indoors as well when I start the tomatoes). I'm doing lots of basil (since I love pesto), cilantro, oregano, sage, thyme, we already have rosemary out front. I might do some chives and such too.
And if you're doing tomatoes, some pest that loves tomatoes hates basil and vice versa. So plant some basil in amongst your tomatoes!
I love growing things and since we farm that's what we do.
In the garden we are doing several different types of tomatoes, okra, yellow squash as well as zuchinni, cucumbers, eggplant, sweet and hot peppers,cantaloupes, watermelons, small ornamentals and pumpkins. We also grow figs, blackberries, blueberries, peaches, apples, plums and nectarines. We have cattle and honey bees too. We will plant hay for the cows soon.
I love this time of year, God has made it all so beautiful. Oh and did I mention that our 1 year old twin boys will be growing in the gardena nd orchards too?
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