Having a go at growing some herbs snippets.bellebcooper.com
@solari Haha yeah! They don't even look like anything edible yet. It's so fun to watch them sprout, but I'm not sure how much luck we'll have growing them to edible size. We'll see!
@belle I'm actually watching this to see how it goes because I'd love to find an easy way to carry/grow plants in my roving camper wherever I go to give it a bit of a homey feel. So please be gentle and if you end up eating them don't tell me so you don't break my heart. ; )
@solari Haha fair enough! I bought this kit really cheap here in Melbourne for a Christmas present. I thought that way it's easy to try and we won't care too much if we fail. So far it's been really easy.
@solari And I've heard of people having herbs that grow so much they have to freeze some! So if it's that easy we can surely eat heaps without putting a dent in the plants. We'll see, though.
@solari basil, parsley, or chives are super portable. All they need it water and some light. Basil likes heat. Tomatoes are pretty easy too, need lots of light and heat (grow them on balcony in summer) but not sure how’d they survive camper, bouncy ride may make them fall off.
@oyam That's my biggest issue - I tend to go where most people don't so it's a rough ride at times (shattered plates and such even). And the climes are not always consistent. Sometimes it will be pretty darn cold. Need to find something indestructible and yet friendly like a tiny dog without the tending to needed. Hmm. Maybe a rubber plant? lol
@belle this is awesome! I really want to grow fresh herbs. Do you need to transfer them to other containers, or can they just live in their little pod holders?
@Burk Yeah, we're about to transfer the bigger ones to pots of some kind. It's really a kit just to get you started. Super easy way to try it out, though!
@smokey Ha! Basil is one of the 2/6 that haven't done anything for us yet, so may have to retry that one if nothing comes of it. Really looking forward to being able to use these in cooking someday.
@belle I’m not sure off-hand what the germination period is for basil, but I recall it often seeming slow to sprout.
@smokey Ah, well we haven't given up on it yet. We'd assumed the coriander and parsley weren't going to sprout because they took so much longer than the rocket and oregano but they've popped up enthusiastically this week so maybe there's still hope for the last two.
@belle I had a nice salad with dinner tonight. That made me realize I don’t think I’ve seen anything about your herbs in a while, so I thought I’d pop in to ask. Did the basil ever sprout? Hope they’re all coming along well. 🌱
@smokey Ah you're right. My last update didn't come through via RSS properly and I stopped hanging out here and thus forgot to post about them. The basil never sprouted, and so far all but one of those we replanted died! 😭
@smokey The coriander has one sprout hanging on right now, but everything else died from the stress of replanting or our bad technique I guess. The oregano was too small to move and is still going in the mini greenhouse, though.
@belle A handy way to do it with Basil is to buy live ones from a store, then separate out the stems into new pots. We did that a few years ago, and were inundated with the stuff.
@belle I find my coriander does really well if I buy an existing plant and let it go to seed and spray itself all over the garden. Comes up through cracks in the concrete, etc. But if I plant it? Big fat fail, hehe.
@belle Ohh hey -- I want to get my podcast (The Run Loop) going again. Would you be interested in being the inaugural guest?
@dgold Hmm well we grew them from seeds okay in our mini "greenhouse" thing, but it was the replanting into pots that didn't go well, so maybe we're doomed to fail at that stage!
@collin Hey, yeah that'd be cool! If you want to hit me up with details when you're ready, you can get me at belle at hello code dot co :)
@smokey Did you still have to replant them? I worry that we're doing something wrong at that stage and would fail anyway. Or maybe we don't know how much water/light they need after replanting.
@belle Oh, hrm. I think even if you get a single-stalk basil plant it will eventually need to be repotted/transplanted, although it could manage for much longer than the 3-4 “stalk” plants they often sell (at least around here), although in theory those should still be easier to divide than little sprouts.
(As for the others, my best guess is that there were too many plants in too small of an area/soil cups, which made them less developed and more difficult to divide/transplant—but it’s just a guess, because the only one of those herbs I’ve grown is the basil that didn’t actually sprout for you.)
@smokey Thanks for the tips! I think we'll try letting the oregano get much bigger before transplanting in case that helps, and not start over on the others until we know its fate. Fingers crossed!
@belle FWIW, I don't know what the instructions might have said (esp. since I've never grown any of those other than basil), but for basil, I would have put only one seed in those things you started out with, and it could have been 2 to 3 inches tall before I would've transplanted it. (Transplanted = opened up the exterior and then plopped the whole thing in the middle of a larger pot and filled in with more soil.)
@smokey I think it says to add "a couple" of seeds maybe. The rocket and coriander were ~3 inches tall when we replanted I think, and we worried we'd waited too long but either they weren't strong enough or we're terrible and transplanting!