Basil and Thyme Progress

  

 

As you might recall, Jennifer and I planted some cinnamon basil and thyme about two weeks ago. Now they're up and growing, so we hope they'll make some good progress over the next few weeks.

You can see in the picture above that Jennifer's basil is doing very well (better than mine, actually). She has around seven basil plants up, and they all look healthy and sturdy.

Unfortunately, her thyme hasn't been as successful, but she still has one or two plants up. The rest wilted and died.

My thyme seems to be doing a little bit better, but I have had some of the seedlings wilt, fall over, and die. I'm not sure why. Maybe they're not getting enough light or water.  You can see that I have around five plants in the picture below.

I've noticed that they seem to be forming new leaves already too, so once they've grown a bit more, I'll be able to re-pot them.

I only have two basil plants up, but I think I only planted five or so in the pot too. Maybe they're just taking a bit longer to germinate, so with any luck, Jennifer and I will have a few basil and thyme plants to enjoy later on.

Megan

Bleu De Solaise Leeks

I love leeks and have used them frequently when roasting vegetables in the oven. I don't eat them often, however, because a bundle of three leeks in the store tends to be $2 to $3 each, and so I cannot bring myself to buy them. To remedy this, Megan and I are growing Bleu de Solaise Leeks for the first time this year.

First, let me give you some interesting information on leeks in general. Leeks  are included in the onion and garlic family, and form a long stalk and leaves when they grow. I find the flavour of leeks to be much sweeter than most onions and they don't sting your eyes like onions tend to do. In many cases, leeks even act as a nice substitute to onions in a recipe.

Apparently, Emperor Nero, who reigned as emperor of the Roman Empire from 54 to 68 AD, is said to have favoured leeks over other vegetables and believed leeks were beneficial to his voice. For those that don't know, Nero was fond of games and the arts and felt he was a particularly good singer, which is something many historians find amusing, so this fact about leeks and Nero is rather humorous to me as well.

Bleu de Solaise Leeks, which is the variety of leeks my sister and I are going to grow, is a French heirloom. They have the word 'bleu' in their title because after a cold spell, their leaves can get a violet tinge. Apparently, these leeks can be harvested straight through until Spring and frost will actually improve their flavour. In fact, we probably won't be able to harvest these until late-Autumn or Winter because they require a long period of growth.

Since leeks enjoy cold weather the most, it is recommended that they get started in flats 4 to 6 weeks before the last frost. I think that we will start our seeds any week now and hopefully we will have some pictures of seedlings to show you during March.

Jennifer

Growing Season 2012

  This year we ordered all of these seeds from the Cottage Gardener. We were so happy with the results we got when growing the Chioggia beets and Little Finger carrots that we knew we had to try them again, so they're on the list, including some new varieties of vegetables. 

 Henderson's Bush Lima Bean

Cherokee Trail of Tears Bean

Chioggia Beet

Little Finger Carrot

Arugula

Bleu de Solaise Leek

Tatsoi Mustard Green
Scarlet Nantes Carrot
Mixed Coloured Carrots

In addition to the new varieties, we are planting: 

Green Zebra Tomatoes

Cherokee Purple Tomatoes

Red Zapotec Tomatoes

Purple Calabash Tomatoes

Yellow Pear Tomatoes

Lucullus Swiss Chard

Musquee de Provence Pumpkin

Radishes (China Rose, White Icicle, Purple Plum, and French Breakfast, Cherry Belle, and Easter Egg)

Lettuce (Black Seeded Simpson, Green Oakleaf, Cracoviensis, Red Deer Tongue, and Australian Yellowleaf)

Bulgarian Carrot Peppers

Jimmy Nardello Peppers

You'll also remember the herbs mentioned in our last post. These include:

Thyme

Cinnamon Basil

Things should get going soon, as we'll probably be starting our growing around March or April. We plan on starting our tomatoes and peppers earlier this year (probably mid-March), as they weren't that big by the time we put them in the garden last year and we had to wait until September before we really started getting much off the plants.  I think we'll probably directly sow everything else. Come back to our blog to check out our progress then! 

Megan and Jennifer

Planting Herbs

I haven't written in a long time because we can't grow anything outdoors at the moment, but I've been itching to plant something and see it grow. Our little precursor to the outdoor growing season was to plant some cinnamon basil and thyme today, because both these herbs can apparently grow quite well indoors. Jennifer and I decided we'd each plant a basil plant and a thyme plant so that we each have something to look after and enjoy.

We've never actually planted herb seeds before, but our mom has and we knew that the process is quite simple. We bought some seed-starting mix at Home Depot and we still had the cups we used for our tomato plants last year, so we didn't need to buy much. We filled the cups with the mix, and because we didn't want the seeds to shift too much when being watered, we watered the mix before putting the seeds in each cup. This way the seeds don't shift but will also stay moist until they germinate. Then we patted a couple seeds into each cup. We are placing them in our living room window that gets quite a lot of sun, so we hope they'll grow nicely. In 7-14 days we should know whether any of the seeds have germinated. I'll give an update then if we've had any luck.

Megan