Kitchen Garden

Happy New Year! As the new year has come, so has my little kitchen garden. I started cutting two liter bottles in half and making self watering containers. So far it has worked very well. I have sweet basil, lemon basil, thyme, marjoram, dill, garlic chives, parsley and summer savory all planted. The dill has yet to sprout, but everything else has popped up beautifully. I don't expect the dill to actually make an appearance for another few days. I'm using a compact fluorescent bulb in a regular floor lamp with no cover to give my plants light and it is working wonderfully.

My little orchard is also stacked behind my emerging garden. I nearly lost my bananas because I didn't get them in before the first frost which came on time this year around the 15th of October, much to my dismay. I forgot all about them so I had more than a couple of battered dying leaves but, the bananas have made a very serious come back. My blueberry bloomed shortly after coming in and has continued to do so. I did finally figure out why my poor lemon wasn't doing so well. It's an iron deficiency that was getting out of hand. I found a rusty nail to insert into the pot around the roots and about a week later I finally got the new growth I should have seen back in August but never got. I'm going to find a couple more rusty nails to insert into my orange and lime as well as their lower leaves started to yellow a couple of weeks ago so I'm thinking it is the same problem for them.

The mother of a good friend of mine is a professional horticulturist and I asked her about it and she agreed that it was either an iron deficiency or spider mites. I went home and checked it out to see if I had the mites and there were none, thankfully, it was just a simple iron deficiency and that is easier fixed than the bugs.

So all of the plants are healthy and doing well with my modesty lighting system. I was looking into a small LED lighting system and found them to be affordable at around $60 for a system that will cover about 3 square feet. I'm looking forward to getting something more set up so that I can start with some tomatoes and maybe some cucumbers which will require more light than my little compact can produce alone.

I've been saving up my two liters (and so have my friends) and I'm going to start experimenting with lettuces next to see what all I can grown in my little pots. I don't really need much, and baby greens are very quick to grow and then be devoured. I'm really quite excited about this and so are the kids, the enjoy planting and watching the plants grow.

It's a nice start and I'm certainly looking forward to have a good fresh salad whenever I want!