Cilantro!!!

Last week I decided it was time to pull out last year's cilantro plants and put in the new plants I started earlier this spring.  This was quite an undertaking, since the cilantro had completely overrun half of the herb bed, and had self-seeded from 2009 plantings in a large pot and a concrete planter next to my door.  We just had a lot of cilantro.

A big pile of cilantro to clean and sort and store

I decided to leave one plant by the birdbath and see if I can collect some coriander later this year.  It is monstrously big.



A giant cilantro plant dwarfing the birdbath.

When I was done I had two ice cube trays full of chopped cilantro (which I froze with a little water), one large tray to dry (dried cilantro?) and two stuffed baggies that I just decided to give away.  No one needs this much cilantro!




Cilantro cubes in a freezer bag, and drying cilantro on my cooling rack

While I was cleaning the leaves I found a neat little surprise: ladybug eggs!  They're orange, oval, and usually arrayed in neat little geometric patterns that remind me of crystals.  Whenever I see these I try not to disturb them, but if I see them it usually means I already have.  I took them back outside and tucked them into a shrub that has an insect problem; hopefully they'll make it.


Ladybug eggs on a cilantro leaf

Spring Progress

 Some (more) not-so-quick bullet points:

Potato seedling peeking out at the world

Happy broccoli

Pea seedlings at the community garden

• The broccoli is looking utterly fabulous.  Even the poor little sacrificial lamb that didn't fit under the cover looks beautiful, no sign of cabbage worms since I picked off some eggs a few weeks ago.  I put coffee grounds all around the plants, hoping to mask the scent - maybe it's working?
• The potatoes are up.  I have some rogue viking purple potatoes at home in a recycling tote, plus German Butterball and Yukon Gold (N's choice) at the community garden.  The ones in the tote are already a little nibbled in one spot, but I can't see anything that might be causing the damage, and it seems to have stopped.
• Peas are up at home and at the community garden.  I actually replanted some of the empty spots at the community garden last week, so hopefully those will be coming up soon, too.
• Last week I went ahead and planted seven of my poor little tomato seedlings at the community garden, filling one of the two beds I'd planned to use for tomatoes this year.  They are not looking any better out there than they did in pots, so Tuesday I went ahead and planted the second bed with seeds.  The trouble is that now I don't want to re-plant the first bed with tomatoes this year, in case it's contaminated.  Sigh.  I'm working on a plot to rearrange the garden, but it's going to take some significant machinations, since I planned everything so well in the first place.  Drat my cleverness and my black tomato thumb.
• I planted some  ginger in my home garden.  I don't know if it will come to anything, but I had the space and thought I would try.
• I have given up weighing the lettuce.  There is so much of it!  Yesterday when N saw the salad bowl on the table he gave a deep sigh, then sat down manfully and began dishing it out.  I grew a lot this year, thinking that I just wanted to use all of the garden space during the spring, even if that meant giving away a lot of it.
• The romaine leaves seem very thick to me, compared to those I've grown at home in the past, and even compared to the ones I buy at the store, although it's hard to tell because mine are all open, with shorter leaves.  (Am I supposed to be doing something to make them grow in a tight head like the store-bought ones?  I don't know!)
• I'm trying to diversify the herb garden, which has been somewhat neglected since I installed it.  (Herbs are just never a priority, but really they should be, since they are so easy once started!)  I transplanted some lemon grass that I grew last year, and some potted chives that have been on my back step for at least three years.  (They promptly tried to bloom.)  I also added some lemon balm and a new cilantro seedling.  (More on cilantro in a later post, I hope.)  In the home garden I also planted cumin, basil, and dill - just a little of each.  I think this year I'll try to plant a new round of basil every few weeks, rather than try to prevent the plants from flowering all summer.
• Over the last two months I've been stealing 30 minutes here and there to work on a major undertaking by the back fence.  There is an area there where we have been letting volunteer trees and at least three different kinds of ivy just take over.  I've been working to clear it, which has taken a lot more effort than I expected.  There is still a stretch behind the shed that needs to be done, plus a lot of little volunteer trees on the other side of the fence that I need to go around the block to cut.  But I can finally set all my little potted plants and seedlings over there and imagine how it will look when they're in the ground.

Dead Rosemary

My poor rosemary plant

I planted the rosemary pictured above from seed in the spring of 2010, and carefully nurtured it through its first winter on my kitchen window.  Growing herbs from seed is something I have been discouraged from doing and indeed find very difficult - only the really easy ones like basil and dill ever work out for me.  I had counted this rosemary a success after we spent most of last winter making delicious rosemary potatoes with it.  I was planning to plant it in the ground in September and let it winter outside this year.

But it seems that for every baby I bring into this world I must say goodbye to at least 3 potted plants.  I left this little one outside during our awful heat wave back in July and forgot to water it, and now even I have to admit that it is dead.  This is victim number two, killed simultaneously to a much-harassed blueberry bush that never did.

Window Sill Herbs

 My potted basil is looking a little raggedy, as it is wont to do this time of year.  I pot one up from my garden every year and bring it in to sit in my kitchen windowsill.  I don't really have room for pots larger than 6", so I have to make sure I have at least one plant that was started late in the season.  It's kind of a tricky balancing act, because I don't want the plant to be so big that it'll suffer in a small pot, but I want it to be fairly big because once the day length starts to shorten they grow very slowly.

All the leaves you see on this plant have budded since the plant was brought indoors.  N is part Italian and likes to make a lot of homemade tomato sauces - we pick off the big outdoor leaves two or three at a time until about this time of year.  Once we get down to these baby leaves we know it's only a matter of time before we start dipping into the dried leaves (assuming I managed to dry some before the frost got them, which I did this year!)  It's an interesting reminder that back in the days before supermarkets the "hungry" season wasn't winter, but rather early spring.

This year I also had a potted rosemary plant to bring indoors.  It is a little too cold for them here, I think.  This is the first time I've grown rosemary, so I wasn't really sure this window would provide enough light.  I'm happy to see that it has survived the winter with little damage done, except that most of the fresh growth from last summer has been eaten.  I think I'll have to start another one this spring so that I can eventually have a nice-sized plant.

Parsley and Cilantro Sprouts

I finally have an herb garden...or, kind of. I planted some cilantro and parsley around my birdbath after I installed the garden bed. I knew it was late in the season, but I've had both plants live through past winters, so I thought they might have a shot. These are still pretty small, though.

I'll give them a haircut and see if that helps them fill out a little before the really cold weather sets in. I always feel a little cruel picking leaves off a plant that only has three, but I've been told and have found it to be true that parsley won't grow much more than an inch tall until it is picked. I'm not sure if I had to do pick the cilantro last time or not, but I don't think I have much to lose at this point.

If you're wondering, the bigger ones (on top) are the cilantro.

My New Herb Garden

Some of you may remember that earlier this year I was lamenting that I didn't get my herb garden installed last spring. Well, I took advantage of my blogging hiatus to get it done! (Oh, and yes, my thesis has been distributed! Yay!)

Actually, I started the herb garden several weeks ago when I finished moving the compost from the driveway. I used a flower support with a string tied to it to make an optimally-sized, perfectly round bed, as Renee Michelle suggested. I carefully centered the flower support between the sidewalk and flower bed, then laid newspaper all around it.


I tied garden twine to the flower stake, and stretched it taut, turning it to different angles as needed to guide my newspaper cuts. Though I could have been a bit more careful and it probably would have gone better with cardboard (the newspapers tended to shift around as I was working), I thought the result came out pretty well.


Then I put the birdbath back, piled compost over the newspaper, and proceeded to neglect the mess for several weeks. (My neighbors must just love my half-finished garden projects, eh?) Eventually, I bought some retaining wall stones from the local big box store and set them in place around the edge of the paper. I added a lot of coffee grounds and some bonemeal to the compost, watered, and planted cilantro and parsley. (It may be too late for these, but I am a gardening optimist!)


I am ridiculously proud of this thing every time I see it.