Herb Pots

My morning task has become retrieving the newspaper at the end of the driveway.  I do this in night clothes, irrespective of the weather unless I have some reason to dress first thing in the morning.  I do not read the newspaper most days, though my wife does and I once had a great fondness for many different newspapers.  A of these dailies have gone extinct, including the Herald-Tribune to which my sixth grade class qualified for a cheap subscription.  Most still print every day but with much reduced local reporting, victim to parallel depletion of paid advertising.  This morning, as nearly every morning except Saturday when the local paper discontinued that day's print edition, I went to the driveway's end, this time dressed in anticipation of our cleaning service visit.  Rain fell steadily, though not enough to create big puddles on the driveway or adjacent lawn.  I found the paper wrapped in plastic, tied at the top, with a coating of water.  I bent down, shook the drops off as I picked it up, then deposited it at my front door to enable my wife to read about what's new.

Today's forecast predicts a much heavier downpour as we enter the first week of spring.  Outdoor activities did not appear on my Daily Tasks, other than to begin preparing my herb pots that I keep a few steps from my front door, their bottoms resting on grassless peat moss applied by our semi-annual landscaping service.  Those herbs had largely failed last summer while my indoor aerogarden herbs have flourished.  I don't know why.  Rosemary had some straggly needles, hardly enough for meaningful culinary use.  Even spearmint, a dominant weed if not contained, produced only a few sprigs.  Chives, thyme, dill, coriander went nowhere.

Reasons for crop failure would generate a long list.  Old seeds, inadequate pot drainage.  I don't think the lawn service sprayed herbicide on them as their placement near shrubbery shields them from the grassy areas.  Maybe too little sunlight, though I have had better growth in previous years.  The soil has not been enriched in any way for a while.  

One recent afternoon I inspected each pot.  The soil seemed tamped down.  I don't remember if I used potting soil or topsoil.  The latter is easier to work with but most online herb pot advice recommends potting soil that comes pre-enriched.  I took a small hand trowel, loosening each upper layer, digging down the to the drainage layer beneath, one made of small stones or broken pottery.  I will confirm drainage before planting this season.  The soil layer for some appeared thinner than when I first established most of the pots a few years ago.

When I watch cooking shows, another activity much reduced in frequency over time, the chefs all have culinary herb access.  I do too as an aerogarden, with some components woefully overgrown and underharvested.  But I really want to be able to go outside my front door to snip leaves that enhance what I create in my kitchen.  That will require a little more attention than in seasons past.

Planting Season

Unlikely to get more frost, so spring gardening approaches.  I did rather well this winter.  Having made a decision last year that vegetables go in the ground in the backyard, while culinary herbs grow in pots outside my front door and in my living room, some of my culinary crop survived.  I have a decent stem of rosemary, a somewhat straggly stem of sage, and a pot of spearmint that has begun its annual recurrence.  In the three chia pots, parsley has big leaves, though not that many.  Chives have been straggly, while basil underperformed previous chia attempts.  The hydroponic aerogarden's dill has overflowed and oregano grows abundantly.  Cilantro was a dud on two attempts.  Sage has sprouted from seed.  Chives has only a few leaves but probably enough for a sandwich.  Basil planted indoors did not sprout, probably due to excessively soggy soil.  Pot put outside to dry a bit, and I have plenty of fresh seeds for a do-over, or to plant basil in a different pot and use the soggy one for something else.

While different plants have different optimal direct in-ground times to plant seeds or transplant vegetables grown from seeds indoors, for my region, the weeks between Passover and Mother's Day seem the calendar's sweet spot.  My pot collection exceeds what I really want to plant.  Moreover, each year Shop-Rite sells discounted flourishing basil, chives, and parsley in containers that I can simply transplant to larger containers all ready for harvest.  I must choose primarily which herbs I want to grow, then enrich the soil, plant the seeds, and label what I have planted in each pot or subsection of a larger pot.

The backyard poses more of a challenge.  I've been formatting the vegetables in the manner of a Square Foot Garden, mostly with disappointing results.  I also have an accessory area that I misjudged trying to plant beets and carrots.  Basically, I have few weed problems because the landscaper many years ago installed weedblock cloth in the defined beds.  My two 4x4 foot beds will generate 32 squares.  The weedblock layer, however, limits my ability to grow root vegetables, despite a previous attempt to make the soil thicker.  Moreover, tomatoes grown from small pots purchased at a top nursery overtake the square allotted to them.  They grow leaves and stems that exceed the ability of my plastic stakes to maintain them upright.  It does not help, that the weedblock layer makes it difficult to insert the supporting stakes as deeply as I might like.  The abundance of green and paucity of fruit suggests that the nutrient mix needs to be better.  Since tomatoes are one of the reliable plants that always taste better from my garden than what the supermarket, or even farmer's market can offer, this gets priority.  I think I will only grow two plants this year, allotting each two square feet, and supporting with cages instead of stakes.  Eggplant and peppers also never reach their potential when grown from nursery pots.  Peppers are easily obtainable at the supermarket, but eggplant more expensive.  My bok choy and lettuce never produce.  Swiss chard is iffy.  Green beans sprout, but the harvest is difficult.  Maybe four squares this year, and a different four than previous years.  Vining plants like cucumber and squash often do well.  Since they need room to spread out, they can only be planted at the outer squares of the grid, but they often produce a very gratifying yield.  This may be the place for that accessory planting portion separate from the 4x4 grid, or maybe even a reason to use a linear rather than grid format for this year's vegetable garden..

Then, once I know what to plant, I need to get the seeds or shoots.  Many of my seed packets are quite old.  I should get some fresh packets.  The best price on seedlings is always Home Depot on sale or the local nursery.  I've priced seeds several places.  I prefer the local hardware store, not because they are better seeds or better value, but because I am grateful for the many times they made it easy to get the home maintenance items I needed in a trouble-free way.  I can spend a little more for loyalty, but I also need selection.  The best prices on seeds seem to be Walmart.  Target sells Burpee for slightly more, but it's a good deal closer than Walmart.  Lowe's seemed expensive.  Home Depot is out of the way, worth it for plants, not for seeds.

So it seems best to invest the week before Passover and Chol HaMoed on planning.  What to plant, herbs and vegetables, which squares or even whether to continue this Square Foot format.  The soil will need to be enriched, so a few packages of organic soil enricher, maybe get a soil test, maybe consider some chemical additives.  Buy a couple of tomato cages.  Then mark and plant and set a maintenance schedule.  Indoor went well this winter.  No insurmountable obstacles to duplicating a reasonable herb and vegetable yield outdoors this season.

Winter Plants

Inventory of what I will try to sustain through the cold, mostly indoors, is complete.  Herbs stay outside if above freezing, inside to avoid the frost.  I have active leaves of sage, rosemary, spearmint, and basil.  In chia pots, parsley seems to be taking hold.  New seeds for chives and basil.  And I planted six pods of aerogarden, don't remember what, but they are labelled. I also have a Bonsai sprig that needs to get six inches tall before transplanting to a larger pot.  And in a small box there are seeds for another Bonsai that I can prepare in the refrigerator according to package instructions. Check on Tuesdays and Fridays for the indoor plants. Daily weather report for the herb pots.

I don't know why my indoor plants never seem to look like the indoor herb gardens that the TV chefs snip in their home kitchens when they need aromatic leaves.  Maybe they aren't.  Perhaps they go to a nursery the day before a TV shoot, buy something flourishing there, and bring it to the kitchen for the camera to capture the cook harvesting.  TV Land has a way of making somebody else's reality better than mine.

But for now I have some chance of enjoying some home herbs in my own kitchen before spring arrives.

Protecting Herbs

While the winter solstice does not occur for a few weeks, frost has arrived.  I exchanged seasonal clothing a couple of months ago.  Snowblower needs to be made functional, though we've not had snow justifying its use for a few years.  Frost has arrived.  While my herbs grow better in the backyard beds than in pots outside the front door, there are enough advantages to the portable pots to sacrifice some abundance of leaves.  Indeed, spearmint and peppermint will overwhelm vegetables when placed there.  The mints become dormant in the winter, re-emerging in the spring.  The basil, rosemary, and sage all need to be replanted.  With the frost, I've been taking the four pots inside in the hope they will survive the winter.  None are really flourishing but have enough leaves for garnish use, and rosemary enough for culinary use.  They still do better in the sun, so for the next few months when we have a thaw they go back outside the front door, with a freeze they return to the lower hallway.  I do not know if the abrupt changes in temperature moving between inside and outside will have an ill effect.  I know that leaving them outside will guarantee they will function as annuals. 

Gardening's Late Season

This has been a dud of a garden.  One cucumber, A few tomatoes.  Pretty decent string bean growth.  Green vines and leaves everywhere, overflowing to square feet not intended for them.  Edibles minimal.  My outdoor pots of herbs did not do any better, except for rosemary which thrives.  And I took down my aerogarden, disinfected each component with diluted bleach, and started over with six new herbs.  Even my chia triad is down to its last basil.  I don't know the reason for such poor performance.  For sure, I am not dedicated to tending each planting, going out to the backyard a couple of times a week to week and nourish.  I'm not even committed to harvesting on schedule.  Tomato plants take up more than one square.  They need a cage, not the commercial plastic stakes, to keep them upright.  And beans need regular harvest.  No clue as to why peppers, eggplant, and so many variations of lettuce never produce anything to bring to my kitchen table. Root vegetables unrealistic as weed block beneath the soil would not allow unlimited downward growth.

Culinary herbs in outdoor pots have more promise.  Basil grows.  Chives less so.  Parsley a great disappointment.  Dill and sage seem to do better in my vegetable garden.  Mint, which grows like a weed because it fundamentally is a weed, died in its pot overnight, suggesting some infestation or exposure to an herbicide from our lawn crew.  Mint has to stay in pots for containment.

Chia in my hands only grows basil reliably.  The hydroponic aerogarden also grows basil reliably, so abundant a root system as to crowd out the other five plant cylinders.

The mid-fall season still leaves me pumpkins to check on, but it's really time to uproot what will no longer grow.  Square foot has 32 squares, clean eight a day.  There is a supplemental section that can be turned over, as uprooting everything there is unrealistic.  The deck has three flower boxes that can have their plant remains removed.  For the pots, protect the rosemary indoors this year when it gets a bit colder.  Harvest what can be salvaged, maybe some basil, sage, and parsley for shabbos dinner.  Pluck everything else.  Plant something in the two remaining chia pots and add some diluted fertilizer.  And see how the new aerogarden herbs turn out.  Replace the dead bulb, consider getting their fertilizer pods which worked better than what I use now.

It really becomes how committed I am to having my own sources of herbs when I want them and the sensory superiority of produce from my own garden.  I am willing to do some effort, though not an extreme, focused amount.

Outdoor Herbs

Shop-Rite periodically sells small pots of herbs for $1.99 each.  At the beginning of the season I bought containers of basil and spearmint.  The mint thrives, the basil shriveled within days.  My own plantings have not done well.  Rosemary that I purchased from a garden center should keep my recipes fulfilled through the first frost, though I've not been successful at winter storage.  Those planted from seed have not prospered.  I have some dill and some parsley, though nothing like the cooks on TV snip from their portable containers.  Chives never flourish.  Thyme struggles.  Basil from seed has done well indoors, though not in my front door containers.  Oregano has some sprouts.  Spearmint from a previous year, often abundant approaching weed status, did not reappear in last year's container. There is some coriander which may be usable by summer's end.  And time will tell if the sprouting oregano progresses.

So as I unexpectedly rolled my cart past the herb selection, now at mid-season and again reduced to $1.99 per pot, I added mature chives and basil to my grocery purchase.  When I got home, I simply inserted each into empty larger pots, placed them outside for the upcoming rain to hydrate them, and will harvest some within the next week, while monitoring their progress.

This Year's Gardens

Gardening has been removed from my semi-annual initiatives in favor of other things.  While it never became a focus as intended, it has found a niche in my seasonal activity, much like monthly donations or monthly financial review has moved from targeted activity to ordinary continuation.

The plants have four general placements.  In the living room, an aeroponic unit that always underperforms, yielding nothing meaningful to my culinary herb needs.  The chia pots, three of them, have been productive of basil, less of other things, but for the first time I'm giving dill a go.  Outside my front door I plant container herbs.  Bought mint since it was on sale, and bought rosemary since mine never take from seed and I need robust rosemary for cooking.  All else is from seed.  Mostly planted, a few sprouting.

Near the back door on the deck I plant flowers in the tree wooden plantar boxes.  They do well most years with very little care.  And then the big project, vegetables, most not yet chosen.  I started tomatoes, eggplant, and pepper from seed indoors.  All sprouted and were transplanted outside, still alive a few days and one watering later.  Radishes go well.  Some yellow squash planted in a different location than usual.  And I want to have some cucumber in a place where the vines can have room beyond the 4x4 wooden confines of my Square Foot format.  Then choose the rest of the vegetables.  Since weed block limits the depth that root vegetables can pursue, I found another location for carrots and beets this year.  A row format for these.

Maintenance probably twice a week for each bed or container, daily for the indoor plants with near total reconstruction of the aerogarden needed as a single focus.  I don't do well with fertilizing or other feeding, and pests have limited past harvests.  But whatever I can get with the limited focus I am willing to give this will be an increment of personal pleasure later on, something in current short supply.

Setting Out the Gardens

This year I did not include gardening on my Semi-Annual Projects.  It is not all that unusual for me to do something a few years, or intend to, like making my bedroom optimal or following TED talks, that I just do them without creating a special initiative for doing them.  Gardening has entered that sphere.  Every suburban homeowner needs to find a place for a few tomato plants and some flowers.  I've had two 4x4 plots in the backyard, located conveniently near the house, though at the expense of optimal sunlight, where I've grown vegetables and herbs.  Last year I moved the herb garden to just outside my front door.  My backyard deck contains three boxes just right for some flowers.  Landscapers trimmed back the rose bushes, so they should be ready to bud and flower with little or no input from me.

Living in Zone 7a, it is too soon for outdoor plantings but not too soon to ready the soil.  My mistakes over the years have been many, but usually different mistakes each year.  Thus far, I have begun tomatoes as indoor sprouts, planting ten of them from a recently obtained packet.  I planted five each of pepper and eggplant from seeds obtained in previous years.  Not sprouted yet.  Give it another week, then buy new seeds.  One mistake has been not adequately delineating the square foot markers that make my 4x4 beds into sixteen separate one square foot units.  I marked one bed with string.  I also found an unused area next to the deck.  It might be just right for rosemary, or maybe even better, I've not been able to grow carrots or other deep roots in the beds due to a layer of weed block.  The unused area seems deep enough to try some carrots and beets there, keeping the rosemary in front with the other herbs, though rosemary has thrived in my backyard in prior years, and far better than it did in the front pot last year.  Maybe I could do both in that space, or use it for the root vegetables and plant the rosemary right next to it.  But conceptually, I still like having all my herbs in the front and vegetables in the back.

What to plant?  I went to the seed display at Lowes.  Must have tomatoes.  Four plants overwhelms the backyard beds, so maybe only one in each of the 4x4s this year.  And I am determined to have my own peppers and eggplants.  Lettuce has not done well in my hands.  Vines have, cucumber and zucchini, but there are limited places to plant them as they spread out.  Pumpkin has been a lost cause,

My herbs do OK, though never as well as what the ladies on those TV cooking shows take from their window boxes each episode.  The seeds last over several years.  I only need one good sage plant, maybe two basils.  Dill has been inconsistent, but I really like dill.  Separate pot for that this year.  And mint is almost like a weed.  It disappears from its pot each winter, only to return with no effort on my part in the spring.  I rarely use it though.

I'm not a dedicated flower person, other than roses which grace my shabbos table in season.  The small deck boxes get zinnias and marigolds.  Maybe do different ones.  Last year the flowering was limited.  Need to enrich the soil in those areas, I think.

My garden's downfall has always been pests.  Invertebrates infest fruits, furry ones like beans.  I've never used netting, and there have been years of reasonable harvest, so I'll likely just take my chances.

And with a little luck, supplemented by an increment of diligence, my kitchen where I really like to hang out and create, will have some homegrown edibles.  

Resetting My Garden

It didn't take very long to yank out all the vines from my two backyard square foot gardens and place the ample organic segments in a plastic bag.  My 32 squares are now entirely bare, covered by pretty much the same mulch as before last spring's planting, with the tomato stakes and plastic ID labels left behind.

Ending the season comes more easily than assessing the season, both for the backyard and the front door pots, which have not yet been closed for the winter.  Both had disappointing yields.  Tomatoes had a lot of green but not a lot of reproduction.  The vines proliferated so well as to outgrow their squares, intimidate the small commercial stakes I obtained for each, and effectively function like weeds.  All this without any exogenous nutrients placed on my part.  I got a little lettuce but didn't harvest it.  Peppers and eggplants bought as starter plants from a nursery all got crowded out.  No beets.  Beans produced but got eaten by pests before harvest.  No cucumbers, something mostly reliable in past seasons.  Pumpkin planted as an afterthought did not take hold.  Effectively a dud of an effort, though also limited by a mediocre input on my part.  This year, I did not plant any herbs in the backyard, reserving it for vegetables with herbs allocated to pots outside the front door.  Basil great.  Everything else, even the spearmint, without meaningful yield.

Since I really want to have a productive source of herbs for cooking and vegetables for supplementing what I get at the supermarket, just like the celebrities of cooking shows have, some learning assessment needs to take place, with a few decision points resolved.  As attractive as a square foot pattern seems, mine never seems to do as well as the fellow on TV.  Perhaps for the next season I should return to rows.  Five tomato plants dominate the planting space.  I need to choose two, one in each bed.  Cages contain lateral growth, stakes do not, and even fall over.  Back to cages.  Cucumbers deserve another go, also with some attempt to have the vines grow vertically. So do beans.  Chard is supposed to be easy to grow, especially with a square foot design, but mine has not.  If I do lettuce again, which I may not as I am not a lettuce enthusiast, rows would be better.  My soil is too shallow for carrots, which are inexpensive from commercial sources at the supermarket.  Beets were disappointing.  If I plant them again, which I might as I like them and they are expensive at the store, they will need more attention than I provided them.

I do not have a good grasp of why my herb pots did so poorly.  Basil is basically a weed.  It should get its own pot.  My indoor basil takes over any container, including the aerogarden.  It needs to be left to itself.  The big pot can contain three herbs.  I don't know why dill did so poorly.  Parsley used to do well in a big pot shared with other things, though overgrown this year by the basil.  And while thyme and oregano spill over the margins of their pots when planted near the edges, I struggle to thin and harvest them as they grow.  Still, a portion at the edged of the big pot seems the way to go.  Some of my pots got waterlogged.  Drainage is essential.  Failure of rosemary and spearmint late in season, two plants I could previously count on, has no easy explanation.

So the gardening goes dormant for the coldest months, perhaps with some planning when too cold to venture outdoors.  Reconsideration for next spring, intent on a better outcome.

Outdoor Herbs

While some snow dominates the forecast, the sun will still run its cycles, as will the seasons.  Time to move my mind and its intents forward to warmer times when my interest in kitchen creations merges with soil and seed.  My backyard herbs have not done well except for rosemary and sage, which do not always survive the winter.  Those planted in containers right outside my front door bring me more joy, if not more taste.  Some have done better than others.  I never run out of mint, both peppermint and spearmint, though the culinary uses are limited.  Basil has done well.  It has a lot of kitchen applications, but usually requires a lot of it, especially for pesto.  My coriander and dill have been fickle, thyme leaves hard to separate from branches but useful without separation for soups.  Parsley does well, the Italian form that adds character to all sorts of things.

TV cooks always have abundant leaves right in their kitchens and windowsills.  I will aspire a notch less, what I want in the amount I need in pots outside my front door.

Getting Outdoors

Pesach came and went a little earlier in the secular calendar than most years.  With a good deal of effort, and some pacing to adapt to my advancing years, our house has returned to chametz.  With this Festival comes spring, warmer weather, snowblower away but to be extricated in late fall so its function can be restored more effectively than this winter.  My outdoor rosemary and sage seeds, planted in transplantable cups before Pesach and placed outside have not germinated but the pots froze one day when I checked on them  Restoring sage and rosemary to my backyard herb garden has not yet reached a lost caused, though growing them from seed might have.

As Chol HaMoed reached its closing days, I afforded myself a few moments in my car and at my clipboard to anticipate what spring might enable.  First, I toured Dick's Sporting Goods store.  They had bicycles, fishing gear, golf clubs, and baseball bats.  I already have fishing gear, a putter and driver, a Schwinn that still functions sixty years after receiving it as a birthday gift updated with a safety helmet.  I had been nurturing my front door pots through the winter, mostly herbs.  One broke, replaced with another and the broken earthenware further fragmented as drainage stones for the other pots.  I went out to purchase all the seeds that I need.  My backyard beds need some layering.  Appropriate bags purchased and transported by hand truck to their sites of use.

Already I have walked a few trails in two state parks.  I photographed the outdoors using techniques I learned from this winter's Great Course on photography, purchasing a tripod to enable even more.  It's been a while since I've gone to see the Blue Rocks.  If the pandemic eases to allow stadium attendance, I could add that to this spring's outdoor activities.  Even a day at one of the State Park beaches could find its way as an outdoor activity before the summer solstice brings about the next season.

Getting outside has been an annually underperformed initiative, maybe best added to my daily task list in some form.  It can be better implemented, and should be.

Optimistic New Week

Restrictions of Covavirus have taken their personal toll.  I had a brief illness with headache, insomnia, and inversion of my sleep cycle.  Mild exertional dyspnea.  No fever so not tested.  I wonder if I was hypoxemic, as this might account for symptoms.  They resolved over a few days and no contacts have become ill as far as I know.  Other than a few days recovery, the strain has been more keeping businesslike.  I get dressed daily, nearly always in the morning.  I have a purposeful list Gof weekly goals and daily tasks that I've pursued about as well as I did when I was working.  Things that are very finite with end points seem to get done, other things slide.  Exercise has become consistent as long as I feel well.  Staying upright through my wake cycle has not gone well at all.  Medscape submissions go out on time each month.  Others are more when I feel inspired to express myself, which has declined in frequency.  My financial reviews have not kept up to date.  My housework largely has, with Pesach imposing some firm deadlines.  And I still wish I got more pleasure from my efforts but I probably don't control this.

New weekly outline, composed first thing Sunday morning as I have been doing for years.  I think this will be the week that my gardens get fully planted.  I have an outline.  The right weather matters.  Maybe I'll go fishing.  And once my financial accounts are outlined, I can cross the project off.  I wanted to become proficient at understanding burnout, but the coronavirus stresses on the active medical people seems to have restored their sense of purpose and blunted some of the antagonisms that contribute to this.  And I'm a platelet donor.  And the evening timer reminds me of the nightly Omer count. 

So there are things to do, though all largely solitary.   Need to keep the end points as specific as possible.

The Week Ahead

As I begin the work week, there are no major appointments or projects or days off.  No trips to the satellite clinic.  No conferences to prepare, no evening meetings to attend or not as my hospital obligations dictate, no grandiose plans for the weekend, just activities settling back into their customary rhythms for the first time in a while.  There are always chores and there are always my six projects to work toward.

They are:

1. Begin a research project.
2. Purge my downstairs of papers so I can bring in a cleaning crew.
3. Develop a real herb garden.
4. Write my estate plan.
5. Submit three papers for publication, two Jewish and one medical.
6. Go on a day trip once a month.

This should be the type of week that allows me to pursue them.