Gardening in Winter #4 –Humble start for herbs

 

Got tempted in at the supermarket in late February and a few packets of seeds snuck in with the groceries. The guilty pleasures are: Coriander (or its doppelganger Cilantro), Cherry Belle radish, (developed in the 40s – how retro!) Grandpa Ott morning glory and Jewel nasturtiums. The nasturtiums are for the balcony – I had visions of bright orange, yellow and red flowers tumbling down from hanging baskets. The morning glory seeds might be a covert guerilla gardening project and thrown down along this ugly chain link fence 🙂 Ssh secret squirrel.

 

The culinary herbs are happening: Mint cuttings sprouting rootlets in water – it was bought at the supermarket but seems very obliging in wanting to grow. After a week rootlets formed and at 2 weeks the roots were clearly visible. I planted it with a plastic bag mini-greenhouse for a couple of weeks and then hardened it off and now it’s kicking off well. This is the common garden mint like what my mum would grow, it makes great mint sauce. To make mint sauce get a handful of mint leaves, wash and shake off the water. Chop them up and pour over 4 tablespoons of boiling water along with 1 tablespoon of sugar. When cool add 4 tablespoons of vinegar – white wine, cider or malt.  Some recipes leave out the water and use vinegar and sugar only – it all depends on your tastebuds.

Coriander seeds planted on 26th February are now sprouting. Yay! Called cilantro here in the US (although the seed is known as coriander, just the fresh leaf gets called cilantro). This time I sieved and sterilised the potting mix. It became delightfully soft and fluffy soil; if you were a seed how could you not want to germinate in something so soft? That stuff feels so nice! The sieving was tedious, the sterilising quick – 3 mins in a microwave.  By March we have shoots!

All the lettuces are slowly, slowly doing their thing. They got to about this high then I started hardening them off. By mid March they have thickened up a lot and finally are looking like lettuce seedlings.  Spring onions are also starting to come along and will need thinning soon.

 

 

Alas no chillies sprouted. I tried a different tactic – where you germinate the seeds on a damp paper towel put in a plastic bag (ziplock is ideal). Finally got 1 habanero and 3 cayenne peppers to shoot and popped them into an egg carton of seedling mix. They are bravely shooting. I started some more habaneros on a paper towel because one is inviting disaster and I need more as an insurance policy against my black thumbs. 

The first of Spring is not the first of March. Nopers, it’s not until the 21st March.  The first weeks of March though definitely show the promise of spring. There are more weeds showing in the grassy areas and some of them are flowering :p There’s also this tree everywhere in flower. The little white flowers are pretty but oh it smells bad! No sweet blossom smell – this is a fusty, old stale sweaty socks kind of smell. The tree is everywhere here – it’s a nice ball shape and when I got here in winter they had beautiful golden leaves which stayed on the branches for ages until they dropped when the weather turned really cold at Christmas.