Hello friends! Kristen here with an herb pot I successfully planted this past weekend using the Little Bytes tutorial we posted last week. This winter has been terribly cold and really long here in Chicago. I’ve heard that our spring is something like two weeks late. After a week of waking up to fresh snow we are so ready for spring to get here. Last night we had our first thunder storm of the season so I’m taking that as a sign that the end of winter is here.
We live in an apartment with a shared back yard and we love to cook. Buying fresh herbs can get expensive so planting our own herb container was high on our priority list of things to grow this year. When we started talking about planting an herb garden I went to buy supplies and the garden centers had NOTHING. The small amount of potting soil and compost they did have was still encased in ice and snow and completely frozen to the core. It took two of us to get the bags I needed out of the pile. I let the bags of soil and compost thaw out in the basement until I was ready to use it.
For comparison sake Jen and I have the same containers and plants. Since I am a little early in our season I just couldn’t find any plants at my local nurseries so, Jen and Mom sent me some plants to play with. When they got here they were a little sad but, not to worry, once they were nestled in their new soil they perked up and are just fine now. Before I started to plant I got all of my supplies together.
I noticed that I was lacking some important gardening implements… Like a small shovel or spade and gardening gloves. I made due with a large kitchen spoon this time around but I will be getting some tools before next go round.
It looks like Jen had a hard time pushing the drainage holes through on her pots using bigger tools. Knowing that, I tried to sneak up on it and used a pair of scissors first. Perfect!
The tutorial calls for a filler of some sort. So, I “shopped the house” to see what I could find. I found the box from our Kureg machine on the porch that was recently freed from the snow and found some Styrofoam pieces inside that would work. I needed to break the larger pieces into pieces that would fit all the way to the bottom of my container so I scored the pieces with my scissors and then broke them over my knee like you would a stick. Some of them I just jumped on and that worked too. Because my filler pieces were so big I didn’t feel like I needed to place additional drainage helpers over the holes.
Planting went quick and easy. I tucked the plant tags along the perimeter of the container as close to the plant as possible. I’ve got very few extra brain cells available to remember plant names so having the tags close to hand is a must.
Though it was sunny the day I planted, the temp was only about 35. So, these lovelies get to hang out inside until the threat of freezing is over. I think they will get to go outside this week sometime. It’s been so nice to have a bit of green inside I may be in the market for additional indoor plants. I’m thinking some succulents or something like that. My mom has a wonderful collection of succulents that I just love every time I visit. I may steal that idea.
So, did you plant an herb pot this weekend too? Send us a picture! You can share it on our FaceBook page, tweet it to us on Twitter or email us at info[at]plantswomandesign[dot]com. We would love to see what you came up with!
