24 January 2010

indoor herbs


Snow. Rain. Cold. A few days warm enough I cleaned out some of the garden, cutting down dead, frozen Broccoli and Cabbage plants that I neglected to compost in fall. Found that the few Cauliflower plants had made small, yellow heads under the top curled leaves. They didn't look good, though. Also emptied the first indoor compost bucket onto the pile, even though it will just sit until spring. That's going better than last winter- I keep a garbage bag of dry fall leaves in the mudroom and put layers of it between each days' compost material. It doesn't smell nearly as bad as before, and breaks down quicker; when I dumped the first bucket onto pile after second one was full, it looked mostly like part-done compost, not like nasty slimy trash.

Indoors, the Basil in pots have died. Only recently. I don't know if it was the cold- they're in an unheated room- or an insect got into it? The ones in living room windowsill are doing fine, one is flourishing. I stuck some of the saved Cilantro seeds into the soil and now have a small spray of herb growing beneath the basil.

03 January 2010

winter

Everything's cold and frozen. The small Lettuces still look alive, but I haven't tried to pick any. We still have Green Beans in the freezer, Garlic and red Onion hanging from the ceiling (used regularly) and the other day I broke open one of my seed packets to use seed of Cilantro plant as Cardamon seasoning. The spring garden catalogs have begun to arrive already, daughter and I enjoy going through and circling all the best-looking flowers and veggie varieties, although I know we'll only end up getting a fraction of them.