Portable Pot of Cooking Herbs

I love snipping fresh herbs from the garden for cooking, but now that we've made the move to town home living ~ I needed to plant a patio version of my herb garden this Spring. What better vessel than an old cooking pot!
I placed a layer of garden rocks in the bottom of the pot for drainage, then added potting soil. I carefully removed the plants from their plastic nursery pots by turning them upside down, then placed each plant in around the big soup pot.
Our local Ace Hardware carries small herb plants, the perfect size for creating a sampler of 6 plants. Some grocery stores also carry herb plants in their produce section, or you can find some at home improvement stores which carry garden plants.
I added some soil around the plants, just enough to cover evenly, then sprinkled some water over the pot of plants & placed in a partly sunny section of our patio. Since I'm always misplacing scissors, I tied a pair onto the handle with some twine ~ for snipping clippings!
As a final touch, I gathered some old mismatched spoons & dipped the ends in craft-store chalkboard paint ~ to use as changeable plant markers. Chalk ink markers come in different colors & provide longer lasting writing, but plain ol' chalk works too. I found my chalk markers at Michael's Arts & Crafts, and also have a few which came with chalkboard coffee mugs from Starbucks.  redshedvintage.com© copyright 2014

 

Spring Gardening ~ Breaking Out The Jadeite Thumb

My green thumb would probably be more of a pale shade of Jadeite, as I tend to kill more plants than I grow! I have had some luck with basic cooking herbs though ~ some in the kitchen window, and some in the (literal) bed of herbs I planted in the back yard a couple of years ago.

I plan on adding more lavender and a few other herbs to the bed of herbs this year ~ wherever the spearmint & peppermint haven't already taken over. Last year I was able to dry so many different types of herbs from my own garden, and even made my own goat's milk & lavender soap with some of the dried herbs. Seeing the fruits of my (not-so-laborious) labor is a great motivator to keep up with 'making the bed' outdoors.

I'm also trying my thumb @ growing my own tobacco (for decorative purposes, not for smokin') and already have some tobacco seedlings sprouting in a vintage glass trinket box turned mini-greenhouse...

We also gather dozens of Florida lemons & ruby red grapefruit from our 3 trees ~ some for squeezing & freezing the juice, and some for slicing & drying to make holiday potpourri and garlands in December.

Dried grapefruit slices + needle & dmc floss = rustic garland!

I'll also update the portable faerie garden plot in the next few weeks, as some plants have grown too big for fairies!

And last but by all means not least, I'll add some stakes for the 'I Love You Bean' beans which I got for Christmas ~ the plants have actually kept right on growing outside, in spite of my not-so-green thumb!