Basil... It's the one herb that I have grown successfully on the windowsill of the window by the kitchen every spring/summer. On one of the years I also tried cilantro, thyme, chives, parsley, dill, and marjoram to not so great success. One time I tried growing sunflowers. The seeds sprouted, but then I didn't know how to grow them in pots so they all died.
This year, end of March 2009 or so, I planted the basil seeds, Sweet Basil. On one pot I put 5 seeds and 4 sprouted and are growing. On a second pot I put 3 seeds and 2 sprouted and are growing.
Eggplant... Now sometime in 2008 I decided I would try to grow my first vegetable. I think it was June or July but I forget, it could have been the end of the 2008 year too or the beginning of 2009. Since I rent a house I decided it I would need to grow in a pot, in the event I needed to move I could take my plant with me.
So I purchased a big pot and potting soil and planted one seed in the middle of the pot. The vegetable I chose was Eggplant. The seed packet itself says Eggplant, Black Beauty. I figured if from one seed a plant sprouted then great, and if it did not then no big deal since I really would not know how to care for the plant and I may end up killing it. If my plants are outside I forget about them and then they die from not watering them. This happened to me with a flower plant I won at work in October 2008. Hmmm... I think I may have planted the Eggplant seed sometime after October 2008, since I realized that flower plant was dead when I went outside to plant the eggplant seed, oh well.
Anyways, the eggplant seed sprouted and started growing. It had tons of flowers. I read somewhere online to not over water the eggplant, so I made it a point to not water it. I would water it just at the end of each week or less. Then almost all of the flowers were gone and no eggplants were growing.
So maybe I should have watered it more often just without over watering it. The plant itself was still growing, so I started watering it more often just not drenching it. Sort of just enough so that it would have water to drink but not so much that it wouldn't be thirsty the next time I added water. Don't know if that makes sense, but whatever. About one to two weeks later it had new flowers, not as many as before, however this time one of the flowers turned into a tiiny little eggplant. Oh how exciting. Then about a week later 2 more eggplants started growing. So I have 3 tiny eggplants growing as of a couple of weeks ago. Now I'm just trying to not over or under water it. I also think there may be some kind of bug that is eating some of the leaves. I'll need to address that. On a website somewhere I read of a natural pest deterrent that calls to mix 1 teaspoon of dishwashing liquid and 1 cup vegetable oil, then combine 2 teaspoons of that mixture and 1 cup of water. I also later learned that I could use a cage to encourage the plant to grow since I have it on a pot. So I did that last weekend, watered it, hopefully not too much. I checked and watered it yesterday and it looks like is adapting quickly to the cage and there are new flowers. So maybe that means more eggplants. That would just be awesome!!!
Tomatoes... A friend from work who says she has never had a green thumb decided to give growing her vegetable garden in her backyard. She planted all sorts of vegetables including zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant, snap peas, and others that I can't remember right now. She chose to grow her vegetable garden from seeds. When she purchased the seeds she was told that 1 out of every 5 tomatoe seeds grow. So she put multiple seeds in each container she had. My multiple I mean tons. A couple weeks later she said that it looked like all of the seeds were growing and now had too many plants, so she asked me if I wanted a tomatoe plant. I said sure. So she gave me on of her containers that had a cluster of tomatoe plants growing. I separated them last weekend. So 33 was the total of tomatoe plants that were in the cluster. I read somewhere online after transaplanting them that tomatoe plants should be tranplanted when they are a certain size. Makes sense since the ones that were super tinny are dead now. I still have though about 18 plants. They are all separated. Now, I had gotten just 2 large pots in which I put 2 plants each. I also put a tomatoe cage in each. The other plants are in small pots. Now that I know that they need to be bigger before transplanting them.I'm goign to hold off transplanting the remaining ones until then. The tomatoes are the beefsteak kind.
Zucchini... I have 2 zucchini plants too from my work friend who also planted too many zucchini plants. These are individually separated. They are already a good size to transplant, so all I need now is to go get 2 big pots and some trellis like cages for these. I hope they grow good.
House plant... So aside from the houseplant that I have always had(that viney like one that just about everyone has), I got so excited having vegetables growing that I also got an indoor plant. It is a palm like looking plant. Don't know what kind since it had no name at the store(Lowe's) that I bought it from.
I am so excited. If all goes good I should be harvesting my own eggplants, tomatoes, and zucchini aside from my usual basil. I van't wait.
