The Plant Cottage AKA Talking to your Herbs

Have you ever just looked at an herb and you start giggling and laughing. This herb can do that to you. One look and you can't help but laugh and giggle. Touch it and the laughter intensifies, then you start feeling the love. It opens its "heart" to you and the love is overwhelming. It just "smiles" and lets you know it will be good in the food you prepare. It really doesn't have to say anything. It just is.

You may read about them just below.

Baby onion on the left and baby garlic (#1, #2, #3, & #4) on the right.

Garlic on the left. Garlic and onion under the living room window on the right. The onion is the second little plant from the left.

Posted February 26, 2011

It's been about 4 -5 weeks now. My housemate pulled out a culture from the refrigerator and it had these "thingies" growing from it. I figured they were roots to something. Asked her not to throw it away...I'll plant it. After about a week, I got tired of looking at it on the table. I looked at it took it apart...oh yes, it used to be a garlic bulb. I decided to go ahead and plant the cloves. It wouldn't hurt to plant a couple of them...after all there was an empty pot with dirt in it left over from my tomato adventure last year. I investigated a bit on the internet to know how deep and how far apart to plant garlic. I took 2 cloves out and pushed them into the dirt in the pot.

A few days later I saw they were growing and I put 2 more cloves in the pot. A day or 2 later when I came home from work, #3 & #4 had popped out of the dirt about a half inch or so. The next morning 3 & 4 were about 2 & 3 inches out of the ground. My eyes got big and I didn't know garlic grew so fast in Florida. Mean while #1 & #2 were getting bigger and bigger at about 6 - 7 inches. After work I put the other 4 cloves I had in the ground by the living room window, marked the spot with twigs and watered. These under the window did not have sprouts on them like the first 4 did. They took about 4 - 5 days for 5 & 6 to break through the ground. When I saw this I wondered if the other 2 would make it. Sure enough about 4 - 5 days later #7 & #8 popped up out of the ground. All this time I'm watching the ones in the pot develop more and more leaves. I started theorizing that maybe the number of leaves that grow indicate the number of cloves in the bulb. I guess I have to wait a bit more to report on this.

During all of this my housemate discovered another different culture in the refrigerator. White thingies (remember that's the roots) growing again. This time we identified it as an onion. Asked my housemate, once again, not to throw it out. I removed the rotten layers of onion, divided it in half (it looked like there were 2 sets of roots growing so I decided to split it into 2 (hopefully) onions. Inside the rotten layers, to my surprise, there was a shape like a spring onion. This culture had a big sweet onion. I decided it wasn't a spring onion and planted it. One went into a pot by itself and the other went into the ground beside #'s 5, 6, 7, & 8 garlic plants under the living room window.

If the length of the leaves is any indication of the size of the bulbs of garlic, then the ones in the pots will be huge. If the number of leaves on the garlic indicate the size of the garlic, then the ones under the window will be huge. I can't tell yet which it true. I guess I'll know when I dig them up. I'll have to wait and see with the onions too.

What is fascinating to me with all of this is I have been accused of being able to kill artificial flowers...that's when the dust is 2 inches thick rather than 1 inch thick. And only twice in my life have I attempted growing any kind of edible material. Once in high school my step-father did most of the hard work and I was away at camp. The other time was carrots in rocky soil...they were funny looking carrots, about 3 inches long with a diameter of about 3 -4 inches. They had to grow out rather than down because of the rocks I didn't move out of the way.

Well, I'll keep you posted on this...gotta go for now. Love you all.

There must be a season for oregano. When I went to purchase an oregano plant there were only a few and they didn't look too healthy. I stood there for awhile trying to decide (using logic) if I should get one or wait. Then one of the plants got my attention.

The plant wanted to come home with me. Of course my logical side (the whole time I was standing there) tried to debate this with my spiritual creative side. Funny thing happened. The plant said take me with you. I grabbed the plant and put it in my cart.

When I got it home I REALLY saw how bad it was when I transplanted it to a bigger pot. Half the leaves were dead along with half or a bit more of the root structure. I knew I'd have to send it allot of Unconditional Love. I did this for about a month. Of course, I've done this with all my herbs, but this one I took a bit more time with.

After about a month more of this, I sat down with the oregano and asked it what it wanted to share with me. "I'm going to be the biggest plant in the garden". Up went my eyebrows and down with my mouth. I was in instant shock. I could just manage, "Oh, okay."

I trusted what I received (it wouldn't hurt, that's for sure.) and why not. Practice, Practice, Practice.

One day when I came home from work, I really took a good look at Essy. "She" was bigger than all the other herbs in the garden. Not taller but she did fill the whole pot, was bigger than and had longer stems than the other plants I had that grow close to the ground. (remember when I transplanted to a bigger pot...it hardly took up a quarter of the space.)