Day 5 my sweet Kitchen Love Makers of Green Week. If you are in like flin for the Green Smoothie Cleanse, that means today you are transitioning off meat and dairy and rolling veggie style. Might I recommend the Vegetable Veggie Burgers with a side salad?
Over here at Making Love In the Kitchen Headquarters, I am done parading my Green Beaver and am now on to my Green Thumb (or lack thereof).
I have a knack for killing plants. Even spider plants, those ugly, spindly plants with yellowish green leaves… Yep. I kill’em. It’s a sore spot for me, given that it is my job to help people feel their best, you’d think I’d be able to keep a plant alive.
I like to pretend that I am on the hunt for the perfect house so I could have a great big garden full of kale, carrots, peas, beans, tomatoes, squashes, cucumbers, watermelon, cabbage patch dolls (what?), and an assortment of herbs. Of course my garden would have a huge variety of flowers of all shapes and sizes in a rainbow assortment of colours. And while we’re on the subject of rainbows, there would be one of those too. There would also be waterfalls, and streams, and little pools to cool my feet after a long day of what else but gardening of course!
I would have bird houses and the little birds would come and sit on my shoulder and sing me a song.
The birdhouse I made during one of our family art project weekends at the cottage.
Fish would swim in the pond and frogs would ribbit on the lilly pads. Over in the corner you would find my little hen house for Goldie, Frizti and Esther, my trio of pet hens. I would be shaded under the broad leaves of my sweet palm tree as I sipped the refreshing goodness straight from the coconut.
But alas, I live in Parkdale, in a building that has no yard and a warehouse style loft that left it’s balcony in the brickyard. I do have a window-ledge. That means I am limited to things that can grow on a window ledge- namely herbs and sprouts. And you better believe I’ll make the most of that ledge with herbs and sprouts.
So off to the market I went to pick up my assortment of fresh herbs: lemon balm, basil, sage, rosemary, lavender, onion, oregano, curry (yes, curry!), mint and a few others and I am going to work my hardest at keeping these sweet goodies alive. Help me please! Any tips or tricks you have to keep me from killing these plants is more than appreciated.
Thank you kindly in advance for all your words of wisdom. Some of the other people who inspire my urban gardening green thumb are Mike over at Urban Organic Gardner and Gayla (who came to one of my cooking classes last year) at You Grow Girl.
But hey… how about if we make a deal. You offer me your urban gardening tips and I’ll coach you through the best Green Smoothie Cleanse of your life?
Deal?
Deal!
Register here! And be sure to follow my twitter feed for live, day of cleanse coaching tips throughout the day!
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Great photo of your market shopping! I love reading Toronto blogs…keeps home fresh for me.
Sorry to hear that you are a bit of a killer with plants, I too have the kiss of Green Death….luckily my vegan partner in crime loves our back garden (I think the ONLY one in all of downtown Brussels) and keeps us fat with lettuce and other goodly bits.
Enjoy your green smoothie week – I plan on going for some green smoothie action in about 3 weeks…as soon as I get this baby-vegan out of me!
Please give Toronto a hug for me – I am missing her like crazy right now.
Beautiful bird house you made! You should sell them! I would buy one!
I use to be a plant killer, but for some reason my garden is thriving (I think it’s my husband with the green thumb!).
VERY excited to see the picture of you at my favourite Kensington fruit/veggie/herb stand. All of those neat little containers of seemingly thriving herbs also inspired me to start a window ledge herb garden, despite my own record of herbicide.
So far, my oregano and Italian parsley are thriving, but my basil is not thriving like I thought it might. I think it needs much more sunlight than my poor little porch can give it.
In terms of tips, I know to trim leaves and stems that are yellowing or not doing so well and to water in the evenings (if needed). Also, window boxes (or other containers) need to have drainage holes.
You’re ON
i LOVE gardening and after many sad years of no space for to grow nare a bean…. I finally have an AWESOME yard and an interactive garden for da bubs. (baby)
I’ll think of some basic tips… and you’re ON…. my smoothies aren’t going so great…..see blog for details!
some day you’ll have that dream garden
I do.. (mine has lizzards, not frogs though)
Happy Thursday!
ROTFLMAO at your chickens!! Goldie will, of course, manage the flock, Fritzi will be prettiest and most vain, and Esther will think she is the favorite.
I am so glad to see you are giving it a try. I will admit to not always having had a green thumb, but I started with herbs, and now have graduated to pots and pots of stuff on my tiny (5′x8′) back porch!
I can remember… your great grandmother was a gardener… there was a veggie garden between the two garages, and I loved picking fresh peas there. So fear not!! Gardening can be said to actually in our genes! Too many years of freezer eating may have diluted it, but at least there’s a couple of us giving it a try!.
Cute!! Looks great… I empathize with the kiss of green death, too (my green onions are already half-dead and I just got them last weekend). The sad reality is, we live in Canada, so we’ve got a couple solid months of sun and warmth, but otherwise things can get cold and shady and wet, which sucks for plants. Oh well… hey, maybe my blueberry bush can hang out with your lavender bush — that would taste good, I think. Oh wait, that also sounded kinda bad.
You just haven’t found the right plants yet for your space ! I have been very successful , moderately successful and unsuccessful at different times and in different houses. I was very green fingered with house plants in my first terrace house (with no garden). My tomatoes and chrysanthemums, amongst others were really healthy and happy. Then I moved houses, and was very successful with most things, but my pots of vegetables would always die when we went away for our two week vacation in August. ( No surprises that the heat and no water killed them off. It was a lifestyle clash. ) We then moved again further north and I seemed to kill everything but weeds till I found plants that liked my north facing house. Now I’m learning again and have great success outside and am learning which indoor plants do best. My orchids go from strength to strength, but everything else sulks, sickens or withers. It’s all trial and error. Just keep the enthusiasm and you’ll figure out which plants love the conditions you can provide. It’s not you !! It’s geography ! Look at what great healthy sprouts you grow ! Have you tried sunflower shoots and peashoots. They are my new revelation. A little compost in a seed tray ( or find a decorative planter or container. I recently saw someone growing pot plants in a copper pan – gravel in the bottom to stand the pots on – that looked fantastic !!), soaked seeds scattered over – sprout in a jar first to get them going if you like – and let them grow 2 leaves ( or more ) and you have microgreens ! ( You probably already do this, but I’m just so excited about this discovery I made only in the last month or so that I’m passing it on anyway .) Have you grown wheatgrass ? It’s the same principle. And wheatgrass looks really pretty as a houseplant. Decorative and nutritious !
I think the thing that makes the biggest difference to my houseplants is the lighting. Are your windows North or South facing ? The aspect seems important. I seem to have favoured plants that like sun. Fine in my South facing terrace, but not good when I moved and the windows were north facing. And I have plants which do really well on my windowsill till the winds start howling and the draughts kill them. As I say, it’s not you. It’s the growing conditions , but there’s a world of plants out there and you’ll find ones that are happy living in your space. Just keep trying !! Good luck !
Okay!
Even though space is tight, try not to cramp the poor darling on the ledge. From what I’ve heard most people struggle with basil, it is quite the finicky little princess, but considering you aren’t buying seedlings I think you should be a-okay.
Especially when it comes to basil, and the sage as well, pruning will be your best friend, or else you won’t walk away with multiple harvests (are you even allowed to say harvest when it comes to herbs?). In terms of the basil I have found that it is very important to prune the stem/offshoot as supposed to just plucking off the dying/dead leaf.
Depending on the weather you may want to start some of these darlings inside, I’ve never grown curry or mint or lemonbalm before.
Do not over-water the herbs!!
Get to know your ledge, what are the conditions like? Maybe you need switch herbs and find one that is better suited to that environment.
I’ve also found it to be quite helpful to insert support beams beside plants (if you are stuck with little room, and smaller pots that is).
Soil is key, more often than not you should always transplant your purchased plants into fresh, superhero soil.
And of course, last but not least, talk to your plants.
Wow! Thank you for all your tips. I now know that when all my plants die, I can blame my drainless pots, Easten view that is shaded by the building across the street, watering in the morning instead of the evening, planting too close together, and choosing the wrong plants. Not my fault at all. I actually may be the best gardener out there, just a victim of location
I love you ladies.
I will def prune regularly (that’s why I got them after all- to harvest) and I think I like the youtube comment I received this morning the best- to give them love and sing to them. That I can do for sure!
Mariposagirl- Please send me your URL again, your name didn’t link.
gettinggreen- you know our bushes would get along great. I want blueberry lavender breadless bread.
Jill/Taryn, thanks for the novella of tips. Priceless!
And for those of you who may be wondering what Elain is talking about- she is my great greatest second cousin (my dad’s first cousin so I am not really sure what that makes her to me). My grandma’s name is Fritzi and she had two sisters, Goldie who was Elain’s mom and Ester. I am naming my hens after my grandma and her sisters because they were seriously like a little flock of hens when they got together.
Most herbs are from Mediterranean countries and like hot sun and little water. They even like it rough (not much fertilizer and cut cut cut) and even some sand in their soil. I have clay soil so most of my herbs (sage, thyme, rosemary) don’t overwinter outside in the ground here in ky, though my lavender survives. Mints will survive just about anything.
yeah, i am not sure why that happened???
sometimes computers confuse me so.
glad you are getting such good gardening advice… I was gonna say play rock music or something!
HA
After several years of not-quite-dead but not exactly thriving plants, my daughter and I are growing a big flower, veg, and herb container garden on our balcony this year, and it’s doing GREAT. My suggestions: use decent potting soil, get some organic fertilizer (we use Jobe’s organic fertilizer which comes in little sticks that you poke into the soil), and water a lot. More than you’d think maybe – usually a little every day unless it’s been raining a lot. (I keep a pitcher near the sink so I can “recycle” water – any water left in drinking glasses or relatively clean water left from rinsing dishes, stuff you’d usually just pour down the sink – some people keep a bucket in the shower to catch the water while it’s warming up!) Our balcony gets a lot of sun so we go with sun-loving plants, but they need a lot of water because they get hot – I read, as I was researching this year, that you should never let the soil dry out completely for container plants, and that bit of advice seems to have made a difference. We are also going to try getting some “compost tea” at the farmer’s market to boost the fertilizer power – the fertilizer is key, I think, for potted plants which don’t have worms helping them out. Once your plants are established you’ll need to pinch or prune them a little – you can find that info for your specific plants online.
Oh and another good piece of advice I received: plants want to grow. So unless they’re hindered in some way, they’ll usually find a way!
Good luck! We love our little urban garden, it’s always beautiful and fascinating.
That bird house is so cute!!! I never even thought about growing a curry plant, cool!
And as far as the lavender goes, I’m thinking Lavender Lemonade! I had some at a seminar I went to, but of course, the person wouldn’t relinquish their recipe.
I’ve looked online a bit, but they are all so heavy on the refined sugar.
You are so welcome Meghan, I just wish I had watched the video first and realized that you are growing everything inside! D’oh!
You are going to looooooove being able to just shear off whatever herb you need on a whim!
re cousinage: Since your dad is my first cousin, I am your second cousin, once removed…. took me ages to figure that out… and you are ‘my cousin’s kid’
Good work girl. Liking it. The kind of herbs that are out there is overwhelming – chocolate mint, lemon basil, pineapple sage…
Good luck with it and can’t wait to see it grow.
Grab a copy of “Don’t throw it, grow it” – you’ll be amazed at what you can grow indoors!
http://gustoso.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/dont-throw-it/
Gustoso- Thanks for the tip. I AM going to pick that up! Adding it to my ever growing book list. Hope you are doing well!