The last few weeks, including weekends, we had real fabulous weather here in New Jersey. It was sunny and warm, but not too hot. Maybe you saw it on facebook, we got a new grill and we used it a lot. I think we barbecued every evening Friday to Sunday for the past two weeks. And we enjoyed our breakfasts on the deck, too. Which was probably part of the reason why we decided Sunday morning to finally plant herbs in pots. Not too much, we do not have a lot of space, but a few.
You know that we love to cook and whenever possible we cook with lots of fresh veggies, salads and … fresh herbs. So, we went to our local garden center, Cerbos, where we already got our indoor plants last year. It is a great place with very friendly and knowledgeable staff – you know my experienced gardener a.k.a. David can be very picky when it comes to his plants. Which I am totally o.k. with, because he is the one with the green thumb in our family, so they are his to take care of. I am the one to harvest and produce something yummy with them later. Much later.
First things first. We needed a planter and we needed plants. While we knew what we wanted, we had to see what the garden center had to offer. And we needed to get the appropriate pot to go on to the railing of our balcony. Planting soil etc. we still had enough, or so we thought. There was really only one pot, well, two, but the other one was too round and too small, so we only had to choose the color: Green, terracotta or white, which is what we got, because our deck and house are white, too. Next up the herbs. Since it is technically still spring, they had lots and lots of little seedlings of a lot of veggies if you have space enough for a whole garden. We do not, so we had to pick and choose carefully. Which, honestly, was not that difficult, because there are a few must have herbs for us: Mint (for Mojitos!!!), basil (pesto!!!), rosemary and thyme for a lot of other dishes. Hmm, come to think of it, I think I have to seriously share a few recipes with you, maybe these two first?
To plant herbs in pots is really not very difficult, but see for yourself. First off David filled a little dirt at the bottom of the pot, for added drainage you can also start off with loose stones or ceramic particles. Then add and mix it with Perlite, which will increase the permeability and basically keep the soil somewhat loose. Now the planter is ready for its new inhabitants. We decided to have the tall basil in the middle with the rosemary on one and the lemon thyme on the other side. When you take the newly bought herbs out of there plastic pots, you may want to loosen their roots, maybe brush off a little of their dirt, which will make it easier for them. Position the herbs in the pot and push them down with a little pressure, while at the same time covering all their roots with some of the new soil. After David had done this with all four herbs, we suddenly realized that we did not have enough planting soil. As you can see on the photos, there should be about an inch or so more in the pot. Which we will add within the next few days. To finish off we watered them and put them on the top of our balcony railing. Where only half a day later they got totally soaked by the rain, which we had – not – been missing for the last couple of weeks.
