The Humorous Herb Garden (a fun idea)

The day I decided to start my herb garden I found a box of children's plastic yard, garden, or beach toys next to the recycle bin. I looked at them and decided that it would be fun to use the toys as ‘pots’ for growing my plants. So I took them back to the apartment and made holes in the bottom of them for water drainage like a proper planting pot.

I originally bought 2 pots and a rectangle planter with a bag of organic potting soil.  But now I have a wheelbarrow, a ship, a bucket, and a small plastic garden watering toy.

To make a long story short I planted mint in the ship by itself because supposedly I got to watch out for that thing going wild.  The rosemary has the same problem, growing out of control.  But I decided to plant it with garlic chives and Italian flat-leaf parsley in the wheelbarrow.  And in my rectangle planter, I have (from left to right) basil, cilantro, lemon thyme, and Greek oregano.  Now according to the ‘instructions/direction’ of the herb plant cards they all like direct sunlight.

Remember me saying I don’t particularly have a ‘green thumb’? At all? Yeah, so now the sun has been literally cooking some of my herbs in the pot, and no, that's not a food cooking pot. Although there has got to be all kinds of puns in that last sentence. I didn’t want to show the updated pictures till I have more time to redeem my plants so the pictures on this page are when I first got everything started. It now looks like my mint, cilantro, and half of the lemon thyme was cooked till the herbs dried out or got crispy on the vine!

And remember the BLT contest due by the end of August 28th? The other two pots that I started my heirloom tomatoes and lettuce in…haven’t seen them yet.  It's not looking good for me to be a contestant in the competition, but we’ll see what happens.  I have a few more tricks up my sleeve.

Once again, Green Thumb FAIL! 

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Basil Overload!

Here on my site and on Facebook, I posted my findings from my first 'Farm Fresh to You' home delivery organic food box.  Which was noted as having at least ten bunches of Basil in it!

Well of course even I couldn't use that much without getting sick of it!  So I cut the stems off and processed all the basil down with Extra Virgin Olive Oil and a few heads of garlic.  Then I scooped the mixture into a Ziploc bag and cut the corner off.  I piped the whole bag into two ice cube trays and put them in the freezer for future use!

I would have made pesto but I don't like what the freezer does to cheese (Parmesan) and nuts (pine nuts, or in my case I like to use roasted sunflower kernels, their cheaper too!) which are both ingredients of pesto.

Later when you want to cook something with a little garlic and basil 'zip' you just throw in a cube or two while cooking or sauteing.  They also use this ice cube trick with stock (chicken, beef, pork...) too, so if you are only cooking in small amounts you can throw a few frozen 'stock' cubes into the pan or food to meltdown and help the flavor.

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