What the Hell Happened to My Basil?

One member of my household, who shall remain nameless, is a pesto nazi--nothing but fresh and homemade will do, and if we don't have it at least three times a month he feels hideously neglected.  In the winter, our basil bills add up, so I came up with the brilliant plan of getting a light shelf and keeping my plants going indoors.  From a distance it looks maybe ok, but up close you can see it's a total disaster.

In an effort to maximize my success, I brought one healthy (or seemingly healthy) plant indoors in early fall, took cuttings from two other healthy-seeming plants, and sowed some seeds.

I'm getting nowhere.  It's partly my fault.  My seeds sprouted, but I got busy at work and they dried up, no doubt screaming in pain.  My cuttings are just languishing, and my formerly healthy plant is has about three green leaves at any given time.

I think it may have something to do with the temperature indoors, which peaks at 67, and goes down to 57 at night.  I put a heat mat under my plants but I don't think it provides enough warmth.  I may have to try putting some plastic around my shelves, to try to create a slightly warmer microclimate that suits basil a bit better.

Garden Envy

We went to visit friends in Milwaukee and I was really impressed with this espaliered persimmon tree.  It's a beautiful addition to a garage wall, and might even produce something edible one day.  Like all other gardeners, L. couldn't accept a compliment, and told us all about crappy this is, since it was her first attempt to espalier something.  Apparently, if you use the candelabra shape you shouldn't have a thick central leader, and there are a few bumps where she left the pruning a bit too late.  However, since I'm not a card-carrying member of the espalier-nazis, a notorious organization whose mission is to provide devastating critiques of innocent gardeners' attempts to train trees into attractive and space-saving shapes, I thought it looked very nice.  I'm tempted to try this on the shittiest part of my yard, although I'm not sure it gets enough sun for a fruit tree.

I'm also really jealous of L.'s bamboo.

I want to get one, but bamboo plants are pretty expensive and I'm afraid it will die.  Milwaukee is just a bit more temperate than Madison.  There are a few varieties that supposedly will survive our winters, such as Rubro and Nuda, but I have my doubts (some sellers list them for zone 6, making me skeptical of other sellers who optimistically claim they'll make it in zone 5).  Rubro and Nuda are also spreading rather than clumping--my preference is for a clumping bamboo.  I really hate to plant anything that can be described as an aggressive spreader.  That so often ends in disaster.

So, to recap, I can't plant bamboo because I'm afraid it will either take over my block or freeze to death.

Conventional Wisdom and Potting Soil

My in-laws were visiting from India last summer and watched in amusement as I emptied bag after bag of potting soil into my various containers.  In America, someone said, even the dirt comes in a plastic bag.  I don't think it was a compliment.

However, it did make me think.  It's Gardening 101 that you must use a good container mix for pots for root growth and development, but maybe next year I'll experiment and see what happens if I fill a few containers with regular garden soil and a little compost.  Will it really be an unmitigated disaster?  Have we sold our souls to the potting mix cartels?  I have to say though that I bought really cheap potting soil once and it was really dense and awful and everything I planted in it just languished.  Maybe I'll just see if I can buy potting soil in compostable bags.

Institutional Landscaping of the Damned, A Continuing Series (Part 2)

I suppose I should give them points for trying, but these are just about the most depressing containers I've ever seen.  I'm not crazy about red geraniums (people have this dreadful tendency to combine them patriotically with those bluish and white petunias around the 4th of July), but this is awful.  It's hard to even blame the smokers for tossing their butts on the ground here.  It hardly affects the aesthetic at all.

It's so tempting to liberate these planters in the dead of night to prevent another atrocity in the spring--plus, those half barrels are really pricy and would look so much nicer in my garden!

Breaking News: Brussels Sprouts Not a Total Disaster

So, I've harvested two batches of sprouts.  The first batch I roasted in the oven with just olive oil, salt, and pepper, and they came out quite well.

Yesterday--yes, I actually harvested something from the garden on Thanksgiving, it was quite satisfying--I added garlic and a handful of grapes, which were supposed to break down and help caramelize the sprouts.  It didn't totally work; I think you have to halve the grapes, and the sprouts got a bit overdone because I was also making gravy and blanching broccoli, and I really am incapable of doing more than one thing at a time.  However, I think there's potential here.  Next year I might plant a few more seedlings so that we can have Brussels Sprouts more than twice, although they take up a lot of room for a pretty small yield.  Maybe I need to stake them as they grow also--my sprouts were all twisted and hunchbacked, which they never are in the store.

Summer's Last Gasp

The nice thing about annuals is they seem to hang on a lot longer than any other flowers or foliage.  My hostas are already melting into yellowy decayed nothingness, but the begonias still look pretty good actually:

And one final shot of this season's marigolds:

I've always kind of felt like annuals are cheating, from a gardening point of view--somebody else starts them and gets them flowering and you just come along and chuck them in the ground and water them for a few weeks.  It's like horticultural plagiarism.  Even if you start your own annual seeds, it's not the same as perennials that you nurture for years and years.

However, I think I'm going to do more with annuals next year because they really provide a ton of great color and structure in the garden and last a lot longer than periennials.

What the Hell Happened to My Brussels Sprouts?

They still look too small to harvest.  WTF?  I'm ready to hibernate and I've still got unripe shit in the garden to deal with.

Ok, well, obviously, I should have consulted some experts before panicking.  First, according to Growing Great Vegetables in the Heartland, Brussels Sprouts taste a lot better after a few frosts.  Second, the book recommends snapping off the tops when autumn starts, to encourage the plants to put their energy into the sprouts rather than into growing ever taller.  All right, they've got maybe another week or two to get their act together.  Then, off with their heads!

The Under-Blogger Hard At Work

As useless as she is at helping in the garden, she's even more useless when it comes to churning out new posts.  In fact, she thinks my laptop is actually a heated cat bed.

Raptured While Raking?

On my way home from work the other day, I noticed that one of my neighbors had apparently been zapped up to the mothership or something, right in the middle of raking. The next day, it was still there!

Naturally, the more logical explanation is that they simply forgot, but these particular neighbors have a very small, very immaculate yard (I don't know them, but I kind of hate them), and it's just not like them to leave a rake lying about.  I think the rapture finally happened, and hardly anyone noticed.

Suck It, May

Check out my November flowers!

I love these hardy chrysanthemums, even though they do have an unfortunate tendency to flop over.