Admittedly, the plants are looking a bit shabby right now, but they should perk up after a few days of getting used to the new environment.
I'd been meaning to start an herb garden all year, but sometimes life gets the best of you. Even though I wanted to work on it, I had no idea as to how I was going to pot and organize the sprouts. I finally gathered the creative motivation to figure it out.
I originally wanted to try and make my own but then I found these lovely drawers in my shed, and I loved the color of them, but they were a bit warped and termite bitten. To keep them from rotting away from the soils and water, I needed to spray them with waterproof paint. I would have liked to use a clear coat but, I only had black and navy blue. So, I decided to improvise to create something a little more... rustic.
A good friend of mine actually sent me these seeds, telling me to get a move on I suppose haha. I was lucky enough to find this miniature "greenhouse" on sale at Home Depot. It normally sells for about 8 dollars but if you're lucky you should be able to find it for about 3-4 dollars. I have to admit it's one of the cleanest and most effective ways to start seeds I've tried so far.
This is the growth after several weeks. The greenhouse kits come with little marker sticks for you to use! There are a lot of ways to start your seeds, a few of the more expensive ways are shown below. Of course, you can always start your seeds in something as simple as a wet paper towel or simply the soil. The latter being a bit harder for me to deal with because I like seeing progress.
However, with both of these ways to start the seeds, you'll need to put the seedlings through a hardening period after they've sprouted their first true leaves. By true, I mean specialized. Almost all plants grow out with Cotyledons, which are the embryonic leaves with no real distinction from one plant to another. The next leaves to grow out after the first set should be the true leaves and will probably look different.
I spray painted the bottoms of the drawers pretty much point blank and let the paint drip down. On the left, I wet the wood and then sprayed the drawer so that the paint spread and webbed out a little more. On the right I sprayed the wood while it was completely dry. The patterns turned out looking sort of like the slightly eerie silhouettes of a landscape against a sunset.
I filled the drawers with about 1/3 rocky topsoil, 1/3 potting soil, and 1/3 peat from the peat pods from the greenhouse.
Ideadly you would also have some sort of compost and perlite, but since I didn't have either, I just made sure I used more rocks from the top soil and I mixed in a few bits of decaying cut grass.
We actually left our topsoil outside for a period of time so that a few earthworms had found their way into the soil, fertilizing it. I found a couple of them wriggling around when I was digging through.
I know a lot of people trying to create their own creative/functional herb gardens. While this isn't really a perfect way to do it, it might help show that their isn't any one way to do it. And that sometimes the best things to use are the things you already have laying around, like those drawers. (Just make sure you have enough drainage!)
- 10:37:00 PM
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