I'm back.

I haven't updated this blog in a while. I've meant to plenty of times; I even took the camera around and took pictures for a few intended entries, but they never happened. I think a good pick up would be to revisit the plants that I've been growing! A plant by plant update is in order... (Pictures are a couple weeks old)

[Cilantro/Coriander]: dead. The transplant put the plant into shock, it bolted, and I got some seeds out of it. Moral of the story: don't transplant cilantro. I guess it's good to start out with the failures first; they make the successes seem that much more glorious.

[Basil]: is doing great! I let one of the plants bolt (along with the oregano) just to see how I can deal with it, but the other I've been keeping from flowering (as much as it tries). I'm going to make some pesto with it soon -- but not too soon, my mother just brought me a jar of her own homemade pesto. It'll last me a while.

[Tomatoes]: After some tomatoes started to grow, the plant was ravaged by a hornworm. I finally managed to catch the guy in action and promptly removed him, but the plant was weak. I noticed this morning, however, that since I've been watering it profusely and feeding it, it's starting to recover! I've got two almost-ready roma's on the vine and two more still green. (The ones visible in the picture are the ones still green. Go figure.)

[Bell Pepper]: The pot that I used to plant this in must have contained some type of pathogen because my bell pepper got the worse case of leaf-curl that I've ever seen. All of the leaves curled up into little spikes and the plant just stopped producing new growth. Moral of this story: sanitize/sterilize all used pots before reuse. Fortunately, the farmers market has a lot of bell peppers that are relatively inexpensive.

I've also added a couple new plants to my collection! After going to the farmers market a few times and seeing the many herbs, I just had to buy some rosemary. And to add to the fun, I also purchased some silver-edged thyme. Both have been transplanted into some large pots and are doing well.

Starting the hydroponic system back up in the fall seems like a certainty. I've got a little tomato (from a seed saved from a tomato from the farmers market [can you tell I love that place?]) growing which I'm going to transplant as soon as I get the system up and running. I just need to figure out what else I'm going to grow in it! I'm definitely open to suggestions!

So many exciting things are happening right now, but I'll save some of those for later posts.