Labor Day's Labors of Love

On Labor Day I planted some lemon basil seeds--some from a package and some I extracted from the dried blossoms of the lemon basil I bought at the Farmer's Market (so I may get two varieties growing.) This is the "how-to" video I used to educate myself on how to plant basil seeds. For the topsoil, I used a layer of compost made from my kitchen veggie trimmings + sawdust in my Nature Mill composter. Fast forward 2 weeks, and here is a photo of the little sprouts coming up out of the soil. My babies! Aren't they cute?

Also on Labor Day weekend, I planted some trailing herbs in hanging wall planters (trailing rosemary, oregano, and lemon thyme) and some potted herbs (chives, flat-leaf parsley, cilantro, Italian basil, "spicy" basil, and mint.) For some color interspersed with the herbs, I put a yellow Gazania in one of my wall planters and an orange Gazania along with some trailing purple verbena in another wall planter. Actually the Gazania I put in with the verbena is from three cuttings off the mother orange Gazania I planted with a red Gerber daisy. Here's the weird setup I rigged up to get the cuttings to root before hanging it on the wall in full sun:

You can learn how to take cuttings from a plant to propagate another one online. Here is everything I planted on Labor Day weekend:

The next weekend I wanted to try my hand at doing some more cuttings so I did some basil cuttings and a couple of mint cuttings. Here they are:

If you know me, you know I have to do things the *exact, exact, right, proper* way so these cuttings were planted in a mix of sterlized sand (I sterlized it myself by wetting and baking in oven at 220 degrees for 1 hr.) and soilless potting mix in a plastic planter that was sterlized with a 10% bleach solution. As is often recommended, I dipped the ends of the cuttings in rooting hormone to promote root growth before sticking them in their holes and covering them up to root. If I sound like I have acquired just enough gardening knowledge to be dangerous, we can thank Google and the internet for that!

Here's my cute-slash-expensive little cactus garden I put together about a year ago. Only $115 for all the plants and materials! When I start thinking I'm a thrifty person, reality smacks me in the face with the fact that thrifty people don't plant $115 cactus bowls. The barrel cactus only blooms once a year in late summer for a little while. A neat thing I've learned about cacti is that if you've got a chunk (big or small) that falls off the cactus for one reason or another (overwatering will cause leaves to get waterlogged and fall off), you leave it where it lies or just tuck the end into the soil a little and in about six months or so, you'll find that it's rooted and is growing itself into a new plant. Isn't that just amazing? Nature is so joyous and fascinating! You just can't keep nature down!

Here's my palm with Baby's Tears growing in the base, my polka-dot plant, and my fern. They love their lives on the porch. Thank heavens for my large, un-LosAngeles-like porch to give me some greenery and dirt in my life!

But, wait! Tune in for the next post when I talk about...COMPOST IN THE CITY!