Herb garden

fun text outline stuff first seen here

I've tried a million times over the past few years to keep plants alive. I've successfully killed most of them. Vegetables, herbs, flowers, succulents....SUCCULENTS. You know, the ones that are supposed to be kill-proof. I've persevered, though, and have finally kept some alive! And actually, to my credit, one of these plants I've had for maybe two years now. Go me!

This is my second rodeo with basil. The previous time that I owned basil I had no idea what to do with it. I hadn't really cooked with basil and I only had it because Jackon's local gardening guru had given it to me as a gift. I sat it out in the sun with a red pepper plant and barely paid any attention to it. This stuff grew like crazy! Again, it's so sad that I didn't know I should make pesto with it or add it to everything I cooked. This plant should have stayed alive, but I left it in the sweltering sun at my parents' home after I moved out of town and it eventually died, probably from lack of water.

This go-around I decided to get the regular sweet basil along with purple basil. I saw purple basil in a cocktail and thought the color was so beautiful! Both varieties are incredibly easy to keep alive and require almost no maintenance. I water them about once a week.

Next up is cilantro. This is my most-used herb and I can't grow it fast enough! I use it in basicaly everything I cook. And apparently cats really like to eat this stuff too, which is why my first cilantro plant from a couple years ago never made it. This one, though, has grown so much (just not fast enough  to use in every meal)! A couple of weeks after I took this picture it even started to grow beautiful little white flowers. I water it about once a week with the basil. 

Little helper!

Rosemary (on the right) is even heartier than basil. Leave this in bright sun light and water it once a week and it'll grow like crazy. Seriously, don't baby it or it will shrivel up and die. The sage (on the left) is about the same!

The plant on the right is my lavender. It's probably the most sensitive of all my herbs. It requires watering every few days and I switch up the amount of light it gets every week or so, because honestly I'm still figuring that one out. As a matter of fact, now that it's a few weeks after taking these pictures, my lavender doesn't look even close to as pretty as it does here. I think maybe it got over-watered during a storm we had recently. I'm trying to nurse it back to health though. I might try putting it in fresh soil that's not so damp.

So that's it for my herbs, but the other non-herb plants I own are this pretty exotic plant in the center (it's called Moon Valley because of all the indentions in the leaves), a type of succulent that I can't remember the name of, the aloe that's in the background of the picture above, a jade plant (not pictured), a string of pearls plant (not pictured here, but you can see it in this post) and two air plants (not pictured).

All of those I water 1-2 times a week and they're all okay with only getting light via indirect sunlight. It's best to mist all of the succulents with water from a spray bottle. Another thing to note is that I move the pot with the aloe in it inside every other week. Aloe starts turning icky brown if it stays outside too long, and definitely don't let it sit in direct sunlight for more than a few hours each day. It's just finicky like that.

So I hope this post helps any of you out there who may think you have a black thumb! Do any of y'all have tips to share about your gardening routine?