Growing Herbs: Trial by Error

Growing herbs indoors can be a great idea if like me you get super excited about starting things at completely inappropriate times of the year! Our unseasonably warm weather has had me itching to start my garden when in reality I should be winterizing and planning our holiday activities. However, this week we lost an hour of daylight from the time change and the temperature plummeted to a balmy 25 degrees F this morning, so it’s safe to say winter is upon us. ugh. To fight the rapidly shortening days and biting temperatures, I decided to transplant a few herbs into pots in the house and start a few additional varieties from scratch.

It hasn’t gone well. For starters, I transplanted my stevia plant and some rooted cuttings of my oregano into pots. The stevia is dead and my toddler plucked the oregano out of the pot to get a better sniff and shocked it a little too much. Frustrated but not completely disappointed, I picked some parsley cuttings and set them to root in a pretty little glass jar on my kitchen window silk because apparently rooting parsley is foolproof. Well, I must be a fool because it has been a good while & nothing has happened. I did however get some sweet potatoes that has sprouted in my pantry to take root after being soaked in water and start shooting pretty little heart shaped leaves! I excitedly transplanted them to a pot and set them in a windowsill to soak up the sun. Imagine my disappointment when I went to water them and found every leaf gone and only the sad little stems remaining. My first thought was, “what kind of caterpillar would do this?” Turns out, it was a two legged Elmo and horse loving caterpillar.

After sending the poor little plants to a nice safe high window, I decided to plant some herbs in pots outside while it was still so pleasant. I filled four pots manure/dirt from our garden and seeded each pot with a different herb. I was so excited when I began seeing little green sprouts! I watched them closely over the next week and . . . they all looked the same. My tender loving care had been invested in grass and not a single herb sprouted.

So yeah, it has not been an overwhelming success, but it has been a learning experiment. My next step is to research and start some herb seeds in pots inside (away from my daughter!) I am determined that I will succeed in actually growing herbs from scratch eventually!