First frost watch!

Our kitchen currently looks like a jungle, and all the remaining plants outside are snuggled against the house!

Lemon tree, lime tree, calamondin orange tree, dwarf pomegranate, spearmint, orange mint/chocolate mint, lemon balm, serrano pepper, oregano, parsley, small container of basil, ginger (new, from grocery store ginger), rosemary (from cutting earlier in the summer), and some petunias (from cuttings). All safe and sound inside the door.

Pineapple sage, cherry tomato/petunia/parsley/Thai basil, small container of Thai basil, orange mint/peppermint, cabbage, Better Boy tomato/petunia/Italian basil/snap peas are all snuggled up against the house. Since the pineapple sage and Thai basil are already flowering, I decided to leave them outside. Mint is a little hardier, so I didn't bring it all inside. Cabbage likes to be cold. The big tomato pots are just too big! Hopefully the basil and tomato survives!

Tonight's frost is only supposed to hit "areas that tend to frost before other neighboring areas," whatever that means. But later in the week, we're expecting a real frost. I think the citrus trees are in for good, but hopefully I can give everything else a few more weeks outside!

End of summer garden update

Despite attacks now by early blight (view here) and TWO types of caterpillars (hornworms and pinworms), my tomato plants still haven't kicked the bucket. The only thing that didn't make it from the beginning of summer was my rosemary plant (still have no clue what happened to it), and I've accumulated a handful of additional plants too. Here's what I have!

Dinner tonight! (Pesto - recipe here)

Italian Basil (after the pesto hair cut), some petunia cuttings on the side, and flowering Thai basil. I couldn't keep up with all the Thai basil, there's just sooooo much, so I decided to let the small pot flower. They're pretty, and I'll try to collect the seeds.

Cherry tomatoes and petunias (Thai basil in the back)

Garden Update

We were on vacation last week, and we brought some of my plants with us. The individual pots of basil, Thai basil, rosemary, oregano, parsley, and the rectangular pot of mint came to the beach. The other plants stayed behind under the supervision of a neighbor.

All the plants are alive and well! The cherry tomato plant had some yellow/brown/rotten looking bottom leaves, which I have since trimmed off. I think they probably just got too much water/got too wet. The regular tomato plant is growing OUT OF CONTROL, and I had to add four tall stakes to hold it up. The regular (better boy) tomato had one ripe tomato when we got back, but some creature had chewed it apart. I had to throw it in the woods. So we're still waiting for big ripe tomatoes. The cherry tomatoes are holding us over, though.

I never figured out for sure what happened to my Thai basil. The other three Thai basil plants are growing happily (and are huge). My best guess is that it was caused by a leafhopper because they are the only insects I was regularly seeing in the garden. I find it strange that it would only affect a single plant, even when there are others in the same pot, but it doesn't really matter. I threw away the plant (didn't want to keep it in with the rest in case it was diseased). Today I saw a cucumber beetle, but it flew away before I could crush it. Hopefully my plants are sturdy enough to survive a few pests!

Did this cute little guy kill my Thai basil? I've crushed a
bunch of them. Then I read that petunias ward off
leafhoppers, so I planted some in with my big tomato
pots about a week and a half ago. No more leafhoppers
(at least in the last two days). and no more dead plants.
Here's what happened to the Thai basil.

Here's my garden as of August 18th, 2013!

Cuttings rooted over the past month or so.
Click here for details! 

Can you believe how good these look after their shaky
start this summer? Click here for my "saving baby
orange tree" post.

Rooting cuttings to clone your plants

There are so many plants you can grow from cuttings! I've done this with mint and basil for a long time, but this year I have also rooted pineapple sage, rosemary, petunias, and even lettuce!

There are two ways to grow new plants from cuttings. The first is the easiest (but slower and more likely to fail). Simply cut a stem from your plant. If there are flowers on your stem, pull them off. You want all the plant's energy to go toward generating roots and not toward anything else at first. Pull off any leaves right near the bottom.

For basil, mint, etc., you should cut just like you would to harvest/trim it (down to a spot with two leaves). 

Now, put the cutting in a glass of water. I finagled this cute little bowl just for this purpose to allow me to use short little cuttings. Change the water every few days to prevent mold from forming. After a little while (a few days to a few weeks depending on the plant), roots will form. Then, move the plant to some soil.

My cuttings bowl. A little glass bowl with a duct tape
grid to hold little plants in place. 

This year, for the first time, I tried using rooting hormone and allowing this whole process to occur directly in the soil. I've read that this will create stronger roots, and you don't have to transfer the plant while the roots are still fragile. I tried it out, and it went well! Now I have several new plants from my originals! Here is a step by step description of the root hormone method:

Chocolate Mint Fudge, fresh from the garden

I've been looking for ideas to use all my mint, which will hopefully take off in the next few days after its root pruning session. I've already made chocolate mint ice cream, had lots of minty water, and made a ginger-mint simple syrup for our soda stream. I eyed up the sweetened condensed milk in the pantry and went for fudge!

Here's the incredibly simple recipe: 
3 cups chocolate chips
1 can sweetened condensed milk (14oz, I used fat free)
~1/4-1/2 cup chopped mint

Melt the chocolate and condensed milk in a crock pot or on a double boiler. As soon as most of the chocolate has melted, cut the heat and keep stirring until smooth. Stir in the chopped mint, and pour into a foil-lined, greased 9x9 pan. Refrigerate ~1 hour. Flip the foil onto a cutting board to cut slices of fudge. Enjoy!

Rosemary Fries

So there's this place in Cleveland. BEST FRIES YOU'LL EVER EAT (it's called The Greenhouse Tavern). They are so incredibly delicious that we went ahead and registered for a mini deep fryer just so we could bring the phenomenal taste into our own kitchen. Well, we wanted to make these fries among other things...

Fire escape tomatoes

My fire escape has been very generous to me recently! I have more mint than I know what to do with, plenty of basil and parsley, a pepper plant with two green peppers, some celery I rooted, and a HUGE tomato plant that has been giving me a bunch of tomatoes recently! The plant itself doesn't look all that great, but I think that's because it put so much energy into its fruit. I can't complain, though!

Just as the first one was turning red

My first little harvest

So many more!