So In Love with Herbs & Spices!

One of my greatest desires is to grow a lot of herbs and spices in my garden, whether in pots or on the ground. Herbs are such wonderful things to have - good to throw some into dishes, really beneficial for health, nice to just smell them or rub them with my finger tips and give such a glorious view. I can spend a lot of time just admiring my herbs. Currently, I have about ten pots of herbs/spices in my garden - thyme, rosemary, lavendar, vietnamese mint, oregano, thai basil, mixed basil (including lemon, thai and purple basil), bay, mint and chilli. I would love to add the following to my list - coriander, curry plant, curry tree, lemon grass, aloe vera, more types of chillies - some time soon. My revived Lavendar Bee Pretty sitting so prettily. Some flower buds are developing again. Hope that I will be able to see them flower a second time within six months.

Mint producing a few little plants at the base - slowly - I guess being confined in a pot does that to the mint.

Bay tree growing slowly as it is. More leaves but same height, I th ink.

Oregano is producing little shoots from below after the trimming.

Rosemary sprigs harvested one week back see them growing new ones again! :) A little pot like this is actually sufficient for my family's usage.

Thyme was given a boost by cutting back and here they go, shooting up new soft wood stems again. There is so much to harvest and give away.

My Mixed Basil from seeds...Purple Basil, Lemon Basil, Thai Basil...rubbing the different leaves with finger tips and smelling it is refreshing! Even my boy wants to have a sniff at them.

Vietnamese Mint leafing more and more after harvesting one big handful to be dried.

The shallot flowers have opened...

A Long Long Entry...

Harvest a good handful of tomatoes from the bush. And several chillies (gone into dishes).

Harvested a lot of vietnamese mint from the flourishing herbs.

The little bay tree has been repotted again. I was greedy and had repotted it into a really large pot and then read that it was not good for a little plant to be in an oversized pot, just because I wanted to save some work later. So now it is in a 30cm diameter pot and still doing fantastic...showing some new leaves actually. I had harvested 3 for my chicken breast roast.

My friend Fina gave me these pears which fell off her tree prematurely during a very strong wind. I could not feed my worms since they were so hard. Blending them would be too tough, so I decided to experiment by soaking them in a pail of water and standing under the sun. Not sure what I will get in the end, probably some rotten pears soon.

Some leaves on the Cayenne Pepper are showing this - yellow spots, yellow streaks along the vein network. Not sure if it is over-fertilising, nutrient lack or? Anyway, noticed this after repotting the plant into a large pot as the one it came in was getting too small for it.

Apart from the yellowing leaves, there are quite a few chillies.

Wow! My ever-wonderful Vietnamese Mint and thai basil are doing so well. They flourish more with harvesting. I am waiting for the mint branches to lengthen before I do cuttings out of them. Harvested some thai basil for my chicken mince dish.

The mixed basil are doing fine in the pot. Hope those growing slowly will eventually grow bigger and stronger.

Yesterday's weather was milder...about 30 deg celsius and windy. I had to relocate the portable pots again against the wall to avoid the wind. That is the advantage of growing things in pots.

My lavender bee pretty has produced lots of green tender new growths but the back was not and I cut it back further. Hoping that the growth will balance out.

The largest sunflower I had was cut and placed in this vase. I gave it to my mentor today and it created a positive commotion in church. Hehehe..as it was indeed a very large one and some of my church-mates thought it was fake!

These are some of the harvest from my little garden. From left : Rosemary, thyme, few bay leaves on the tomato, tomatoes (which did not look as good as I wished) and thai basil.

The melons are extending out a lot at the vege patch, lots of flowers. The fruits are very tiny and I have a feeling they will probably not grow. I did not provide the sufficient nutrients for fruit production and I know to have reasonable fruits, there must be some input. It's okay. I am happy enough seeing them growing and bees visiting at the vege patch.

The other pot of thai basil did not have very good leaves so I just let it flower. At least 5 stalks of flowers now. Above's one of them.

The largest tomato from the bush. Not sure why it did not turn red. It was orange and already soft. I plucked it and shared it with my golden retriever who finished his portion with one gulp. Sweet!

The caterpillar (pests) has nice colour right? Soft cute little thing. And a yellow line running down its back. Found it attacking my pak choy. Poor pak choy has been subject to various caterpillars. I found another four similar ones today and got them in a box with some of the pak choy. Going to feed them fat and use them in the spray. Heard this long-ago method works to repel caterpillars.

On the second and third day of the heat wave reaching 43 deg celsius, I relocated the smaller pots to the left side of the house where they coped better out of direct scorching sunlight. This move proved to be a wise one.

The capsicum plant - one seedling which I potted and doing well. Some of the leaves were eaten by probably a grasshopper before the potting.

A fellow blogger has two worm farms died in the heat wave. So sad!!! I was concerned and hurriedly checked my worm farm in the garage. Thankfully, they were coping fine. Found some in the collecting tray and some in the liquid! Quickly drained the liquid before any drowned. Found a dead one but just one! Fewh! I dug through the contents and were glad that they were found. All my precious ones and costly too haha...

My thai basil close-up...looking good! The successful one out of five which I grew from stem-cuttings.