This long weekend will be spent building an indoor herb cabinet with some built-in grow-light LED strips and automatic watering... I'm planning on moving most of the herbs and peppers inside for the winter before the frost hits. Not sure how it will go, but here's to hoping it'll work.
I found a site for seeds myseedneeds.com I have a tendency to get a little drunk and order a bunch of seeds. Well, today's purchase was pre-hurricane sober but the last one was not. You can get bundles for cheap and they have a good selection. All heirlooms too so you can harvest your own seeds. I like their hot pepper selection and bought a ton of flower seeds for next year like bee balm, milkweed, nasterium, passion flower, and others. Here is the fall garden so far. The peppers in the back are exploding. Lost a lot to split branches but hopefully the restaking effort will keep them intact. I may need different marigolds for next year because the mounding type took up a lot of space. The rye grass I planted in the space where there were tomatoes is coming up now. I'll get it get tall and then cover with black plastic to compost it. More attempts at keeping the soil quality up. Spoiler
The herb garden has, for the most part, flourished quite well this year. Also in there are my various hot pepper plants that are doing pretty well so far. Time to harvest and trim it up before moving it indoors.
@bewildered :: In response to your "hang to dry or use immediately" question, I've picked up 100 small deli soup containers and will chop things up fresh, containerize them, then put them in the freezer. No need to go through the hassle of drying them or taking the chance of them rotting, etc, just put them in the freezer. Worst case is you need a small ice pick to remove what you need when you want it, but I find it's so much easier and tastier than dehydrating or drying. Remember, if you can smell it while drying/dehydrating it, then that's flavour being sucked out of the herb. I've also done that with the hot peppers and tomatoes I've harvested... some of them are chopped, some are left whole. In the end, it's not like they're going to be used fresh on top of a salad, so a bit of freezer burn is not a problem at all... it's all about the flavour, because texture is a non-issue.
That's a good idea. I saw where someone did it in oil. what's your opinion on freezing with water vs olive oil?
I don't freeze them with anything, really... just whatever water is left in them. Sometimes I'll blend shit up and mix it with butter or something similar (thyme, oregano, etc), and then freeze the mix in ice cube trays so that I can have a buttery flavour bomb that's easily dispensed.. same thing when I make demi glace or some other super condensed stock... freeze them into small cubes and then transfer to zip lock bag when I need the ice cube tray again. Makes it really easy to add killer flavour when needed.
Awesome tip, thanks for sharing. I dried a bunch of basil and am not crazy about it (i don't prefer the dried basil in my spice cabinet over the fresh from my garden so I'm not sure why I thought drying it myself would be any better). This is a better method. Similar to your methods above, my mom freezes tomato paste in a freezer bag and smooshes them into 1T segments since a lot of recipes just call for a little bit and just aren't the same without. I need to get more clever with my cooking. I have a couple bags in the freezer that I am constantly adding soup stock ingredients (ends of carrots celery onions . ..) and another with seafood bones and shells. I made some out of this world shrimp etoufe and it was all thanks to the 5lbs of shrimp heads and shells in the deep freeze on the porch.
Infused butter is awesome. I roll it up into a log in in the freezer, when I make burgers I put a little pad in the center of the patty. Doing this with cheese is also fun.
Yes. It grows like a weed from seed or you can easily do divisions if it strikes your fancy... though there really isn't any benefit in it as it germinates well. The 'hot trend' with it seems to be to grow it in combinations with lavender and citronella scented geraniums as a half assed mosquito repellent.
Two nights ago I started working on a countertop herb centre for the counter space that's free in the laundry room. I hit up Amazon Prime and Home Depot, and then fabricated a frame and shelves out of super cheap pine and galvanized chicken wire. All the wood has got 2 layers of leftover spar varnish from my deck table I built. (The bottom is completely waterproof so if a bunch of water spills it is nicely contained.) Today the grow LED lights, timers, pots, water system, hoses, etc all showed up, so I now have to mount/wire the lights, and get the watering system set up. With the temps getting lower and lower, the goal is to get everything inside this weekend. There are 2 main shelves to handle the herbs I already have in the garden now, and then a small rack on the right to grow some seedlings over the winter in preparation for the raised beds I'll be putting in next year.
From my experience starting seeds indoors fluorescent shop lights haven't failed, cheap and effective. I tried an indoor led light set up last year with bad results (not sure if the color spectrum matched what I needed, my brother had one lying around). I am curious to see how yours does, what are the bulb specs?
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B01MG4SJYN/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Those are the ones I got... 2 rolls, they were cheaper than what they're listing at now, as I paid about $16 each for them. Figured I would give them a shot. Easy to staple to the wooden frames I have in place, power supply included. I did a bit of research and they seem to hit the sweet spot, wavelength wise... so yeah, we'll see how it goes.
Yeah that looks like the same color breakdown I had, not sure about those specific ratios. You might keep sunglasses handy as the colors really messed with my eyes.
Yeah, they make things appear a bit... fuzzy... but they'll be on a timer in the laundry room, so very minimal exposure. We'll see how it goes. Worth the try, for sure.
Was asked for a few more details on the countertop enclosure. The shelves are just glued together and held with a ton of staples (joys of having a pneumatic staple gun). Chicken wire is cut and stapled in place. The base is a separate piece so it's easier to move into place. The LED strip was VERY carefully stapled to the underside of the frame pieces. Those pieces were placed there specifically for the best placement of the light strips, down the middle, rather than around the outside of a typical box frame.
And here's the final piece on the counter top in the laundry room. The plants/pots get transferred to it this weekend, but for now, there's power and it's on a timer.
I just made an audible noise of mixed envy and impressedness. Nice rack there. I had no idea strips existed like that.
They are also being used in the wild by large growers... with some interesting calls to 911 as a result.
Started to transplant the herb garden into small pots and bring them inside to their winter home. I do believe I've somewhat underestimated the size of some of these plants... they sure didn't look this big in the step planters I made. I do believe it's going to be a bit of a tight squeeze... more grow lights are on their way for a new addition to the cage.