Herbal Garden: Prepping for Basil

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

It seems my preparation work for basil will be almost identical to that of Rosemary. The only difference is that fort basil I need to pick up some liquid plant food, and be sure to get a good rich compost soil.

Because it can take some time to germinate seeds or root clippings for basil, I am going to look for seedlings. If I fail to find them, i will try a late start with germinating my own seeds.

Basil prefers a well draining soil just like rosemary, so more broken pots to help my plants grow. It's a great way to release stress, and your recycling! I never thought I could have so much fun smashing ceramic and not worry about feeling guilty.

Just remember if your breaking items like this, wear eye protection. You may look funny, but loosing an eye would look worse. You can feel free to use old plates or cups, this is a good use for many old items. Be sure anything you use is non- toxic, last thing you want to do is kill your new plants.

Now the hardest step of getting ready for basil, picking the kind! It just so happens that there is a large amount of species to choose from. After talking it over and looking more closely at each kind, we have settled on Sweet Basil.

Here is a little deeper look in to the kinds and what they are used for thanks to GardenAction.

Sweet Basil (Ocimum basilcum) - the most popular variety in the UK used in Italian style dishes and salads. It grows to a height of 75cm (2ft 6in)

Cinnamon Basil (Ocimum basilcum) - form Mexico, with a cinnamon flavour. It grows to a height of 45cm (18in).

Lemon Basil (Ocimum citriodorum) - mild lemon flavour, commonly used with fish. It grows to a height of 30cm (12in).

Purple Basil (Ocimum basilcum purpurea) - similar to sweet basil, but with purple leaves. One of the more tender varieties. It grows to a height of 75cm (2ft 6in)

Red Rubin Basil (Ocimum basilcum) - similar to sweet basil but very darkly coloured leaves.
HHA. Ht. 75cm. A much deeper colour than purple basil. It grows to a height of 75cm (2ft 6in)

Thai Basil (Ocimum sp.) - very spicy, used in Indian cooking. It grows to a height of 90cm (3ft).

As always you can find more information on Basil from my reference links.

Herbal Garden: Prepping for Rosemary

After doing some reading on this wonderful herb, I have decided to skip the seeds and try to find a seedling or cutting to root myself. I was happy to find well of information on how to grow and tend to rosemary. The planting season has already begun, so I need to get read to start growing as soon as possible.

The first thing I need to do is find a good sunny spot on the terrace. I have lots of clay pots that we wanted to discard. I will use some to break and make a draining layer at the bottom of my growing pot. This will save me the time and money of finding stones or spacers for a drainage layer.

I will need to buy new soil, the old stuff that is in the pots are from when my boyfriend moved in about 7 years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if they were from the former tenants and he just never bothered to throw them away. Still, the clay pots littering our terrace are plentiful, and some in good condition, so they are ideal for what I want.

Most sites recommend using a sandy soil, because rosemary likes to stay well drained. Well, that's not hard in Madrid, I will pop out and get that from the local market square. They don't feed a lot so I won't worry about fertilizer for this first season in fresh soil. It should be more then enough to sustain it's self.

The terrace is open so the air circulation is good, and it gets 6 -8 hours of sunlight a day. That fulfills the other plant requirements for rosemary. The last thing I need to do is find some thing to elevate it on, so that it gets enough sun over the rail. At least until it is tall enough to fend on it's own. Rosemary does grow a bit large it would seem from the descriptions, so I have make some more room out there.

If you would like more information on the requirements of rosemary please feel free to visit my resource links.

I do have to note that I found this article from about.com to be the most clear and useful.
Rosemary - You Can Grow the Herb Rosemary

Herbal Garden Selection

I was looking threw some things to find out what the best choice of herbs would be for our living arrangements. The two that I found best fulfilled my requirements was Rosemary and Basil, Not only do we enjoy to cook with them, but they also grow well in our climate.

It would seem these two spices have great insect repelling qualities, and do not attract predatory wasps . While Rosemary will attract bees during pollination periods, it should not be prolonged or excessive. These two plants are speculated to be especially good at repelling mosquitoes and flies. We plan to cook out on the terrace this summer, so they sound just right for what we need, and they should grow well here in Madrid.

Now the trick is finding a place that I can find started plants or seeds. I need to read up on how to grow and care for these two particular spices still. I do know that they are grown locally to our climate, but I have not yet taken time to learn how to do it myself. I hope to have more information for you this week.

To learn more on insect qualities of spices, please feel free to look threw my reference links.

Herbal Garden Project

Sunday, May 18, 2008

A while back I was talking about my bulk shopping and my friend Sangria brought up the home growing suggestion. I know it would be hard to make room to grow produce, and the laws about growing on your terrace would make it difficult to try. I have considered the alternative of growing my own herbs.

The considerations I have for this project are not nearly as complicated as most. I will need to pick herbs that can grow easily in the Mediterranean climate. Preferably ones that have the beneficial qualities of insect repelling. I would want them to be herbs we like to use, and that can be brewed for teas.

The things I will need to avoid are any herbs that attracts wasps and predatory insects or bees past pollination periods. We have both pollen and bee allergies to consider in my household. Our terrace is small and it would be hard to share with wasps. We don't mind the occasional hard working bee though.

With the laws here, i can only grow in pots, I cant make any troff. They have to drain elevated so I cant make any dirt or sand patches on to the ground. It also has to be a moderately low moisture plant that can withstand full or partial sunlight, and hopefully doesn't grow to large. Living on the fourth floor it also should not be a plant that drops any heavy or hard bits such as large fruits or nuts.

I will look in to this more another day, tomorrow is my first dentist visit in Spain. I will most likely not be up to working on anything after that one, but I don't plan to be out of action long.
If you have any tips or information on good things to grow in sunny Madrid, Spain that may help, please let me know.

Spring Cleaning, Preemptive Strike

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

I decided that tomorrow I will start my house clean out. After looking around it became apparent that I can only shuffle things from place to place, unless I first clean out my storage areas. This will be a task of tasks, mostly due to the fact, the majority of stuff in storage is my boyfriends.

You see, like so many men, he saves everything. Nothing is in bad enough shape to dispose of yet, after all it seems wasteful to throw some thing out just because you forgot you had it for the last 3 or 4 years. That is if I can get him to even look threw it. He cooks and he cleans with out me even asking , but he will crawl under the couch and hide when it comes to sorting threw old things.

I will be dedicating the next two days to making new storage room and handling the old and tattered items in storage already. I found a few useful, or at least explanatory sites on cleaning and organization. A lot of it is stating the obvious, but there are a few cute toys, tips, and tricks rolled in.

Here are my links, I hope they can provide some insight on your cleaning projects in the future.

• Bringing your bookshelves back to order
• Free printables calendars and charts
• Ultimate Spring Cleaning Tips Guide
• Storing extension cords

Adjusting the Flat for Spring

Monday, April 28, 2008

Ah yes spring is here, the birds are nesting and the days are now getting warm and sunny. It's time to settle down and plan out my Spring Clean and house re-organization. This year however there is an exciting new challenge. I am going to budget myself only 10 Euros for the whole house.

How on earth am i going to clean, organize and make my flat more livable on 10 Euros? I plan to Recycle, reuse, and create every thing I can. Like everything els, I will research, and record all my stages. Then I will post my plan and it's updates as I go along.

Tomorrow I will try to get my goals listed this way if any one has advice on them, I have time to look in to it. This flat has not had much TLC, we always planned to move ASAP, so we never sunk any time or money in to it. Now that we know we will be here a while, were going to have to try to make it livable.

We have only a little furniture, lots of nick-nacks and things to store, and extremely limited storage room. Actually we have one closet for two people to share and a pantry for food items and thats it. It's not odd or surprising though, after all it was a bachelor pad until I came, and like I said we never invested in it.

All in all it should be a great deal of fun to see what I can do when given a good challenge. I look froward to any advice I can get along the way, I will surely post any thing I am stuck with, and my whole process.

Wish me luck!