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Gardening for Geeks? 98

Posted by Cliff from the discover-your-green-thumb dept.
selan asks: "Spring has sprung, and this year I've decided to try gardening for the first time! I'm starting with a small container garden on my balcony and am planting oregano and parsley. I was wondering if any Slashdot readers enjoy this low-tech hobby and have any advice to share with a newbie."
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Gardening for Geeks? More

Gardening for Geeks?

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  • More herbs the better, stick them near the back of your pc to remove dead air caused by staying in your room on pc too much :)

  • First thing to learn (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Chilles ( 79797 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @04:37PM (#5681149)
    Gardens actually have usefull bugs, know them and let them be.

  • Sunlight (Score:5, Informative)

    by Lemmeoutada Collecti ( 588075 ) <obereon.gmail@com> on Monday April 07, 2003 @04:39PM (#5681159) Homepage Journal
    Herbs... some are like us Geeks, some like normals. Don't try to mix shade/partial light plants with full sun plants. You will find one or the other suffering. Keep partial shade plants in a seperate container, I have found that morning sun works for most food herbs, while flowers tend toward noon day sun best. Depends on each plant.

    If you are growing temperate climate plants (thyme, oregano, etc) then watch the nightime temperature, they don't take well to cold nights (not even in Florida.)

    If you have children over 5, plant mint, they can chew 1/2 leaf for a good fresh flavour and to help prevent tooth decay. (Be very careful about what you put on those plants!)

    Avoid harsh chemicals and pest sprays. If it says non toxic, it can still make the plants taste like manure. Growing for food, organic takes more work but is well worth it. I love being able to grab a fresh bay leaf for soup right from the plant.

    And always, always rinse under cool water before using.

    I could go on all day, but that's a start for ya... yes, I do enjoy this archaic sport. Watching mints grow!
    • If you have children over 5, plant mint, they can chew 1/2 leaf for a good fresh flavour and to help prevent tooth decay. (Be very careful about what you put on those plants!)

      Kids aren't the only ones who like mint. Several years ago our neighbor gave us a decent size mint plant. By the next day, my doberman had eaten the entire thing except for the root ball.

      • Several years ago our neighbor gave us a decent size mint plant. By the next day, my doberman had eaten the entire thing except for the root ball.

        Well, maybe if you brushed his teeth occasionally, he wouldn't have to devour entire mint plants to freshen his breath.

  • Oregano? (Score:4, Funny)

    by shunnicutt ( 561059 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @04:39PM (#5681167)
    Riiiiiiiiight...

  • Take it high tech... (Score:3, Funny)

    by missing000 ( 602285 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @04:39PM (#5681171)
    and down under at the same time.
    Like under your house.

    Get some grow lights, a hydroponics kit, and your in business.
    Just don't get caught or they will take your house.

  • Accidental gardening (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Mprx ( 82435 )
    I have a basil plant growing in my kitchen. This is not intentional, I bought it for cooking a few months ago (very cheap) and surprisingly it didn't die. It's now about 4 times as big as it was when I bought it and still growing strong, although the roots are showing so it probably needs repotting.

    As for gardening tips, if you remove the growing tip of the plant (just break off the very top of the plant with your fingernails) it will grow 2 more. Remove those to get 4, then 8, 16, 32... Of course, if

    • Re:Accidental gardening (Score:3, Informative)

      by KDan ( 90353 )
      Don't bother keeping basil beyond a year. Just buy some new seeds and plant a new one. It grows very fast and tastes a lot more fresh.

      Daniel
      • Basil might grow fast in some climates, but in the UK it's incredibly slow. Plant other herbs, like sage (which smells nice and the purple stuff's quite attractive), thyme (slow grower, but it forms a little mound and looks good on rockeries or in the side of a bigger pot) and oregano and get the 70p packs of growing basil from the supermarket. They'll often keep growing for quite a long time if you repot them (basil's a bad example, though, cos I always eat it too quickly ;-)
    • Removing the tips not only encourages bushiness, but it also helps keep the plant from flowering. Most herbs' flavors will change after setting flowers.

  • Herbs and houseplants (Score:2, Informative)

    by nelsonal ( 549144 )
    Any herbs you cook with will be much, much better fresh, and you will save a ton. Since you're getting started try to find things at the end of their planting season, as the garden stores clearnance them, then you won't feel bad if you kill them. An easy starter garden is catus and other desert succulents, since they can go a week or two without watering, nice when you want to take a trip occasionally, and don't want to find someone to water for you. Tropicals are fun and neat to, but like water almost d
  • Just kidding. Sort of. I always wanted to grow hydroponic watermellons in the college dorm lounge. Didint quite work out.

    For some serious advice:
    Dont get hybrid seed. Get regualr seed, and reuse the most succesful ones for next year. THat way yore more likely to wind up with plants that are more adopted for your particular climate conditons.
    This is especially true for things like apple tress.

    ANd actually, hydroponics might be an intersting way for you to go. Im planning to try ot do the exact same thng in my backyard. I actually have a small indoor turtle pond, and i want to work the filtration system for that by using the plants. Ive done that before on limited basis, and the plants love it. Plus, im sure the turtle appreciates the filtration.

    And if thats not a geeky enough gardening idea for you, youre on your own.
  • I plant canabis in my computer room.
    %-)
  • Compost is your friend. You get to get rid of all of your vegitable waste (grass clippings, left over food etc.) and get back a great soil amendment.

    Try to grow everything, tomatoes work well, corn if you have room for enough of it, herbs, vegitables.

    You will get interesting friends at work trying to pawn off the vegitables you can't eat... bring those extra tomatoes in, let your non-enlightened friends share

    It is a great life balancer, I love to sit on my ass all day at work and just think hard, go

    • I agree. Compostis great! I personally use a compost tumbler. Here [compostumbler.com]is a site I found to buy one . Or If you have a free weekend one can build one out of a 50 gallon drum (clean it first).
    • Speaking of compost, look for a book called "Worms Eat My Garbage" to see how you can use a bunch of food waste that you would otherwise put in the garbage and speed up the process of turning it into compost. See if your local library has any back issues of Organic Gardening magazine from which to steal ideas.
    • Yep. Composting is wonderful. I've got a handy system right on my terrace.
      Drop me a line and I'll forward you a DBF (or tab-delimited file) of my links DB which contains, among other things, something like two hundred garden/green links and quite a few for composting.
      I'm working up to (probably) opensourcing the whole shebang but haven't gotten around to it yet.
      Anybody know a good overview of all the open source licences?

      Rustin

  • As an experiment I've grown wheatgrass and catnip for my evil cat, as incentive for him to stay out of the other plants.

    I've found that I had good results if I let the seeds do their initial sprouting and growth underneath a sheet of clear plastic wrap. The trick is not to get too eager and remove the plastic wrap to soon. The plastic wrap is a perfect way to even out the sporatic waterings that are inevitable when you're slashdotting.

    Michael.

    Treasure [michael-forman.com]

  • RTFM, of course! (Score:3, Informative)

    by dacarr ( 562277 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @05:01PM (#5681357) Homepage Journal
    There are many books and magazines on gardening. Aside from a few varying techniques, they will generally have the same kind of advice on how to plant certain items, along with when, where, sunlight, soils, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

    Along with this, keep in mind that seeds will also have instructions on how to plant. Naturally, this is a little beyond simply dropping your seeds in dirt and doing the slashdot three-step (1 - plant and water, 2 - ???, 3 - profit!).

    If you're concerned about mineral content of the soil, your local city office might have assay information. The books will also show you how to deal with this.

    Rotate your soil bases, especially if you are doing this yearly. You know how production farms will let a field rest for a year after using it a few years? It's to prevent depleting the soil. Barring this, be prepared to replenish the soil with commercial fertilizers or cattle manure.

    (To wit, cattle manure is not straight fecal matter from bovines, it's decomposed cattle waste. Broadly speaking, manure is anything that fertilizes the soil when worked in - including commercial fertilizers if you want to reach. Decomposed cattle waste is fairly common, though.)

    Lastly (and speaking of manure), one thing my father did back in the early 80s was get some straight up manure-based soil (like what some people put on their lawns to fertilize). It smells horrible, but your crops will taste fine, and they will also be extremely healthy - but again, be prepared to replenish after a period or your crops will start losing .

  • Spring has sprung...

    Well, you've already beat me on step one: Don't live someplace where you're getting the third snowfall of the month on April 7th!

    Since moving into a place with a garden, I've given it a try the last two summers. My newbie's experience -- growing from seeds is fun but difficult. Be careful with moving seedlings outdoors. Put them outside for a few hours during the day, keeping an eye on them, then overnight when you're absolutely sure they'll be OK and only then transplant them. And whe

    • Do you at least have spring to look forward to? I remember spring and fall from 30 or 40 years ago here in coastal NC but now we have 3 seasons, summer (also known as hurricane season or too wet to mow the jungle formerly known as the back yard), winter, and everything covered in yellow dust (pine pollen).
      • In central Massachusetts, it's still snowing today, and is supposed to be cold for at least another week. We'll probably end up with 2-3 weeks of "spring" before the weather jumps up to its usual sweltering summer temperatures.

        This winter has made me want to move somewhere, anywhere, where winter is less than 1/2 the year (it's already been 24 weeks here).

  • I've started gardening recently and have a lot of yard waste. I'm curious about creating a compost pile. Any tips or bad composting experiences? I remember someone here on Slashdot mentioned a rodent-free, odor-free composting product (from the UK?).

    How do you know when your pile is done? Some web sites I've read say "6 weeks to 2 years." Gee, that helps a lot.. :-)
    • My folks used to spend hours at the hardware store, and I would read the books, trying to find something interesting, one of the better books was about composting. The tips I remember well were:

      Make sure you turn it regularly, the more air the faster it will compost.
      Try to get a good mix of what the author classified as carbon rich, vegetables and other food wastes, with nitrogen rich plants, such as grass clippings leaves and others. It will work at 80/20 either way, but it will take longer, and the ti
    • this is pretty clear and handy. enjoy http://home.howstuffworks.com/composting.htm
    • Well, you too should feel free to email me for a copy of the vast green links DB, but I think that you're probably looking for the Green Cone [greencone.com].
      Rustin

  • Cabbage. (Score:3)

    by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @05:23PM (#5681506) Homepage
    I strongly recommend you plant some cabbage. It'll give you some idea of the consistency of your brains after 20 years of IT work.

  • companion plants (Score:5, Informative)

    by mattsucks ( 541950 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @05:30PM (#5681539) Homepage
    Look into Companion Planting [google.com]. In a nutshell, a companion plant is something you grown alongside your food plant to keep the bugs away. Some companions repel bugs altogether, some work to draw all the bugs to themselves and thus away from your herbs/veggies.

    My fave is the Marigold [google.com]. Its a pretty flower, easy to grow in a small pot, and fairly hard to kill (that's important for me :-). Dump some water on every couple of days, partial-to-full sun, and you'll have happy flowers.

    Also check out Container Gardening [google.com] for many many more links on growing things on patios, small spaces, in containers, etc.

    And finally, a safety tip. If you go for anything larger, like say a couple of tomato plants in one of those big terracotta pots, PLEASE get one of the wheeled bases for it. A 3' tall pot full of plants and wet soil is a biatch to move. I don't care how sweet the tomatoes are ... a hernia makes everything taste like ass.
    • I have been lonely, Will a companion plant help any or would I be better off with a dog?

      • lol! I have a couple of companion cats that have a bad habit of USING my plants for ... well, lets just say its not a good thing.

        That is actually a whole related issue ... how to train your pets not to desecrate your indoor/patio garden. Most of the things housepets do to your plants are not very beneficial. I keep a loaded super soaker next to the door for just such occasions. I started with a little squirt gun, but the cats quickly learned to ignore it. Twin streams of high pressure H2O still get th
  • After 9/11 I took some time away from New York with my boyfriend and we stayed with my family in Ohio, taking care of my sick grandmother, working out, and just kind of recuperating from Dotbomb + WTCBomb. I had always been interested in gardening, and my mom got this very cool magazine called Countryside http://www.countrysidemag.com/ that is sort of an instruction manual for what it calls the "Voluntary Simplicity" movement.

    It serves a whole range of people from a whole range of backgrounds, from neo-hip

  • i think you want to go here [hightimes.com].
  • Easy to grow. Almost impossible to kill. Needs regular watering, although you may want to try the Earthbox [earthbox.com]. If you do try them, be sure to get a determinate tomato plant (the non-determinate ones keep growing and can get up to 8 ft long.

    Once you get the hang of it, you might try topsy-turvy [davesgarden.com] gardening.

    • So a salesman is selling tomatoes in different cities. He realizes that, by plotting his route, he can figure out how to grow any non-determinate tomato plant to a polynomial size.

    • If you do try them, be sure to get a determinate tomato plant (the non-determinate ones keep growing and can get up to 8 ft long.

      Yes, but they can be managed with a bit of care. RTFM. You take out the side-shoots as it grows and the top when you're happy with the quantity of fruit on it. Fine for planting outside or in a greenhouse and tying to canes; probably not so good if you live in a 1st floor flat, though.

    • IIRC, determinate tomato plants bear all their fruit in a short period of time--great if you have a big home canning operation set up, not so great if you want a tomato a day for a few months. If you plant indeterminate tomatoes, you can harvest them until frost kills the plants.

      The other great thing about tomatoes is that you can buy actual plants of various sizes and varieties instead of starting seeds on your own. (They say, though, that you might as well buy smallish plants, because they'll catch up to
    • Almost impossible to kill.

      Like hell. I tried my first tomatoes last year. Two things you must do:

      1) When they grow too large for the seedling pots, put them in something larger. Don't leave it for 3 months and then do it.

      2) When it's nice and sunny, make sure they're watered.

      3) If you don't put a solid stake in the ground, they tend to wander around and then fall over.

      Guess which 3 things I didn't do :)

      I've still got their dried up stalks in the plant pots - haven't come around to remove them yet. I
  • The first thing you should do is start composting your poop [weblife.org] as seen on Slashdot [slashdot.org]. No but seriously composting in the traditional sense is quite an important part of gardening. If you're talking about a window box then it isn't very practical, however.
  • must... come... up... with... binary... tree... joke... *ngggkk*

  • The geekiest garden approach is permaculture. This is a systems and pattern-oriented approach to producing food and other agricultural products and I keep wondering why it isn't growing [*groan*] more rapidly as a philosophy.

    Reasons for geekiness:

    • gardening is relational: patterns of planting, systems of flora and fauna
    • smart gardening is lazy: plant lots of perennials, organize things for ease of access, use no-till methods
    • weeds and pests are not bugs, but features to be managed
    • make a good design befo

  • Tomacco! (Score:2, Funny)

    by OneBarG ( 640139 )
    I heard tomato and tobacco seeds, plus a little uranium, leads to a very addictive treat. Just keep the farm animals away.
  • I'm starting with a small container garden on my balcony and am planting oregano and parsley.

    I may not know much but I remember from my college days, the correct code word is "tomato plants."

  • Yup. Grow up with a father who grew up farming to make money. Let that father have you grow several acres of okra, and an orchard with 400 trees. Tend that to get spending money. Learn that gardening is something that successful people would prefer to pay the help to do.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Don't think of it as mowing the lawn, think of it as gathering clippings to go into the compost pile.

        It'll still be a major pain, though.

      • It depends on where you are coming from. For relaxation, there's really nothing wrong with gardening. And herb gardens do kick ass (once you've gone fresh, you'll never go to dried). But having to do it as a job really and truly sucks.

  • Anybody ever do something with automating the moisture control for plants?

    What would you use for detecting the moisture content of the soil and deciding when to add more water? Perhaps measure the current flow through the soil (shock the little plant roots)?

    What could you use to control the water supply?

    Surely there's something plant-wise that I can use my computer for! Can I actually control my whole garden with a computer?

    Maybe I can scare away pests with some motion detection on a camera and a loud s
  • Tell that to all the snow on the ground. Here in Montreal [weather.ca] the winter still rules. Although the forecast for later this week looks promising.

  • I live on the 3rd floor. It's a great balcony but I used to war constantly with the squirrels. They'd top the basil and some flowers. Seems they daily would look for acorns like Iraqi's looking for banned weapons hidden during the first Gulf War (neither has a clue where they might be buried, IF they might be buried, but since neither has any command and control, there might as well be none).

    Then I went to the local garden shop and they recommended a fertilizer made from organic pelletized chicken shit. I

  • Your two plants won't live the same amount of time. Odds are your oregano, a perennial will come back year after year. Parsley is a biennial, meaning it lives two years and dies. You may be able to trick it into staying alive by not letting it go dormant, but it's easy enough to grow that it's not really worth it.

  • Sprouts? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Maria D ( 264552 )
    How about a three-day version of gardening? :-) Put some seeds in a dish... Pour a little water... Add water every day, just enough to cover the seeds... Rinse and eat when sprouts look good enough. You can buy good grain in healthy food stores like Whole Foods.
  • I have a bunch of containers on my balcony. I really love them. Tomatoes and herbs are nice to have, but don't ignore flowers: petunias, marigolds and geraniums are good and are in flower for ages. Outside is good as nature will help with the watering. Make sure that your pots are big enough. Ones way bigger than you think you need will often turn out to be the right size.

    • Tomatoes and herbs are nice to have, but don't ignore flowers: petunias, marigolds and geraniums are good and are in flower for ages.

      Nasturtiums look nice and can be used as a salad vegetable. Not that I know of anyone who's ever eaten them, but it's a theory. Runner beans (string beans in Merkin?) were originally grown as an ornamental plant, too - they have scarlet flowers and lots of foliage. And chives have bright blue-purple flowers.

  • Programming was my hobby until it became my profession. Now gardening is my hobby. Digging holes, mixing dirt, matching activities to the season: not at all like programming and therefore a good break from it. If you HAVE to get geeky, though, finding exactly the right soil for each plant is a very difficult problem: pH, organic content, trace minerals, etc. I'm currently working on getting azaleas exactly right in my shady yard. Very enjoyable!

  • My favorite container plant... (Score:3, Informative)

    by chrysrobyn ( 106763 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @12:07AM (#5683823)

    Speaking from experience, try a strawberry plant. Keep it from getting frost, and if you're in a hot climate, keep it from getting direct afternoon sun. For a whole year, it's just a green plant. The next year, it'll bear fruit. The sweetest fruit you've ever tasted. There's nothing like a strawberry vine ripened and still warm from the sun.

    My new problem, however, is that my wife won't eat strawberries from anyplace else now. Like oranges, when you've had fresh off the plant from the right plant, nothing else just can compare.

    You asked specifically about two plants. Your number one enemy, from my experience, is severe spider infestation. Mist your plants if they're too delicate to handle direct hose water. Don't use pesticides, but try to keep as many nasties off as you can. There are some nice organic solutions, including using cedar. It seems to work pretty well to use cedar mulch on top of the soil. If you have the right window exposure, you can grow good plants indoors. My strawberry plant grew well in a Vermont window with a northwest exposure.

    Also, stay away from plastic pots. They hold moisture too well, and even with the right drainage, it's tough to keep mold / mildew from growing in it. Same with heavily painted terra cotta. Stick with bare terra cotta and you won't go too far wrong in the drainage department. Of course, you will still have to monitor moisture (Wal-mart sells hydrometers for like $5 or less), but it's tough to overwater a terra cotta pot with a hole in the bottom.

    • Also, stay away from plastic pots. They hold moisture too well, and even with the right drainage, it's tough to keep mold / mildew from growing in it.

      I get white mould on the soil surface of pots, but ime it's never caused the plants a problem. Perhaps you worry too much? ;-)

  • I love Hot Peppers, and have been growing them on and off for a few years. They are hardy, cheap to buy and startout with, and if you love hot foods, you can learn that there's more then just Tabasco sauce and Habaneros out there. Check out a few links to see if it's for you
    Pepper Joe's Seed Catalog [pepperjoe.com] (I buy all my seeds from him, they always give you FREE seeds with your order, great way to test and see if you like the flavor of a pepper you've never heard of before)
    Pepper Joe's Gardening Tips [pepperjoe.com]
    EXCELLENT h [batnet.com]
  • How is it that I submit a story that's about current technology and it's effect on geek life that gets rejected, and stuff about planting fresh oregano gets posted?
    • Nerds gotta eat, too. Might as well eat good. Growing herbs and a few other things can make for much improved, yet still simple, marinades and other things. And it'll impress the heck out of your mom.

      cbd.
  • As an old hand at apartment gardening, I can give you a few pointers.
    • ~ First off, figure out what kind of exposure your chosen window has. (No, not
    • that kind!) A south-facing window gets the most light, and is best for plants that like a lot of direct sun. North-facing windows have a more filtered light ("cooler" light, in art and photography terms.) Plants that like light, but not quite so much, will do well there. Partial-shade plants will do better in an east-facing window. I recommend sun-loving plants
  • Depending on where you live, I'd recommend talking to your count agricultural extension office. They usually can do soil testing for free/dirt cheap ;) and they can always give advice on planting in your region.
    Where I live, they offer a "Master Gardener" program , which lasts about 9 weekends. The cost is basically buying the book for the class and helping tend some public gardens for 1 or 2 weekends.
    Another good resource is a locally owned garden center or nursery. Don't expect the people at places li
  • They're indestructable. Get a clump of chives and plant them in a sheltered spot that gets a decent amount of sun (I live in a cold climate, so I have my chives in a nook by the back porch, right near the foundation... seems to protect them somewhat from the -10F winters). Snip some off when you need it. Snip any flower buds--I hear you can eat chive flowers, tho I haven't tried it. Generally, herbs taste different if you let them flower, so don't.

    I've had the same $1.59 clump of chives growing in my yard
    • I've abused my plants terribly (no water for weeks, lots of sun, then almost none, etc.) and the hardiest survivors are onions, cilantro, and carrots (gotten by sticking the ends of carrots I've eaten into the soil instead of throwing them out).
      This, btw, on a windy west-facing terrace in New York City.
      The onions have become a staple in my cooking as I have long-since gotten in the habit of going out to the terrace while, say noodles are draining, ripping off some green shoots, and mixing them in. Yum!
      Rus
  • Any slashdotters also into homebrewing might consider planting hops. They'll take a year to get established, but if they're planted in the right conditions, they'll really take off. Of course this means you need the vertical space to accomodate them.

    I have 2 varieties (Cascade & Nugget) that have now grown about a foot each in the last 2 weeks (3 weeks ago they weren't even visible). If their performance last year was any indicator, they should be doing 1-2 feet a week shortly.

    Now if I just had time
  • Another slash site told me all I need to know [smokedot.org]

  • my experiments with indoor plants (Score:4, Informative)

    by tcyun ( 80828 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @12:38AM (#5690884) Journal

    For several years now, my friends have watched as I geek out over some house plants. I have had a great deal of fun watching several of my plants grow.

    Amaryllis [ncsu.edu]
    About 7 years ago, I was given an Amaryllis. A flowering plant that has a bulb. When I received the bulb, it was already on the way to flowering. When it flowered, I took a q-tip and cross polinated the flowers against one another (not sure what the correct term is). I left the flowers on the plant until they dried out and fell off. After a few weeks, the stem on which the flowers grew turned into a small bulb that obviously contained seeds. I have since re-planted the seeds and given away about 10 small amaryllis plants to friends. Unfortunately, I have not been able to watch any of the small plants grow large enough to flower again, but hope to do so with my most recent bunch. I have also had the original large bulbs split into separate bulbs several times. I now have four large bulbs from the original (plus the many small plants that have grown from seed).

    Ficus [ivillage.com]
    When I finished school, I purchased a small ficus tree. It grew quite well sitting in the window. When it out-grew its pot, I trasferred it into an overly large Rubbermaid container [rubbermaid.com]. Once it was in the too-large container, the extra soil space allowed it to grow out of control. As I was living in a small, urban apartment, I decided to plant my own "lawn" in the pot. I was able to sustain a small patch of green grass along with the tree for an entire summer (all indoors). I learned a great deal about small ecosystems (clippings must be VERY small to not matt down new growth) and potting soil from bags (these bags contain bugs- if the plant is indoors, the bugs will be indoors too).

    Worms [cityfarmer.org]
    One of the things that I learned from the Ficus-lawn experiment (see above) was that a small potted-plant system does not break down organic matter very quickly. I spoke to several friends, gardeners and academics. They all said that the possibility of getting the lawn clippings to compost properly in the large container was fairly slim. However, they said that if I was interested, I should look into getting some worms to help out. They also said that the worms would help with small bugs. On several occasions, I gathered earthworms that appeared on the sidewalks after rains, but I am not sure that any of them survived for long in the soil system (I believe that worms require fairly loose soil and potted plants generally end up with fairly dense soil).

    I have also played with various other herbs and flowering plants. I have 4 calla [gardenbytheseason.com] lillies [betterlawns.com] that I have grown from the same cross polination "technique" that I used with the amaryllis described above. The callas live happily in my office windowsill with a cyclomen [cyclamen.org], hyacinth [inthecount...dgifts.com], and several pots of amaryllis (at various stages of maturity). They all seem happy enough living in a windowsill.

    All that said, there is a wealth of information out there on how to grow plants of all varieties. As useful as the information is, I have always found it more interesting to experiment on my own and see how much I recall from high-school biology and geolgraphy courses. A bit of common sense can keep almost any plant alive; a bit of experimentation and work can grow a single plant into many or

  • I am a pretty avid gardener, and my herb garden has evolved... I started by planting a few varieties, thinking it would be cool to have sage, oregano, thyme, etc... I also put basil in, and that did the best, by far. It also is the herb that I used the most. You can do all kinds of amazing things with basil, especially putting it together with tomatoes, mozzeralla, oil and balsamic vinegar!! Now, my herb garden has a big row of several basil plants, and some Italian Parsley (also very useful). Good luck an
  • Believe or not, potatoes are a fine thing to grow in containers, using straw [colostate.edu].

    It's fun, very tasty, come in a variety of colors (iSpuds?), and you don't even have to wash the dirt off this way.

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