Urban Renewal

The herbs we were growing have gone kaput, so we have started growing tomatoes instead. I had a bit of trouble with them at first - they came up sickly and looked like they were going to wither away. Fortunately they survived, and the first tomatoes are ripening up now!

Here is how they looked two weeks ago, compared to a quarter:


And here is the same one now:

More Basil At Once

The basil is finally taking off, so I'm able to get a good amount at once if I let it go a few days between trimming. Here's the amount I was able to get one day to sprinkle over salad & pasta with dinner:

We left town for a week for Thanksgiving and I was a little nervous how it would go with us gone - would the basil take off, grow into the light, and burn down our apartment? Happily, no. I trimmed the heck out of it before we left, so it looked like this:

And after we got back it looked like this:

Plantlife

Our little Aerogarden is still alive, and successful so far:

The basil has really taken off. I've pinched it off at the top - once it gets bushier I plan to try to keep it closer to the height of the rest of the plants. This latest trimming was the first where we were able to harvest more than just a couple leaves at once:

We had this on top of green salad with dinner. Yum!

Other Plantlife

Here is the other mini-garden I'm attempting to maintain. My mother gave me this adorable little cactus garden for my birthday. Unfortunately one of the six plants died immediately, but the rest are still OK. I used to get irritated when the sun shone through the sliding door from our balcony, but now I wish it were even more sunny for the cacti.

It's Alive!

We got an AeroGarden when it was a Gold Box special on Amazon. It came with the standard herb seed kit, in which we were quite pleased to discover that the cilantro had been replaced by thyme! Upgrade! We set it up last weekend, and the basil and thyme were our first sprouts.

Now, the purple basil, dill, and chives have sprouted as well.

We also bought the cherry tomato seed kit, so once the herbs run their course we'll try that too.
Despite having avid gardeners as parents, I'm not too skilled at keeping plants alive. So it's nice to have the Aerogarden, which I like to think of as a little robot that helps us keep them going. It's...THE GERMINATOR. "Come with me if you want [your plants] to live!"