Potting On

(The OG Basil hanging out)

Not sure if this is just a Brit slang thing or not, but "potting on" something refers to switching a plant from a smaller pot or seed tray or plug into a larger pot to allow it to grow. The basil (my absolute favorite herb) has been putting on new growth slowly sitting on the windowsill, but it's pretty clear that it needs a bigger space in which to grow and allow for marigold playmates to join it later (basil always enjoys marigolds, grow them together as companion plants and you'll find they're both happier). My problem is that I like to eat basil just about every day, so I need it to keep growing and getting bushier for as long as possible so I don't just devastate the plant.

To this end I pulled out a smallish pot that has been sitting outside all winter, and which has a kind of dish attached to it underneath with drainage through the pot onto the dish. It's a lovely glazed ceramic pot that I thought would look well on the porch, but for the moment while it hosts the basil it will come live inside until the weather turns decidedly into spring. I cleaned out the pot from the remains of its last potting soil, which was pretty solidly packed into the bottom (which gives a great clue as to why it is empty of its last occupant). I then placed a shard of broken pottery in the bottom creating a kind of tent over the drainage hole so that the soil won't pack in and cover the hole again. Basil doesn't want to stay wet. It wants to be well-watered, but not damp all the time.

Two notes on the shard:-

a) I always see gardeners on these shows I watch grabbing loose shards from collections of them for exactly this purpose and think to myself "How do they have so many? Why? Do they buy pots to break them just to have these? What are you doing to your pots to have so many broken ones?" But it just so happened that I did, in fact, have a pot break this winter and thus I found out how and why. Which brings me to my second note.

b) It turns out that some ceramic or terracotta pots will not cope well with frost, and that it creates little cracks that splinter off parts of the outside and compromise the structural integrity of the vessel. I was noticing this winter that one of my lovely glazed and patterned pots kept having chips broken off, and I just blamed the squirrels (although I did think it odd behavior for them). Nope. Frost.

Once the shard was in the pot I added some gravel to the bottom to improve the drainage, and then a generous helping of potting soil mixed with vermiculite (so that it retains water where needed). Popped in the plant after loosening the soil around the roots, added more soil, and then watered it well. It is now back on a sunny windowsill in my kitchen.

I did get a few other things done today, like pruning my holly bushes which had all kinds of gangly new growth, and I pulled out some more slate pieces from the culvert which helped me to lay out the edge of the path from the deck to the greenhouse. Speaking of the greenhouse, it now has some magnets to help keep the door closed, but failed an important test this morning when I found frost on the inside of the panes. This will be mitigated by me closing the gaps on the bottom where it was raised on one side to level the structure. That's a project perhaps for tomorrow. A trip to Target (an hour away, ugh) yielded an outdoor power strip which will enable me to add a small heater as well as the warm seed mat that is just waiting for the potting table.

Oh yeah, that happened too. Five days after I ordered the potting table the supplier finally let me know that it was back-ordered and they were cancelling my order. Son of a b*tch! I got that e-mail at 2am and promptly got up and ordered another one, but it won't be here until later of course so things are still on hold. We're expecting some nicer weather early in the week, so I might try to at least sow some seed trays on the deck in anticipation of getting to use the greenhouse once it does arrive, but it's going to be a crazy busy week so I'm not holding my breath.