Garden Maintenance

Besides American Girl dolls, one of my passions is gardening. Whether it's indoors or out. I really love plants, trying to understand them and most importantly, making them grow. I'm lucky enough to have some boxes which I'm able to garden in freely and I have really taken to enjoying them. I thought I'd share some pictures of my herb garden box, and also what I've learned in the two seasons that I've been able to enjoy it's bounty.

It must have been late spring 2007 when I planted my herb box. I had been keeping an herb garden in pots and I had noticed that as the season progressed the herbs weren't doing as nicely as I had hoped. I knew that it was much better to put them in the ground and let come back stronger and better the next year.

The layout for the garden was simple enough. The box was square and I wanted the garden to look tidy so I planted 9 herbs. Three rows of three containing: 3 types of Lavender, A silver leafed and also lemon Thyme, a Spearmint, Sage, Oregano and creeping Rosemary. This year they all returned and I decided that I had enough room to increase the number of herbs to 13 with three new Rosemary Plants and one new Lemon Verbena.

The biggest change I've contemplated with the herb box is removing the Spearmint entirely and relocating it to its own container. I was readying the beds for winter, doing a little last minute trimming and weeding and discovered that the spearmint had sort of secretly taken over the herb box with its web of underground roots.

Luckily I think I got to the problem in time, and was able to remove most of the excessive root growth before it started to harm the root systems of the other plants. But now that I know this little booger grows with underground roots, I don't want the same problem to happen again next year. Which leaves the new problem of where to put this lovable pest? I'll let you know how that goes, but for now you can see how nicely the herb garden has filled in this year and also just how invasive the underground roots can be!



This box filled in so nicely, but it really is time for a trim, you can see how the thyme is starting to cascade over the edge of the box, but you can also see it's woody growth, not very attractive.



Nothing is more pestilent than underground roots, because you think you've got them all and them wham bam there's waaay more for you to pick. Look at how the roots just moved right over and tried to snuff out my beloved lavender (which I like more than Spearmint by the way).