Basil & Broccoli

September 20, 2023

This past summer we started to explore gardening and growing our own crops with the limited space we have in good ol’ Aggie Village. Our back porch allows us to have a raised garden box and store our bikes and grill. We planted broccoli, green onions, and carrots. The broccoli seems to be growing and now we have two heads that are the size of one floret. Each week we are confused as to why one leaf on each broccoli plant turns purple, flips over, and dies. We are considering whether we are watering too much or too little.

Inside, we have pots filled with basil, oregano, and cilantro. And because I killed Ferry, we are now propagating a new pineapple plant. Update: the propagated pineapple plant failed, and we are still pineapple-less.

MANY MOONS LATER…(I began this blog post without ever finishing it)

At the time I began this blog entry our broccoli seemed well enough, and our basil plants were gorgeous. Our basil plants are still gorgeous, but our broccoli plants have been murdered by grasshoppers and aphids. We were forced to cut them down and only the carrots remain in our garden box. Next summer, we will pursue renting a plot of land and growing a bigger garden, as well as the raised bed on our back porch. Unfortunately, broccoli will probably not make the lineup as it was a real pain in the butt this summer.

I want to put either strawberry plants or flowers in our raised bed next summer; having grown up surrounded by flowers, I long to look out our back window and see colorful heads of petals grinning back at me. Strawberries are delicious and the convenience of having them right outside is very appealing.

Our house plants caught a bad case of the fungus flies. We have been using neem oil to manage them, but it makes me worried to use any version of a pesticide on our herbs. Our Monstera plant is growing in size and it is time to replace its smaller pot with a larger one. Our snake plant is indestructible, and we bought more low-light plants because our apartment feels like a cave sometimes.

I love houseplants so much. I dream to own a giant fiddle leaf fig. Our future home must have an atrium where I can collect such green beauties.

Our Strawberry Plants

March 10, 2024

We finally got around to repotting the Monstera plant, and in addition, we repotted two Pothos plants and another succulent-looking plant we purchased from a nursery in the fall. We bought a spray bottle of peppermint and rosemary essential oils in the hopes we can control our fungus fly population; the other pesticide we were using was harsher and seemed dangerous to having in our living space.

Calvin is now researching the best grow lights to use for our indoor herb garden. We do not get enough light in Aggie Village to sustain a bunch of herbs, and there are some pretty cool models of herb gardens with lights online--all of them very expensive, of course.

I finally got the fiddle leaf plant I have been dreaming off! It is quite stout, but I am sure it will grow to be a large, exotic tree in no time.

Herb Seedlings in 3D Printed Seed Starters

February 11, 2025

Well, I have quite the bummer update: the fiddle leaf plant is dead, the strawberries we planted never yielded any crops, and the herbs attracted too many fungus flies that we gave up on the basil dream.

Over the last two years, our pothos, snake, monstera, and unknown succulent plants have thrived the most.