Kitchen herbs

This is my rendition of a little herb garden I saw on Pinterest.    Started with some tin cans, and spray painted them red.  Drilled holes in the bottom for drainage.  After a couple of weeks, I covered all but the top strip with painter's tape. I waited primarily because I was busy, but waiting helps the first coat of paint to cure so that the painter's tape doesn't peel it off.

The next step was to spray-paint the top strip with chalkboard paint.  (Have I mentioned that I'm in LOVE with chalkboard paint?)

After that layer dried, I peeled off the tape, filled the cans with potting soil, and planted herb seeds.  Set in a sunny kitchen window, and watered occasionally, they soon sprouted in the cheery picture at the beginning.  These are almost ready to start using!

Future Food!

Got the computer back up and running, so I have a bunch of posts to get caught up on.  Back in January, I started thinking about the future garden, and all things green.  Our local recycling center quit taking milk cartons, so I started saving them.  I cut off the tops, and saved the bottoms.  It took about two months for us to save enough 1/2 gallon milk cartons, and orange juice cartons for this project.  Of course, there's only two of us, so with a larger family, this would happen faster.

Then the first week of March, I started tomato seedlings (three different varieties) and peppers (two varieties) in Jiffy pellets in a bright window.  By this past Saturday, they looked like this:

Time to transplant!  Using the milk cartons, I started by drilling three holes in the bottom of each:

(And if you want to know where to get the CUTEST little tough pink drill in the whole wide world, check out my Tomboy Tools website at:  www.tomboytools.info/bevbafus )

I don't worry too much about the tomatoes getting leggy - since each time you transplant, you can bury the stem up to the leaves.  You can even pinch off a few leaves, and bury more stem.  The tomatoes will grow roots from the stem, and become even more hearty.

Remember to label all your seedlings with the variety.  Of course, you can do this with a Sharpie or even masking tape, but the geek in me has to do this with technology, so out came the Brother P-touch:

I place all the milk cartons on some old lunch trays that I found at a yard sale, and they are sitting on a cool rack found at another sale.  I take them outside on sunny days.  These will probably go into the garden in late May. 

The seedlings have grown about three inches just since I transplanted on Saturday.  Can't wait for the yummy tomatoes and peppers!