Retail therapy...
...in a very non-consumerist way



Last Saturday, I enlisted Bruce's help in getting me out to Richter's Herbs with the intent of starting the herb garden I've been dreaming of for the past two years.

I ended up going home with 9 plants in total: wasabi, coriander, Alpine strawberry, Pistou basil, compact English thyme, garlic chives, "chocolate" mint, Blue Boy rosemary and dill. I also picked up a small steel "tub" container, which I thought I could repot at least two of my new plants in.

A quick trip out to Canadian Tire yielded no more pots of interest, but I was able to secure a wireframe "box" which I could use to hold pots over our sunroom railing, a garden shovel and potting soil.

On Sunday, Bruce kindly ferried me back out to Richter's so that I could get another 3 steel containers — to hold 6 more plants in — plus one terra cotta pot for the strawberries (which I'm keeping separate 'cause I lurves strawberries).

Monday was a busy day for me, so the only progress I made on the herb garden was to wash and sterilize all the containers.

To make up for Monday's relative slack-itude, I went to Chinatown over lunch on Tuesday and picked up 3 oblong plates to use as drain trays (I had to get the fourth yesterday, 'cause it completely slipped my mind that I had 4 steel containers). Upon returning home, I punched holes in the bottoms of the steel containers using the super-high-tech hammer-and-nail method, repotted all of the plants and placed them in their respective spots, either on the sunroom floor on in the railing box. An impromptu photography session resulted in the accompanying photos.

A trip out to Lee Valley yesterday meant a haul of copper pot labels and barnyard tea (which is a less-ucky way of saying manure tea — composted manure from which a liquid fertilizer is made).

The end result is that, about $100 and 5 days later, I have a live herb garden ready for further culinary experimentation. So far, I've nibbled (a lot) on the "chocolate" mint, which really does have a chocolatey quality, was blown away by the intensity of the garlic chives and used a large sprig of rosemary with a garlic-marinated lamb dish I made for last night's dinner. As long as I'm going to try my hand at having potted plants, I figure, they might as well be practical.