aphid update

Well, my ladybug friend did not kill the aphids. There are still some lurking around my poor little basil. But my ladybug friend's children might! I found ladybug eggs that will hatch ladybug larvae that also eat aphids. Them little tykes plus a little soapy water might save the day! Since I've started spraying the plants with very dilute dish soap, there are a lot less of the little buggers. We'll see.

aphids...

Two of my basil plants have aphid infestations. AAAAHHHH!!!!! So far I've just plucked off very infested leaves and cleaned off the sugary trails that they leave. I knew when I noticed the little buggers that it would be hard to get rid of them without pesticides and stuff but thankfully, today, I found a little ally. While squishing a smaller than usual morning crop of aphids, I found a ladybug under one of the leaves. I don't know how these guys got into my second-story window, but it's been an interesting little twist I wasn't expecting.

basil pesto: take one!

Finally busted out the food processor to make some pesto! Pretty yummy with all that parmesan, pine nuts and basil but I kinda wish I had a mezzaluna so that I could be like an italian grandmother. For future reference, I would put a lot less olive oil into the pesto. Instead, I would put it on top of the pesto to prevent browning in the fridge. I guess browning is one of those things you gotta look out for in fresh pesto.

Speaking of freshness, I bet you wonder about the basil plants from whence the basil came from. I pinched off the tops of a lot of the plants (I have ten or so at the moment) and collected around two cups of basil leaves. After collecting the leaves, some of the plants looked like bald little buggers. Look at what the oldest basil plant looks like now:
PS See the jar of alfalfa sprouts sunning beside the cut basil plant?

basil - wk 4

I'm thinking in another week or two, I'll be able to make a nice big batch of pesto! This particular plant is my favorite. We'll call him Guiseppe since he's Genovese. Guiseppe was sown at the same time as his siblings but he's leaps and bounds bigger than his siblings. He's actually made up of four plants, one of which will soon be - in Sicilian terms - sleeping with the fishies. There's not enough room in the pot for four plants. Three's pushing it. I'd love to have bigger pots so that the basil can really spread their roots, but I don't want to spend any more. G's lovely blue pot was found on the street with a "free" sign on it.

Two of G's siblings have found new homes. I brought one over to Berit's place on Saturday. We'll call that one Umberto. I'm sure Umberto will grow to be a big bushy basil! The second basil plant I'll call Cristo since I strapped him to a fence in the alley behind my building. Since he's at the top of a fence, Cristo gets oodles more sunlight than all the other plants. I consider it a small scientific experiment to see how much the sun will help basil growth.

Things I've learned about basil farming this week: though lots of nitrogen can make big beautiful leaves, it can compromise the basil flavor. So G and his siblings are going to get balanced fertilizer from now on. Root damage from transplanting can really stunt the growth of the plant but not really kill it.

basil - wk3

So the basil has been planted in eight separate planters. I will probably start giving some of them away as hostess gifts :) I can't believe that they're actually thriving under the supervision of my black thumb. Though it might be because I am so obsessed about how they're growing that I stare at them for half an hour each day. They can feel my brain waves willing them into growing faster.

Notes: It's genovese basil. I pinched off the apical growth on most of the plants after the second true-leaves. From accidentally breaking off a branch on the big basil plant (furthest in the picture) I've learned that pinching the stem off exactly at the leaf node (thus not leaving a branch above that leaf) keeps new growth from happening at that point.

basil in self-watering containers

So I've finally found time to make images of this basil project of mine. The first true leaves have sprouted and I figured this is as good a time as any to post about my burgeoning green pinkie (thumb's still quite black, I killed the cilantro plant that's the backdrop for some of the basil pictures). Considering my mother can kill plants with her (literally) withering glance, it's pretty amazing that I haven't totally killed these seedlings. I'm pretty sure this luck in gardening is due to the self-watering containers I've made for the seedlings...

These self-watering containers are made of 2-liter soda bottles according to Topper's website. One of the perks of working with electronics is the multitudes of soldering irons lying around. I then found that the bottles filled with soil and stagnant water to be a little unsightly since they were going on my livingroom windowsill. So, I cut 1" wide strips of plastic grocery bags (white and blue from Albertson's; orange-ish from Safeway) at a bias and knit up some bottle cozies. The orange-ish cozy is knit with a horizontal herringbone pattern discovered on Ravelry. The white and blue cozy is done in stockingette with short-row shaping to make the wavy scallops.

I found that one bottle worked well to house around 3/4 of a gallon of soil (which, according to the internets, is a good amount for a single basil plant). I refill the reservoir with water every couple of days, though this last weekend (2 weeks after planting) I scrubbed out some greenish gook before refilling. I'll start pinching off the smaller seedlings soon. Pesto, here I come!

More pictures to come as me pretties mature...