Chicken soup and other things

I love chicken soup in any kind of weather. Given my mass quantities of fennel, is as you see here, a primary ingredient, roots included. Also floating is fresh basil and fresh bay laurel, oregano, all from my garden. I don't have many onions.

This is a dragonwing begonia. I got it in a 4 inch pot on impulse.

Here's the same pot about 3 weeks ago. I think it is twice as large.

These are I believe, the same variety of mint, peppermint I think. I hope you notice that the sprig in my hand is greener. The pale mint is from a planting from last year while the green was potted this year. Clearly the old pot is becoming deficient of some things including nitrogen. I just added a little bit of dried cow blood to help it get back some vigor, but it probably needs some more help.

I suppose I won't talk about soil in depth here, but I do encourage all to look closely at your plants as they can't tell you what their needs are. Testerday somebody found this blog after doing a search for "enriching poor soil." Today it seems that this blog is #2 for that inquiry of blogs.

In this case the question is "fertilizing potted plants." There are many possible solutions, so don't take mine as the final answer but I occasionally lime my pots a bit, because the soil has a high organic content which turns acidic as it breaks down. Sometimes I fertilize with a seaweed mixture and very often I use some bokashi juice. If it is a plant with certain specific needs I may add some other things. Also, as the soil breaks down, the soil level in the pot goes down. I generally top it with some compost.

I have noticed that this year my beds seem to be in better shape, my plants seem to be less needy than they were last year. I guess I am doing something right.

Here we have a bunch of chamomile that is ready for harvest. Notice the round yellow balls with the white petals tucked under. When your chamomile blooms look like that, it's tea time! Pop them off and either make some tea or put them in a brown paper bag to dry out.

Pittsburgh Farmer's Market

In the lower sidebar, I list the farmer's market as a gardening source. A lot of farmers not only bring fresh local produce but they sell locally grown garden and house plants. The lady that brings us fresh eggs from her farm also sells pelletized chicken manure. The fresh locally grown garlic may be planted in your own garden in the fall.

In theory I try to start my vegetable plants myself but this doesn't always work out. Plus sometimes they have things I didn't think about before or maybe I just love buying plants.

What you see here is some red swiss chard. This is beautiful in a garden and very good to eat too. I honestly cannot remember whether I got this as a seedling at the farmer's market.

Seedlings from other sources often come from very far away, especially when I get them from home depot. I have bought seedlings that were shipped from California and Oregon by mail. This is an improvement over getting the actual vegetables shipped from 1,000s of miles but I am doing better if I get them locally.