Hello everyone and welcome to my follow up post about my attempt at an indoor herb garden! It was a really interesting experience, and I learned a lot that I am excited to share with y’all. Although things didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped, I still think the experiment was a success. That does mean it will be a short recap as there wasn’t a ton of success 😊
I was able to get the basil, lemon grass, and thyme to sprout and grow large enough (or so I thought) to grow in the jars with water.
Turns out they were not quite large enough to really grow in the water. They did all grow roots in the water which was really cool to see, but it seemed more about surviving rather than thriving.
The reason I think they plants were not large enough to do well in the water is because of the experience we had with a bunch of green onions purchased from the grocery store. I needed some green onions for dinner one night but did not need the entire bunch. I decided to put the remaining green onions (that were much more mature than any of the plants I started) in a jar of water to see what would happen. I was very happy to see them grow the way that I expected all of the plants to grow! I was able to use and regrow them several times! I’ve also had some success with this method and parsley.
I had a feeling that I needed to grow the plants to a larger size. That would have required me to transplant them into larger containers though, and I was feeling really lazy. I also was eager to get them out of the dirt and move on with the experiment. I understood the risk and accept full responsibility for the results 😁
So where do we go from here? I could grow some plants again, but this time wait until the plants are larger before putting them in the jars with water. That’s not super appealing to me since it is a decent amount of work to start seedlings and we still don’t have a lot of growing space indoors. When we are living up on the homestead and growing plants outdoors I’ll be able to let the plants get plenty big before taking cuttings to keep in water. It should also be a good option to keep herbs fresh that are going to seed and I don’t need them immediately. Until that time, my plan and what I recommend you do if interested, is to by bunches of herbs from the grocery store and keep those in jars of water to extend their usable life. Give it a go and let me know in the comments what works and what doesn’t!
Take care out there!