Friday, October 26, 2012

Potting and Repotting

During the spring I planted a lot of different seeds & bulbs and waited for results... I've never been the handiest when it comes to plants.  Amazingly enough, nature worked its wonders and voila, I had flowers, veggies, & herbs!  I've written a couple posts about my progress, so I thought I'd give you another update.  The bulbs of gladioli didn't exactly work out, the leaves popped up but the flowers never did... apparently they needed a lot more sunlight than they were receiving.  The mismatched pots full of seeds did the same, lots of leaves (still pretty) but no flowers... maybe it was already too late in the season.  The basil my daughter and I planted took off, I was really impressed, they looked & smelled wonderful.  And the starter sets for tomatoes & carrots also sprouted.  But then the summer came as well as the puppy and needless to say the plants weren't getting the attention they needed.  Realizing the weather was changing and the cold was on the way I knew I should try and salvage what plants I did still have.  My toddler and I headed out to a large plant shop, Coppelmans in Valkenswaard (despite the buckets of rain that day).  I had a general idea of what plants I wanted to replace and which ones I wanted to repot and before I knew it I had racked up a decent bill!  The weather was too bad when we arrived home so we didn't actually get busy potting & repotting until the next morning, but boy did we have fun.  It always gets messy when dirt & a 3yr old are involved in a project.  It had been ages since I repotted a plant, so I took a big risk moving the basil.  But from what I've read they have to come inside for the winter and the container they were in was too large.  I lost one or two plants since the move, but the other 4-5 are doing great.  Since I had left the tomatoes & carrots in the starter pots there was little hope for them, but the tomato plants have seemed to shape up since their move... still not sure about the carrots though.  I filled the gaping hole where the basil had been with some kind of silver grayish plant, the sign said they'd hold up through the winter (and they matched my new grey, brown, & black wooden pots).  I yanked up the remnants of the gladioli, dumped out the other flowers from the mismatched pots, and then went to work on some type of pepper plant I purchased.  They add color, tying in the red & yellow from other decorations on the terrace, and they were pretty easy to put in their new pots.  As of now, I'm quite happy with the results, and hope everything holds up through the winter.  And also hoping I can find space for the ones the will not survive the cold somewhere in our already full apartment! 
(When I snapped the pictures the plants were still waiting for a good watering, since then they have found their places on shelves & tables around our terrace.)

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