Harvesting the garlic

[KFCarter]

Ahhh, rosemary too?... you have treasure growing in that ground of yours!

[Bugbear]

Yes, rosemary does very well out here if it is planted in the ground; in a container, it doesn't do well.

I used to have my whole yard, front and back, planted with crops in raised beds, and I had hanging gardens above some of that. Other plants were under fruit and nut trees.

The key to it all is to make lots and lots of compost.

[Iain Robb]

Yes, rosemary does very well out here if it is planted in the ground; in a container, it doesn't do well.

I've found that rosemary does just fine in containers, indoors at least. It's one of the herbs that I just can't seem to kill in our kitchen/dining room herb garden. Tarragon, now, that's another story altogether ...

[piperdbh]

My rosemary does best when I ignore and abuse it. I tried regular watering, fertilizing, good dirt, the whole bit. The rosemary died. I got some more and stuck it in the ground and left it alone, and now I have two waist-high bushes of it that smell really nice and are handy to the kitchen. I like to break off a piece and lay it on the dash of my car. In the summer, the warmth of the car wakes up the smell of the rosemary and makes the drive home more pleasant.
Try purple basil in your pesto, in addition to or replacing green basil. It's a whole different taste.
Does anyone here live near Gilroy, CA? I drove through there last July, and would like to be there when the garlic gets harvested, just to smell it.

[Bugbear]

I don't have any windows with good lighting here in my aluminum box, so I really don't have any plants indoors.

I like to put rosemary plants in cinder blocks, and that is kind of like an open bottom container. once the roots have grown down into the ground, I only water the ground around the cinder block. You can line up the cinder blocks in a row and make areally neat hedge wall, or one side of a raised bed garden for pest management.

[Iain Robb]

I planned to pulverize purple pesto and pass it to pals, but practically all of my purple plants grew green.

[Bugbear]

That's ok; there's nothing wrong with green pesto.

I have grown purple okra, but it tastes the same as the green okra.

[Iain Robb]

Precisely. I would've preferred purple pesto perhaps, and planned for prodigious provisions of purple plants, but when it grew green I gladly ground it into glorious green pesto.

[Bugbear]

There are purple hot peppers, you could turn up the pesto a notch with some heat.

[Bugbear]

I spent part of the evening extracting a clump of chives that were growing in a cinderblock and very much in need of dividing. I had to cut them out of the block with a turkey knife, but now they are in a much roomier hanging basquet. That's hanging on a front porch type of area along with several other plants. They are in columns of hanging basquets.