Spearmint dies in freak accident, and other news.

The cut spearmint stems are no more: A little over a month ago I had posted about how well the cut spearmint stems were doing.
Up to the time of their death, they had occupied a glass jar that adorned a glass shelf positioned above my cactus arrangement, where the cut stems were thriving and shooting beautiful healthy roots. On July 17, the neighbors' kid's football hit the glass shelf, which gave way under the sudden blow, dropping the glass jar. The spearmint stems met their premature demise on the thorny surface of the barrel cactus (Echinocactus grusonii).

Herb Garden, Interrupted - A Revisit

It has been well over a couple of weeks since I started my container herb garden, and I had been so looking forward to following up on that first post with updates of my then-presumed would-be-lush garden.
Regrettably, this is not the case - it is a bumpy road to herbal abundance: the spearmint seems infested with one or likely more diseases and/or pests, and I (gasp) caused the thyme to dry out for fear of overwatering it.
Nonetheless, I am hoping the garden and I will rebound soon from our loss.
In this post I describe the problems I faced (introducing a couple of new plant pests), my recovery efforts so far (introducing a propagation technique), and also update on aspects that are pleasantly going on track.

Starting a(n) Herb Garden

One of my food-growing plans has always been starting a small herb garden that would provide a zesty fresh supply for my culinary needs; but I mostly craved it for the scented display of these fragrant plants. The endeavor is also exciting because of the various possiblities it allows: the size and shape of the container, and the number and types of herbs planted are all variables that offer endless combinations.

Setting up a small container garden of herbs is easy and pretty straight forward. In this post I describe how I started mine.