Sounds like you’ve got a good handle on it. I would like to grow more stuff, but I can barely raise an anemic looking bushel of oregano. All brown thumbs, I’m afraid.
Nope, I’m also a brown thumb due to having the attention span of a newt :) but I’m trying to figure out a way to make that tendency work anyway. Lazy indoor gardening. $10mil idea, which I’ll never profit from :)
If I can, literally everyone can (with freely available plans I’m developing! Because I like creating but the follow through… oof, nope…)
If you want to grow herbs, specifically, tho, I highly recommend water beads. You can get them on amazon for water bead blaster things, some 4x120,000 for under $10, which makes like a couple gallons of beads? They are also available at various retailers if you don’t want to support Amazon, expensive when bought for plants, cheap when bought as a toy. Go figure. You can mix your powder nutrient solution (10/10/10, with whatever additional nutrients you may need) with water, soak the beads in that water, plant the stuff in the beads, and then just sort of let it do its own thing, top it off with plain water as needed to retain the volume. If the herbs die, meh, just extract the nutrients from the beads with distilled/ro water for a day or so, let them dry, remix the nutrient and plant new ones!
You’ll get a good feel for what plants need and how lazy you can be with them. The water beads dry out as they are used up, but don’t really evaporate, so it’s a super clear sign to replenish them, with none of the disadvantage of organic soils (poor drainage, poor moisture retention, nutrient overload, etc.)
I’m planning to try the beads as a medium for strawberry rhizomes in the spring… I think they will do a decent job for some of the everbearing varieties. Or they won’t _.
I really need a friend who can keep a schedule so I can try my ideas… 😅
Sounds like you’ve got a good handle on it. I would like to grow more stuff, but I can barely raise an anemic looking bushel of oregano. All brown thumbs, I’m afraid.
Nope, I’m also a brown thumb due to having the attention span of a newt :) but I’m trying to figure out a way to make that tendency work anyway. Lazy indoor gardening. $10mil idea, which I’ll never profit from :)
If I can, literally everyone can (with freely available plans I’m developing! Because I like creating but the follow through… oof, nope…)
If you want to grow herbs, specifically, tho, I highly recommend water beads. You can get them on amazon for water bead blaster things, some 4x120,000 for under $10, which makes like a couple gallons of beads? They are also available at various retailers if you don’t want to support Amazon, expensive when bought for plants, cheap when bought as a toy. Go figure. You can mix your powder nutrient solution (10/10/10, with whatever additional nutrients you may need) with water, soak the beads in that water, plant the stuff in the beads, and then just sort of let it do its own thing, top it off with plain water as needed to retain the volume. If the herbs die, meh, just extract the nutrients from the beads with distilled/ro water for a day or so, let them dry, remix the nutrient and plant new ones!
You’ll get a good feel for what plants need and how lazy you can be with them. The water beads dry out as they are used up, but don’t really evaporate, so it’s a super clear sign to replenish them, with none of the disadvantage of organic soils (poor drainage, poor moisture retention, nutrient overload, etc.)
I’m planning to try the beads as a medium for strawberry rhizomes in the spring… I think they will do a decent job for some of the everbearing varieties. Or they won’t _.
I really need a friend who can keep a schedule so I can try my ideas… 😅