A Time for Bigger Pots

The last week or so, my Basil had begun to look a little sickly. The top leaves where the new growth was occuring looked fine, but the older leaves were turning whitish and falling off. At first I suspected that I'd just failed to water enough, since the leaves were also a little droopy.

But more frequent watering wasn't helping.

Next on the list of possibilities, though one I'd feared, was that the roots had run out of room to grow. I'd been dreading it because there's always a risk when transferring to a larger pot that the plant will be unable to take the stress, and die.

But gardening is always a risky enterprise. So today I transferred both my basil and my pomegranite tree into new, larger pots. The basil had indeed become root bound, with clear roots spread all through the bounderies of the old pot, and peeking through the drain-hole on the bottom.



The pomegranite, while the roots were well-developed, only had a few tentative feelers out to the edges of the pot. Still, I wanted to give it plenty of room to grow as we head into the home stretch of the summer.



Speaking of home stretches, and of the sadly inevitable end of summer, I also wanted to try something a bit more exotic. On Saturday I bought a window box, soil, and something entirely new for me: beet seeds.

The beets are supposed to need just 60 days until harvest and will tolerate a little cold weather. I searched a little on-line, and it appears that the absolute end of the growing season in Philadelphia should be the first week of November. Thus, I should have plenty of time, but there's no telling the weather. (I also looked up my zone. My zip code is in zone 6. Thanks American Horticultural Society.)

Planted on Saturday, they've already started to sprout (which is always a little miraculous.) I'll punch the first pigeon I catch munching on a sprout.



The beet seeds were sold under the name American Seed, and should only be about 3 inches when I dig them up.

Finally, you can see in the basil picture that the Sedum is growing, and in fact is preparing to flower. The nasturtiums, however, croaked. I suspect that they didn't get a good enough footing in the unusually hot summer we've been having. Oh well, something to try again next year. I think the Sedum are quite handsome so far, with a lot of red in their thick stalks. And the flowers should attract butterflies and bees when they start blooming.