My mowing meditation this morning – I was thinking about the basil and macadamia pesto post and how much basil we have harvested this summer. Pesto on toast for breakfast and on sandwiches and wraps for lunch, pesto pasto, pesto pizza sauce, basil in polenta and moussaka and fish cakes and quiches, gorgeous tomato and basil and bocconchini salads. I think if I had had just one pot to garden this summer, I would have planted it in early Spring with a sweet basil bush – the one indispensable ingredient at the bottom of a whole season of healthy eating.
Which of course led me to thinking, if I had just one pot to plant now, what would I be planting in it? After an hour of mowing, I settled on flat leaf parsley. It is the thing I think would be most difficult to buy, that I would use daily if I had it sitting on the step or the windowsill in a pot, and that I would most miss if I didn’t have it. Tabbouleh and green salad, omelette and quiche, kangaroo stroganoff and tagine, maidanosalata sauce for fritters and patties, fish cakes, winter soups and stews and casseroles.
I would choose a deep pot, preferably a ceramic one – parsley has a single deep tap root and it doesn’t like too hot a soil. I would fill it with a mixture of compost and creek sand and feed it every couple of weeks with worm pee tea. Leafy greens like a high nitrogen diet but parsley needs very good drainage. I would put it in a sunny spot and be careful not to overwater – it will cope with drying out better than waterlogging.
Which then led me to thinking, the hardest part would be getting the one seedling. Buy a whole packet of seed? Find flatleaf parsley seedlings (hard) and ditch most of the punnet? Maybe I should start a random act of kindness parsley in a pot giveaway.
So, fellow gardening bloggers – if you had just one pot to garden, what would you plant now?
I’d be planting parsley also…. It’s rediculously expensive to buy and so easy to grow in pots. I love Tabbouleh and it’s something I often make when the fridge is empty. or would I choose mint? Or lemongrass? I love my herbal tea. I’m glad I don’t really have to choose just one pot as i don’t think I could decide.
Parsley for me too. Mint is nice, and thyme is tempting, but it’s parsley because I put it in everything. Salad stews pastsa soups stocks eggs. But as possums are eating all of mine I may have to try some pots and put them in hard to get places 😉
Mine would be chives.
Our basil has gone mad this year too. I’m not really sure why – even after flowering, and long after the flower spikes are dead, it’s still producing large, aromatic leaves. I’ve taken to using the basil and parsley as salad leaves!
I’m still a bit new at all this, so I have no idea what will and won’t grow in a pot! But I recently decided that I wanted to grow wild rocket, and have this fanciful idea of going out each day with scissors and snipping off what I need. Would that work in a pot?
Wild rocket (aragula) was on my short list too, a close contender. It’s a short lived perennial so a really good choice for a permaculture garden. And I love the flavour, so much more interesting than annual rocket. It doesn’t bear a huge amount – you don’t get the quantity you get from rocket – but it should do fine in a pot, and you should be able to snip a few leaves a day once it is established.
Spinach!
Yep, I’d pick spinach too if I were a bit further south. This far north (northern NSW) I have to leave it till late in autumn/early winter to plant spinach. But it really rivals parsley for the yield from a pot and the number of recipes you can make with it, and you just can’t make without it.
Lettuce. Definately lettuce. Grows well in a pot and tastes better than the store bought stuff.
Basil at my house is loved to death when in a pot. Watered, cuddled and then watered again. Does much better in the garden.
True. The loose leaf lettuce from the shops is all hydroponic I think – tastes like it anyhow. And it does really make a sandwich.