I have a problem with plants. No matter how robust they seem when they are delivered into my custody, how sturdily healthily green, my black thumb will despatch them in a matter or days. Mostly I don’t care very much. Plants are not really my thing. They get deluge or drought according to my memory on any given day. I see no point in getting attached to something that will die sooner rather than later. My two cats at least have the sense to remind me vociferously of their need for food and water. They thrive. Anything green I come into contact with seems silently to shrivel and die. I even wonder if I might even be able to hire myself out to rid places of Japanese Knotweed such is my grim reaper effect on anything verdant.
One thing though I would like to be able to get right. Herbs. I love cooking – although the results tend to be somewhat variable – and I fantasise about luxuriously fresh herbs of the kind that would make Jamie Oliver wilt with envy. But our kitchen is small and the only feasible place within easy reach whilst cooking is on the window sill. Nice and bright and sunny during the day. Frostbitten and damp at night. Not to mention right next to the sink for that sauna effect. Hardly the hot dry conditions that the herb pots’ labels say nine out of ten Mediterranean plants prefer.
Ever optimistic in the face of experience I buy myself a set of pretty planters and some Baby Bio compost. I like this compost. It lures me with impossible promises and before and after pictures showing thriving plants growing in it. Plus it’s a sort of desiccated disc that is very light and easy to carry home from the shop. You are supposed to then add a carefully measured amount of water and Ziploc it shut. Following the instructions carefully, with a bit of squidging, the contents miraculously swell up to become perfectly serviceable compost. My father in law is visiting and comes in at this point to inspect proceedings. As he is a man who can coax anything to grow I take his advice and go and find some bits of stone to put into base of the pots to make drainage, rather than just lazily stuffing the compost in as I had originally planned. Then, under his expert tutelage I gently transfer the herbs to their new homes. I even trim away the dead herbs that are gradually choking their hardier brethren.
Once I’ve finished there’s not much left. A few sad green stems struggling nobly to survive. In theory their odds should be good. New compost. Dainty re-potting to avoid root damage. Tender care taken to avoid splashing water on their delicate leaves as I give them a proper wetting. I eye them dubiously. They are practically wilting at my approach and I think dinner tonight had better use what’s left of them. Perhaps my original solution of getting new herb pots weekly along with the supermarket order is more practical after all for me. Compost promises or no I grudgingly admit that my fantasy of lushly flourishing herbs along my windowsill may have to remain just that. Experience in the face of experience…
