The aerogarden has new seedpods in it. No, nothing bad happened. In fact …

Dill, parsley, and basil transplanted from the aerogarden

The plants got so big we were having trouble eating them quickly enough. Well, really, that was the dill. We like dill, but not to the point of eating it every day. So after some consideration, I decided to try to transplant them out of the aerogarden, and reseed it with herbs we eat more quickly. It’s recommended when you change out your aerogarden pods to change all your plants at once. I discovered why when I took the plants out. All the roots get tangled together in the bowl of the aerogarden. Trying to add a new plant to an existing root mass would be difficult; it would probably suffer from the competition too much and not thrive.

I transplanted the herbs yesterday and started hardening them off this morning. The dill and parsley look like they’re doing very well. I discovered in this process that we have five dill plants. Oops. No wonder we weren’t eating it fast enough. The basil is going through a bit of transplant shock and seemed unsure about the amount of sun it got this morning. I think it will perk back up in a day or two. Fingers crossed.

So what’s in the new aerogarden setup? More basil, because we’ll eat it constantly, and it doesn’t quite grow fast enough for how much we eat. Chives, because we also eat green onions constantly. And thyme, which I do have outside, but it dies back in winter. It’d be nice to have some year-round. We’ll see how everything does. I understand that most of the plants are supposed to have about a six to eight month lifespan in the aerogarden.

Out in the garden itself, I’ve planted some lettuces and arugula, fennel and beets. We have some arugula sprouts, and some volunteer green onions and garlic chives from last year. The thyme has new green leaves. I wasn’t sure it’d survive the winter, and I cut it way back on the theory that it wouldn’t, but apparently it’s a stubborn little thing, so good!

It’s still just a touch cold for tomatoes. I’m thinking I’ll get to plant some next week, after this last round of storms rolls through. I desperately want some good tomatoes. I may at some point get one of the big aerogardens for tomatoes through the winter, and try out some of the varieties from the Dwarf Tomato Project to see how they do in it.