The best laid plans of mice and Neanderthals often go awry 2019

Or “Neanderthal proposes, God disposes”

Or “🎶It’s raining, it’s pouring, the Neanderthal is swearing🎶”

Here’s a video of my nice clear day for planting.

Oh goody- the forecast was wrong.

Well at least I can clear the beds for planting next week.

Nope. See, we’ve had so many damn blown down rotten apples to put in the compost bin…

That there’s no room for the stuff I have to pull out to make room for the vegetables I have to plant, that I can’t plant today anyways.

I… have so much to do and I’m not really able to do any of it.

So after an endless psychic scream, I proceeded to do what I could. It was raining, but not a downpour. So I picked up the soil underneath the potting table and put it in a box that will keep it dry- put a half pallet under the table for my remedies and bucket, and cleared the table for a much needed cleaning.

That’s a really dirty table! Time to get to work under the eyes of my sausageman sign that I will never ever get rid of.

A little elbow grease later everything is all set up for work. I can’t clear the beds for the veggies- but I can pot the herbs under the protection of the house overhang that shelters the table.

It was time to get to business.

My first victims were the flat leaf and curly leaf parsley that I had bought almost a month ago. Mr. Flat leaf looked amazing- Mr. curly looked a little nitrogen deprived.

A side note on curly leaf parsley. I love all parsley but I find curly leaf parsley makes very nice chimichurri. Something about the texture of the leaves perhaps? So I found the text on the label for the curly leaved parsley hilarious. Known for garnishing deviled eggs and an ingredient in tabbouleh? I mean the tabbouleh makes sense but they couldn’t think of another parsley centered dish then “a garnish for deviled eggs”? I mean I make deviled eggs but I’ve never garnished them with parsley! You dust them with paprika duh.

I make some great damn chimichurri though.

Point is I like parsley, and it’s more then a garnish! Get it together plant nursery!

I like it so much I tried growing it from seed in a pot and that was not a success.

It has a really low germination rate even in perfect conditions, so it’s the perfect herb to buy as a plant, since seed sowing is always gonna drive you crazy.

It can be a heavy nitrogen feeder too especially in wet conditions that wash out the soil nutrients. The parsley in my ridiculous herb bed also needs some fertilizer- and a trim.

That bed is a mess, but its not all doom, gloom and crispy thyme in that bed, the native coyote mint (which isn’t even an edible) is doing great! As is the *real* mushroom growing underneath my octopus behind my fake mushroom.

Which is depressing and hilarious in equal measure. San Francisco, fungal nightmare.

ANYWAYS, back in herb land I put the flat leaf type into a larger pot, as it’s label called it parsley “gigante” and I’m not taking any chances. I also said screw it to any sort of fooling around and straight up sprinkled some loam builder into the potting soil. I did that for all my herbs today and I regret nothing. Yeah I know that stuff’s 50% chicken manure. I. don’t. care. The rain’s gonna wash out half the nutrients anyways and this way I don’t have to maxsea as much.

I was going to rip out my dead garlic chives (sob) and put the curly leaf into the pot I painted but there were a few problems.

Firstly I used acrylic paint to paint the damn thing and it was a peeling mess. Second I realized my boss was right about pots with lips- it’s all but impossible to take out a plant to re-pot it- or junk it, because the lip in the pot hold onto the root ball. I had to take a trowel to the root ball in the rain by the compost and… I’m gonna put this one under the greenhouse bench and just make it a problem for another day. I have plenty of cast off pots from things like gallon veggies that will make fine herb pots. I took one for the curly leaf that was once a tomato pot and got on with it.

I’m not really sure if I have viable tarragon or not. I keep clipping the green bits for eggs but the root stems look rough. In drier weather I’m gonna take a hard look at the survivability of both plants, but for now they go on the ground to make room for the other pots.

Onto the mitsuba. I wanted to use a pot that had an attached saucer as that retains more moisture. Not a problem in this weather currently but we will have dry spells- our weather is inherently unpredictable, so I found one of my indoor pots that last housed a satin pothos. Don’t worry, she’s fine, she just needed to go into a narrower pot so she got taken out of the big boy here.

Side note, I know these biodegradable pots are in now, and lord knows I like sustainability but sometimes the roots get so robust you have to crack the pots open and I always ALWAYS cut myself on them. C’mon there has to be a way to make a biodegradable pot that’s not a hazard to ham hands. I am choosing to look on the bright side- the plant is none the worse for wear for having been in a little pot for three weeks, very nice root development.

I just have to mutter “there’s a bright side” to myself enough and maybe I’ll believe it.

Now onto the chervil train. I got three plants when I got them, on account of the fact that chervil is sensitive in the best of conditions and I love it with all my heart. These pots are also former houseplant homes, but sadly housed houseplants that are no longer with us because I re-potted them too soon and you really shouldn’t do that.

RIP Felix and Tina the first. You will be missed.

There were a few problems with my plan however.

And here we have a literal round hole square peg situation. I probably could have shoved it in, but I also have a thousand other random pots I can grab instead.

I had hoped to put two in the one rectangle, but they fit so snugly I wouldn’t have been able to get the soil into the sides without potentially damaging the leaves- chervil is a delicate baby.

This of course was a little bit of a shanda as I’d already put sure start in and I didn’t want to waste it.

A dilemma indeed.

Well. I did have one more herb, that like chervil is a member of the fines herbs…

That’s a modern looking herb pot. Thanks, I hate it! At this point it was getting to late afternoon, which this time of year meant very close to sunset. I had to hurry.

I shoved my three chervil into three random pots under the “eh it’ll be fine” principle, and surveyed the mess I’d made.

Ah yes. The natural state of the potting table. Complete chaos.

But hey! The herb tables look great! Despite the inherent wrongness of the rectangle of chives just… rectangle-ing all over the place- it’s a viable herb area that’s easily picked for all my breakfast, lunch and dinner needs.

And on the floor the losers and potential future winners. I’m gonna pick out the viable stems from the mint messes for new plants, and I do have to see about the troubled tarragon- but the last batch of chives is a goner. I have new chives now… in a rectangle… man that pot bothers me on an existential level.

But no matter. The potting table is clean once more!

But I have Bok choy, broccolini, napa cabbage, kohlrabi and leeks to plant… in beds that I cannot clear, and in weather I cannot plant in. I also have old plants in pots to pull for next month and mint plants to take runners from and…

…

Hey. It’s better then a drought!