I Started new Herbs from seeds last week.

[Gary350]

About the 1st of June I sprinkled a hand full of Basil seeds on the ground in a small 6" diameter circle and covered them with sand. The plants all came up in a few days. Now it looks like a big shrub. Wow the smell is strong. I can smell it 50 ft away. Too bad this smell won't kill mosquitoes, it's about to kill me. LOL. It is a pretty over powering smell from 5 ft away.

Last week I got the idea to do the same thing with several other herbs. Wal Mart has seeds now 99 cents per pack so I dumped a whole pack of seeds in each 6" circle and covered them with sand and kept them wet. All the herbs are coming up.

I used the Chinese water method to keep the soil wet. Poke a small pin hole in a 1 gallon plastic milk jug full of water and set a jug next to each plot of seeds. They stay wet all day in the hot sun and they all come up quick in this warm weather.

I will have 7 more herb shrubs in about a month.

[rainbowgardener]

Interesting... keep us posted on what happens when they get bigger. It seems like being so overcrowded in the pots they would be expected to start strangling each other out. But we are always open to experiments here, especially when someone else does them for us!

[Gary350]

I don't have the seeds planted in pots they are on the ground in my herb garden. So far the basil is doing fine with lots of plants all crowded together.

I got this idea after looking at the herbs that I bought in pots. The pots have a lot of plants it them. It looks like someone sprinkled a lot of seeds on the potting soil because there are a lot of plants growing in each pot. The oregano has 11 plants in one pot. The Hysops has 5 plants in one pot. If it works for them it should work for me.

Example. I plants a whole package of parsley seeds in a 6" circle. Without counting ever single plant it appears there are probably 25 plants coming up. I planted a whole package of chives, too many plants to count. I planted a whole package of 5 other herbs one appears to have about 30 plants coming up the others have less. I don't recall how many seeds were in each package of seeds. It appears to me all the seeds did not grow.

[rainbowgardener]

ground is better than pots, none the less your plants are very crowded. It's not so bad now when they are little, but what happens when they are big? Anyway, as I said, it's an experiment and you can let us know how it all works out....