I feel for a scam at the Farmer’s Market last fall.
I’m not the most organized when it comes to vegetables and spices. I buy as small an amount as possible, but I always seem to let it go to waste. I don’t know how many times I’ve bought a head of garlic, used some cloves, and then watched the rest sprout tendrils and try to grow out of my kitchen. I don’t like to eat garlic that is attempting to grow stuff.
I realized that I use parsley very rarely, but I do use it for the occasional recipe. Every time I purchase it from the grocery store I buy a bunch, use a few sprigs and watch the rest go bad before I need to repeat the process. So when I saw that I could buy an entire living parsley plant from the Farmer’s Market, I thought it was a great idea. I could grow the parsley I need. So I plunked down the money for the plant and took it home.
Since it was several parsley plants, I split the bunch with my mother. I took some dirt from her dirt pile to replace the missing earth so the pot could still be level.
The problem is that either I can’t keep a plant alive, or that parsley traditionally dies in winter. (Hence the scam.)
So I was left with a pot of earth. Since I had a head of garlic on my kitchen counter doing its usual thing, I dumped it in the pile of earth. It grew quickly and looked like it was well on its way to… something. Then all of a sudden, all the green withered and died. Did I water it too much, or too little?
I have a poinsettia that I’ve kept alive for a year and a half. I’m proud of that. However, it fell over a month ago and several branches broke off. As an experiment, I took some of the broken branches and planted them in the pot. Usually they never take, but I used recent growths, and they haven’t died yet. They don’t make roots, but I think the two have grown bigger leaves.
Then, at about the same time, something else green sprouted from the pot. I have no idea what it is though. Is it parsley? Is it some garlic that survived from a root? Is it something that was growing in my mother’s dirt pile? Who knows!? I’m not a gardener. But it is getting bigger and trying to get to the window.
To add to the fun, I bought some parsley seeds and dumped them in last week. I’m assuming that is what sprouted there overnight.