Beginnings in herb gardening

August 2013.  Some one just asked recently when I started my interest in Herb Gardening and coincidentally I was just going through all my pictures of my plants sorting them out by type of plant.  Looking at the dates on the pictures, I deduced (as memory fails!) that I first started growing herbs around May/June 2011.


I have always enjoyed looking after plants and have had plants in the flat.  But between the constraints on space posed by the flats we have lived in (no balconies, not much light and constantly moving flat) and the constraints on time due to having 3 young children, I never took this hobby seriously.

However, 2011 saw us moving into a more permanent flat with a west facing balcony which got plenty of afternoon sun and a more settled situation on the household front.  In the early summer of that year, I stumbled upon a plant shop (I loved checking them out even if I couldn't buy many plants!) which was selling a few herbs - lemon basil, a compact tomato plant, pandan and rosemary.  I decided to give these a try.  I seem to remember killing off the tomato fairly quickly after eating all the lovely tomatoes.  The lemon basil did quite well until it got attacked by something and I decided to give it a prune.  Sadly, I was unaware that you are not supposed to prune it back too much and so that too did not survive.  The rosemary I think, died during the summer from probably too much water.  The only plant which survived was the pandan.  So not a very good start all in all... a novice with little know how!

This very bad picture from June 2011 shows, L-R, rosemary (just a few sprigs in the corner), pandan, scraggly tomato plants started from seed, and a bushy lemon basil

But my interest was piqued and I was determined to try other things and I quickly tried planting some tomatoes from seed.  Looking back, I realise that trying to grow tomatoes in the HK summer was a bad idea - they don't do well in the heat (and you can see how scraggly they were in the photo above).  But not knowing that at the time, I persisted in the hope that they might develop later.  I recall trying to vary some of the conditions (more light? more water?) and they did survive for a while but after our summer holidays, they had been attacked by something and I had to throw many away.

Tomato plants before we left on holiday

Thankfully, I had also tried growing some seeds which I had taken from store bought tomatoes - these proved hardier and survived the rigours of our summer.  When the weather cooled down in the autumn, they began to flourish and soon I was excited to see flowers developing and then fruits forming!

Finally producing flowers in the cooler weather

Not much of a harvest but finally one tomato

The harvest was pathetic but at least I had managed to grow SOMETHING!  I was determined to persevere and this set me off on my herb growing adventures!