Old Jars & New Plants

Recently, my sister and mother helped this lady out who had a lot of things in her house she wanted to sell. Being the wonderful person my sister is, she let me have first dibs on everything! She showed me these old jars and I just fell in love, especially with the blue one.

The rubber rings on the jars looked old and musty so I removed those and cleaned out the jars with warm soap water. Then I went to Lowe’s and picked out some herbs (sweet mint, lavender, rosemary and oregano). Mind you, normally my store of choice is Home Depot but me and the hubby were in Lowe’s for some reason so I bought them from there. I also bought basic potting soil and decorative rocks to put in the bottom of some of the jars. Now, I am not a horticulture expert by any stretch of the imagination but I believe adding rocks at the bottom will prevent overwatering.

I added the decorative rocks in first then filled up most of the jar with potting soil. This is definitely a messy project so I wouldn't recommend doing this indoors (totally did this indoors). It was a little tricky and messy to get the plants to fit in the mouth of the jars but I just got a little aggressive with the roots (again, this was probably not okay). I added more potting soil on top and gave them some water. Yay plants!

Update: Trial and Error? So the past two weeks, I’ve noticed that the lavender and oregano are not doing too hot while rosemary and sweet mint are looking awesome. I believe the problem is that in the jars of the dying there are pockets of missing soil so the roots are exposed. Probably not good. I have since then filled those empty pockets so we’ll see if they pull through!

Second Update: Dead, Dead, Dead. Okay, so the herbs are all dead. Upon further research, I believe we 1) overwatered them and 2) didn't give them enough sun. Herbs need over 6 hours of direct sunlight and our house is surrounded by large oak trees so I doubt this was happening. Oh, well. Just not meant to grow herbs. Now these jars are free for new, more appropriate plants.

On a positive note, I now use the tall jar for my fruit-infused water. And I feel so fancy drinking it! Pinky up, ya'll!

#herbs #plants #jars