Day 20: Herbs

I have watched oh-so-many episodes of Jamie At Home, awestricken as Mr. Oliver plucks fresh tomatoes from his garden to toss up a summer pasta, or digs up a range of colourful beets and throws them over a coal fire to bake!

As a result, very often when I'm in the kitchen and I find myself day-dreaming of how wonderful it would be if I had a kitchen garden in my balcony from which I could just pluck a few fresh, fragrant herbs and sprinkle them straight into my pot!

(Besides, many herbs like rosemary, thyme and sage are tough to find in fresh form at my local market. I have to plan ahead and drive an extra distance to find them if I want to use them in my cooking.)

My new Sage, Thyme and Rosemary plants

So still on yesterday's kitchen garden high, I went to a local nursery this afternoon and bought some herb plants, five kilos of compost, and five kilos of coco peat. Tomorrow morning I will go downstairs and collect a few bagfuls of soil, and then this weekend my balcony garden will be transformed! Well, as transformed as it can get it with some moving around of pots and a few new plants. Because it turns out, since it is extremely hot in Bangalore these day, it's not the best time to be sowing new seeds or repotting plants...