Nature and Gardening

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Advice for raising Lemon Balm, Chocolate Mint and Orange Thyme indoors? (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by piezoelectron@sopuli.xyz to c/greenspace@beehaw.org

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For context, I have no idea on how to take care of plants, but I'd like these three baby plants I bought to thrive.

I'd also love to snip them every now and then when I'm cooking, making a salad or a tea etc.

Right now each plant is quite young and in small plastic pots. The chocolate mint is already about 8-12 inches tall. The lemon balm and orange thyme are both less than 5 inches tall.

My questions where I'd love your advice are:

How often should I water these plants?
They're all newly bought and in disposable plastic containers. When I repot them, will it be dangerous to mix their current soil and the generic store bought soil I'm planning to get?
How fast do these plants grow? Should I be optimistic and already buy semi-large pots, even though they're quite tiny right now?
Any other general tips to care for these plants?

Appreciate your advice, whether it's plant-specific or applies to all the three plants. Thanks in advance!

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[–] gina@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can’t see all the comments, so this may have been mentioned, but make sure you have a good spot that gets bright sun most of the day. I don’t even bother with herbs indoors because my kitchen faces East and I don’t have a bright enough spot. If you notice your plants starting to look a little “leggy” (sending out long shoots with lots of distance between the leaves) that’s a good sign they are not getting enough light.

[–] piezoelectron@sopuli.xyz 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Thanks -- especially for the tip about them looking 'leggy'! Thankfully I've got a good windowsill that gets a lot of sun, so I'm hoping they'll thrive (over the summer, at least).

EDIT: And yep, strangely enough, there are only 3 comments here (6 now, including my replies to each of them), but the text below my post says there's 20 comments in total...strange?

[–] gina@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Ah, maybe it is just a bug in the comment calculation then. I did think it was odd when I replied that an hour old post on a brand new forum about plants already had 17 replies, haha.

I’m jealous of everyone with bright indoor spots :) I actually don’t know if it makes any difference taste-wise for herbs if they get leggy, but it does make for a scraggly, sad-looking plant.