Plants, birthdays, farewells, and driving...

This weekend has been one for driving. From Cedar to Salt Lake, from Salt lake to the garden shop, to the garden shop to my nephew's birthday party (in Spanish Fork), birthday party to the shoe store and back again all in a very short period of time. Spent about 50$ in gas. The idea of spending just a little bit more on a car and buying a hybrid is looking more attractive all the time.

I'm excited about the plants. We bought tomato, rosemary, and basil. However, I'm starting to wonder if you really want to know what to do with gardening in pots if you must learn it yourself. The book I borrowed from the library on the subject was quite adamant that a tomato plant could be accompanied by several other plants in the same pot. The person over the phone at the plant catalog agreed. However, at the local plant store the worker seemed to think I was insane for even thinking of putting a indeterminate tomato vine in a pot, let along sharing the pot with several other plants. Then again, this was the same person who told me that his rosemary plant at home was 6 feet tall and tried to point out which variety it was he used and pointed to a dwarf variety that grows to 1 foot. I tried to tell them I was new at this and needed some help getting set up and the only help I could get was "tomatoes need a lot of water," "don't buy an indeterminate vine if you want it to stay small," and "make sure you fertilize." OK, I'm a smart person and read up on tomatoes before considering planting one in a pot. I already know all that stuff and more. Try to ask about potting soil and I expected to get a response like, "use this soil additive for your rosemary, it likes drier more acidic soil" or "this soil brand is better at retaining water and will work well for the tomato that likes being really wet."

Instead all I got was the fertilizer is that way and the dirt is that way. Half the point of planting things in pots is you can customize the soil for the plant, but I get the feeling none of these people have really tried doing that before. Either that or they think I'm not worth their attention. Its frustrating because I can check out books and visit websites talking about how wonderful it is to customize the soil for best results in different pots but none of them have a comprehensive guide on what types of soil or additives are best for what plants. I would probably need a gardening encyclopedia for that kind of information, but I figured I could get a basic run down from the people at the store. Guess not. Maybe they should hire me... I seem to know everything they told me.

To make up for all the driving we checked out a book on CD (Airborne by Kenneth Oppel) on the way out of town. That way we can listen for hours without Bonnie Jean's voice tiring out. It was nice, but I think 6 hours of listening was quite enough for now. Wonder what we'll do on the way back down...