Re-potting herbs FAIL

Here I am, back with more exciting news in the herb growing FAIL series.  In this amazing post I am going to tell you about my adventures in re-potting the herbs, that is taking the tiny herb shoots from the little growing trays to small pots.

This has to be the hardest part of the adventure yet.  First off as mentioned in the previous post I had some shoots that had come up which is excellent but even better was that some of them had grown strong enough to be moved.  As the main aim of this whole project was to get some coriander I have to say I was very happy to see this so far has been doing the best.

Initially when setting up the trays I had used an even mixture of both compost and manure with some bone meal feed in to help the seeds grow.  However for the new pots I was advised that what I needed now was more a 3 to 1 mixture of compost to manure.  Also unlike the little seed trays the pots needed small stones at the bottom of the pots to help with the drainage.  Getting this all together was easy enough and who does not like playing with mud and getting their hands dirty :D

However then came the difficult part, the moving of the plants.  This I was nervous about.  I took a butter knife from the kitchen and gently prodded around the little shoots to get them out of the hole they were in.  This at first seemed fairly hard and I was worried I would damage the tiny fragile plants, I am not exactly used to handling such delicate objects but after the first few it was easy enough.  Below you can see the results.

All but one of the pots above are coriander (which I am finally learning how to spell without the spell checker reminding me ;) ) and the top right pot is basil dark opal.  While at this stage if I can get this many coriander plants out of the process I would be more than happy I still have hopes for a few of the rest to come up and as more do I will post the results.

This was all done last weekend and since then the herbs have been shooting up nicely, it is great to see them come up so strongly however it will be a while yet before they are ready to live outside.  That however is fine as I still have plenty of window space for them all :)

In other small side news I had some health based FAIL recently after eating some salsa that had been out too long.  This went from food poisoning to a cold :(  Tis been a bad week for my body but almost fully mended now and hope to be bouncing around as per usual next week :D

Peace, love and happiness.

Herb growing and picture FAIL

The FAIL continues :)

First off on a small side note there has been some hosting FAIL.  Photo hosting FAIL this time.  I decided to give this new Instagram thing all the kids are talking about a try for this post.  It was surprisingly hard to use.  I guess that is in part because all I wanted to do was get a photo on this blog and what it wants to do it get a list of your friends and provide you with photo twitter.  Why photo twitter + image effect plugins is worth $1bn is frankly beyond me but I do think it is a neat tool that I will most likely use more often.  However to more important things :)

As you can see from the picture above the first sprouts are here.  Those are the coriander sprouts, however there are also some of the basil, thyme and a few others all ready starting to poke their heads through.  In the next few days it will be time to put the coriander into small pots and maybe outside.

One of the great things about doing this is the quick progress you get.  While it has taken daily attention to get there it has not been much time and the results have been quick.  In the long term of course I hope the results are tasty too :D  Which I will of course be posting about.

Peace, love and happiness.

Herb growing FAIL

Hello again internet based world,

This time in the interests of documenting my continued FAIL I figured I would write about my attempts to grow some herbs.

A while back I was wondering around the supermarket most likely in some sort of marketing induced haze and thinking about some tasty carrot and coriander soup, tis a simple favourite of mine.  So I wondered along to where the coriander plants are and found them to be as about expensive as just buying the soup pre-made.  Of course I would get some more soup out of the plant and a bag of carrots than a carton but a boy has to ask himself "just how much soup can one beard take".

On that occasion I decided to go along with my maker side and buy the plant, go home and put things in a pot. This worked out well, tasty soup was made and munched.  However ever since then I have been thinking I should go back to having a pot of it in the back garden.  Given my recent move into the countryside this seems like an even better idea now I have a massive garden and nothing really much to do with it.

Moving on I decided to have a chat with my dad as he is about as down with the growing things as a hobbit would be.  Now I have some seed trays sitting on my dining room window and I am just waiting for little shoots to come through.  See picture below.

Of course I can hear all of you in blog-land saying "but Lazzurs, surly it is too early to be blogging about your FAIL yet as you have not gotten to that".  Well I would say to you my blog reading friends that in plant growing FAIL is always going to happen.  In the trays you can see I honestly expect to be fortunate to get a few plants of each herb type growing to the stage where I can add them to some tasty noms.  Why, well let me list for you some of the FAIL I expect

• Dead seeds
• Too dry/too wet
• Too hot/too cold
• Root damage

The list could go on and as this little experiment goes on I will add to it.  However this is the joy of learning anything new.  At first you suck, and usually suck badly.  I wish I had documented my first attempts at changing the brakes on my car as a great example of this ;)  However as with anything else you get better over time with practice and I expect the same here.  To be clear this is not my first attempt ever at growing something, I have been here before with the help of others and so I do have a little experience in this area.  However most previous attempts were filled with so much FAIL it is almost not funny...almost :D

So the FAIL continues.

Peace, love and happiness to you all.

BBQ cleaning FAIL

A few years back now when I left my job to go start my own business I went and bought an outdoor gas grill.  I loved the thing.  Previously I had always bought those cheap charcoal grills that would last just long enough for one Scottish summer and then get another one the next year.

However one day I was in the middle of cooking myself some lunch and boom, my partner and I split up.  Needless to say the grill did not get much attention that day and to be honest I could not face going back to it for quite some time.  Given this it was left in an awful mess.

Finally today after taking in across country in this state I got the thing cleaned with the help of my drill and my wonderful new partner in crime.  It only took two years.

Next week I will be having my first family BBQ for my step mothers birthday and the weekend after that I will be having yet another to have my first small party in the new house.  Of course if you are crazy enough to be reading this and in the area on the 28th you are welcome to come along :D

I cannot wait to eat more tasty meats, cooked on cast iron outside in the beautiful English countryside.

Peace, love and happiness.

Blog domain FAIL

Turns out even the FAIL blog can FAIL, lol.

I have clearly not had much time for blogging about FAIL recently, too busy not causing too much FAIL I guess.  However one FAIL I was told about recently was this very blog.  Someone mentioned, "Lazzurs, your blog just gives me a redirect loop" and I was all :(

Fixed now :D well at least I hope, going to test shortly once this post is out and my DNS cache that my chromebook uses has caught up.

In other news of my litttle life I have moved out into the middle of nowhere.  Like really, I have neighbours I can count on one hand and the nearest anything is over the hill and far away.  Sadly this also includes cellphone signal.  However the place is generally awesome and not living over 2 hours away from the office will allow me to get back to a somewhat more normal life or what ever that means for me.  Most likely more FAIL and blogging.

Hope the internet is the same lovely place I left it and if you are bored enough to read this I hope to be in touch soon as I know what with the cycle of sleeping/driving/working I have not been very social recently.  Heh social FAIL!

Laters,

Peace, love and happiness.

Happy New Year and Happy New Blog

So here I am again.  Yet another year and yet another blog.

In typical me style my last blog sort of imploded with my business as things went FAIL shaped which is why I am starting here again on Blogger.  I clearly love Google far too much and feel the need to hand over more of my personal information directly to them.

Just to be clear, as with the last one this blog is mostly going to be dedicated to the continued failure that happens as I bounce my way through existence.  As I seem to love failing^Wlearning a lot I figured I should continue the trend of writing about my continued adventures.

For those that missed the last blog and the posts just before it imploded here is a quick catch up.

• I am a mixed up 80's kid from a broken home in central Scotland who is into computers and geeky stuff.
• Never, ever have I taken the easy road to anything in life.  Yet I am amazingly lazy some times, good combination.
• Sometime between 2010/2011 my little bubble imploded and I was forced to 'go have a word with myself'.
• Now having been through lots of healing I am getting on with my life and trying to do what I can to make the world a better place and cause as little doom as possible along the way.

In summary, like everyone else in the world I have no idea what I am doing most days and am trying to do my best to get along in life and sometimes this leads to FAIL.  As with most bloggers I have some arrogant notion that my thoughts might be of some value to others and so instead of keeping all this fun to myself I post it up for the whole world to see.

While this blog is named Lazzurs FAIL it will not just be about my never ending FAIL but also about some of the awesome and fun things in my life and what I have been doing since the bubble burst.  If this all bores you too much then feel free to turn off your terminal, get off your ass and go for a walk in the park ;)

Peace, love and happiness.