Gardening Update - Basil, Spinach, Lettuce

It's been a couple of weeks since the update of my container garden. Here's how it's growing...

Basil at 5 weeks after sprouting

Haven't been looking at the basil as much and *bam*...it's much bigger. I can almost pluck the leaves to eat...but it hasn't grown much in height...just width. Seems the purple one in the middle is much slower.

Baby Spinach

First set of spinach...heard these were easy to grow. The package said to plant the seed 1/2 inch into the soil...but I read somewhere that you don't have to do that and sometimes it doesn't sprout if you put it in 1/2 inch. So I did as this website suggested and just scratched a little in the dirt and slightly covered it up. It worked just fine...all three seeds came out (at different times though).

Baby Mesclun Lettuce

These are meant to be scattered cuz the seeds are really small...but I spread some of them apart as much as I could...I'm gonna try to grow these to maturity instead of eating baby Mesclun lettuce. Here the reddish colored ones grow slower too. Hmm....purple basil grow slower...red lettuce grows slower...I didn't realize the colored greens are slower growers. Learning something new everyday.

The trouble I'm having with my new container gardening is lack of sunlight. My patio faces northeast so I only get morning - early noon sunlight. I can get a maximum of maybe a little over 6 hours of sun right now...it is almost summer solstice so the sun is almost at its highest in the sky. A month after that it will whittle to 5 hours...and then less. It's still growing....but seems slower. I guess we'll see what happens when the sunlight decreases.