Fun Experiment to Grow Garlic

I love garlic (Allium sativum), especially as one of the main ingredients for most of food I cook. In the beginning of spring in 2024, I came up with my own idea to do experiment to plant it at my own garden. The idea came when I bought garlic at community market store located several blocks from where I live. Several cloves had been spreading and I thought why I did not to try to plant it in the spring, so I could harvest it in the summer?

I started to plant some cloves in the small pots filled with 3/4 of potting soil. Because of the weather was not warm enough, I decided to keep them inside the house and put it near the kitchen window, so they would still get sunshine.

They spread quickly as I watered them everyday. Then I searched online of when and how to plant garlic. I found it and it mentioned the best to plant garlic was in the fall and the harvest time was in the summer.

I was so excited to do my first experiment of planting garlic. I enclosed several pictures of garlic that I planted below.

The first planting and harvest in 2024

The second planting and harvest in 2025. The garlics size were bigger than the previous year because I used the bigger size of garlic cloves to plant.

Kingdom:	Plantae
Clade:	Angiosperms
Clade:	Monocots
Order:	Asparagales
Family:	Amaryllidaceae
Subfamily:	Allioideae
Genus:	Allium
Species:	A. sativum
Binomial name
Allium sativum L.

Source: WikiHow

Fun Experiment to Grow Sweet Basil

Sweet basil (Genovese basil) or kemangi in Indonesian, is a culinary herb I use for cooking. Last year one of my good friends from Ohio sent its seeds to me. I was so excited as several months ago for the first time I planted it. From all three small pots, all seeds grew well. As they all grew well, I could harvest their leaves and use them for cooking. The leaves may taste somewhat like anise, with a strong, pungent, often sweet smell. A perfect additional herb for spaghetti.

Cultivating sweet basil is not difficult. Besides daily watering, picking the dead leaves, and adding nutrition, I used to watch its leaves carefully. If its leaves have wilted from lack of water, it will recover if watered thoroughly and placed in a sunny location. Yellow leaves towards the bottom of the plant are an indication that the plant has been stressed; usually this means that it needs less water, or less or more fertilizer. The good thing of picking the leaves off the plant helps promote growth, largely because the plant responds by converting pairs of leaflets next to the topmost leaves into new stems.

Because I have three small pots of sweet basil and as I love giving, I was thinking to give one pot to someone who likes cooking. One lucky person who got my gift is a VA employee who cut the grass in our backyard. He went home carrying a small pot of sweet basil on his left hand with happy face. Do you want it too? Wait next year! Hahaha! (*)

Basil

Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Asterids
Order:	Lamiales
Family:	Lamiaceae
Genus:	Ocimum
Species:	O. basilicum
Binomial name
Ocimum basilicum L.

Source: Wikipedia

Fun Experiment to Grow Cosmos

I got cosmos seeds from my sister in law, Cathy, several years ago. She used to send any kind of seeds since she knew I liked gardening. Last year I planted several cosmos seeds and when they bloomed, I cut some of their good-looking flowers and displayed them in the living room.

It wasn't difficult to grow this plant and it didn't need a lot of works to take care of it. I watered with washing rice at least once per week and gave little bit of fertilizer, contained Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and Potassium (K). I also removed faded flowers routinely so it would stimulate other new flowers blooming. If the plants grew tall, I would need staking them.

Try it and have fun!

Cosmos
Cosmos bipinnatus
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Eudicots
(unranked):	Asterids
Order:	Asterales
Family:	Asteraceae
Subfamily:	Asteroideae
Tribe:	Coreopsideae
Genus:	Cosmos Cav.[1]
Synonyms[2]
Cosmea Willd. Adenolepis Less. Cosmus Pers. Cosmos sect. Eucosmos Sherff Gosmos Motomi Ito, spelling variant, apparently accidental

Source: Wikipedia