I am very cold tonight. And this isn’t just the usual me complaining about the guy in the office who keeps the air conditioning on too cold either (he wasn’t in today). This is really cold.

The greenhouse seems to have helped some of the plants, particularly the parsley which looks quite lively. I’m not sure the salad leaves will ever recover from the hurricane last week, but there are definitely about 10 leaves that are still growing. Let’s be positive here.

I figured the two to rescue were the tarragon and the basil. Basil is native to Iran and India so while -2 degrees Celsius on my balcony can’t quite replicate that, I decided the closest I could get was the window sill in the second bedroom/music room/den/study/computer room (the room title is still under intense negotiation since the move). I’m not going to lie, they don’t look great. Hopefully I can nurture them back to something better. Although in their defense, I did pillage them for leaves very recently.

The tarragon’s stems are quite sturdy so it is definitely surviving. The leaves however are a little bit discoloured in places and very limp. I had been reading that I should have been taking the top 10cm or so off the tarragon regularly enough. I blame the lack of recipes. It should die down in winter anyway, although you can split the roots and plant a root cluster inside for new shoots in the winter. I just might do that. Not today though.

I decided to take the ends of the tarragon as it is to at least conserve the considerable growth there. Apparently drying leads to mold so I resolved to freeze them.

I have heard of this done before for basil and people wondering what to do with all their basil when they don’t want to make 2 pints of pesto. (luckily I don’t have this problem)

I followed method two on about.com. They use seven steps but it boils down (figuratively) to this:

1. Freeze chopped tarragon in an ice cube tray, half filled with water.
2. When frozen, top up with water and freeze again.

The half filling is to stop the tarragon floating to the top you see. This holds for any non woody leafy vegetable so it’s good to know and I might do it in the future with basil or parsley. It’s undergoing freezer stage one as I type and I’ve included some photos of the process so far below:

Despite many years of physics education, I feel beaten by two principles of the physical world: (i) the higher the centre of gravity of an object, the easier something will fall over and (ii) a force is proportional to the area to which it is applied. Last Saturday night (possibly Sunday morning, it was a lazy one) the greenhouse became the object in question, the force was the wind and the area to which it was applied was the greenhouse plastic cover. The result was herb carnage:

Pretty much all of the soil and plants had found their way out of the pots. I have since put it all back together again, as much as a plant jigsaw can be put back together. I reconstructed the greenhouse and migrated it to a (hopefully) more sheltered part of the balcony, the north western corner. At the sacrifice of a bit of sunshine, I have moved some of the heavier pots to the bottom to lower the centre of gravity a bit.

Seeing as our summer was so cold, I figured it would be prudent to get kitted out for the impending winter. I decided that in order to enable survival for my plants over the winter month they would need some kind of protection from the frost and cold.

There is an apartment around the corner with a small plastic plant covering type thing which got me thinking. After a few searches on eBay, I decided I needed to own a multi-tier mini greenhouse. And a few days later I did – for the reasonable price (I think – no frame of reference here!) of about fifty quid (Euro).

While watching Ireland triumph over Cyprus last night I decided to go ahead and set it up. There were no instructions but, through a process of going by the picture on the box and winging it, it all fell into place in the end.

As regards the plants, I decided what was to go in based on one part instinct, one part book learnin’ and one part observation of which were doing badly in the cold so far. Those that made the cut were: salad leaves, parsley, basil and some small chili plants I didn’t transplant. The woodier plants like rosemary, bay and thyme should be OK out in the elements. That’s the plan anyway.

I’ve included a few photos of the greenhouse construction below (admittedly I may be making it sound marginally more arduous than it was!). By the time next spring rolls (yum) around I hope to have a some loftier plans for the greenhouse.