This Melissa officinalis is sharing one of my vintage 2008 AeroGarden 7 planters (with Marvel of 4 Seasons lettuce from an official AG seed pod, now a Miracle Grow product) and a pink wax begonia almost hidden in the back.
This lettuce sprouted in about one week in my new AG6-LED and after about 3 weeks of growth the green leaves started turning to a pretty copper color on the tips. It is a mild tender lettuce, but with a good growth pattern as it survived being yanked out of the AG6 and transported for 5 hours with the roots immersed in plain water before being put in the AG7, which unfortunately has a broken pump. Once in a while, I insert a drinking straw in the base and blow oxygen into their water. Presumably the breath I exhale contains mostly nitrogen, but also oxygen and a small amount of C02, all beneficial to plants, I hope.
In this photo the lemon balm has not yet taken over, but it will.
Soon, however, I will stop munching on leaves of the cut and come again lettuce, in order to give it a change to grow bigger, and I will cut the lemon balm back and use the fresh leaves in cooking and in tea.
I have a love/hate relationship with begonias, mostly love. The problem is that although they are technically edible, begonias taste awful! But the name semperflorens is entirely apt, they simply do bloom all of the time and endure utter neglect so cheerfully that I cannot force myself to get rid of them. They coexist harmoniously in or near my Aerogarden planters with Greek Basil, a few leaves of which show in the upper left corner of this photo, but the lemon balm will grow right over the begonias and crowd it out.
