Starting a herbs garden

Hey there.

At first I wanted to plant grass in between the fruit trees, but I came across an article about layering the tree, (some called it permaculture) which try to mimic nature's forest, but by designing the trees according to the height, but due to the trees in the article are usually will not survive in my place, so I just try to design it based on my own judgement. Rather than just grass, I could plant so many more fast crop than just wait on the fruit trees.

*Side note, you could go and get educated on permaculture design, but since it's not available here, I just read a few articles.

For example, the highest tree in my farm is the durians, reaching up to 15m, in the middle of them there's a few langsat, duku and dukung (I can't tell them apart, yet) averaging 8 to 10m, with nothing except weed and grass. So under the durian, in a round circle, I'm going to plant chili with distance of 60cm, in two lines. inside the line, I'm going to plant herbs and crawling plant, to minimize weed. I also bought flowers to make it prettier too.

I've bought thyme, lemon balm, chamomile, strawberry, and lavender seed a while back, but I haven't successfully germinate them. I also bought melon and pumpkin seed today. I'm hoping to have pumpkin, melon (red, yellow and cantaloupe ), sweet potato ( need to plant by itself since it will go deep) , peas. Went to the farm in mid morning, and dug 23 holes, plus 12 holes yesterday, so I've planted 30 chili plant today, and topped 28 of them as the other two not yet reach the desired height.

After I got back and the toddler is asleep, I went and mixed coco peat and moss peat in 3:1 then fill the seed tray. Pour water on them and after it damp but not soggy, I sprinkle the seed in. The tray have 51 holes and I divided them with the herbs seeds I have.

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          x     x     x     x     x     x     x     x           Chamomile

       x     x     x     x     x     x      x     x     x      Creeping thyme

          x     x     x     x   |  x     x     x     x          Snow in summer | Night scented stock

       x     x     x  |   x     x     x   |   x     x     x    Aster pink flower | Lavender | Strawberry

          x     x   |  x     x   |  x     x   |  x     x        Thyme :English | French | Orange | Lemon balm

       x     x     x     x     x   |  x      x     x     x     Pak choi | Tat soi

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When I was sprinkling the strawberry seed, I realize stratifying process, which I never came across to. Basically stratifying is to place seed in cold area for certain period, before letting them warm up to room temperature, then sow them as usual. Since I live in tropical country, it is a must for me as we don't have cold periods. Oh well..

So at night I start gathering 2 containers, and lined them with tissue. I draw lines on the tissue, then wet them and placed in the container. I sprinkle the seed on the tissue paper, and placed another tissue and put it in fridge. A month from now I will need to take it out and try to plant them.

Big container

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   x      x    Strawberry | Orange thyme

   x      x    Lemon balm | French thyme

   x      x    Lavender | English thyme
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Small

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  x     x  Thyme (s) | Chamomile (b)

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So, here's hoping that both will grow well, even the un - stratified one.

Will update later on the outcome!