What about knowledge...

You don't need to know much to be an indoor gardener. You need to know how to put soil in a container, put seeds in the soil and to water them. Somethings that makes it all easier is the will to add to the knowledge every now and then. I've recently [re]discovered the library. What a place! Oodles of colourful gardening books for me, just me!.. and all others smart enough to pay a visit :-).

Every other week I go to Uppsala City Library and borrow a gardening book and a language course. The habit have payed off already. For exemple i now know that my calamondin are suffering from lack of iron due to the hard water we have. Soon I'll know what to do about it :-). Besides, it feels pretty good sitting in the sofa looking at pretty flowers while it's raining outside.

And the language course? Well, the only language an indoor gardener needs is her/his own. Plus, of course, it's good to know the latin name of a plant if you need to look for it. But the more languages you know, the more gardening knowledge there is to gain. I mean, take a look at the picture above. I took it in Paris two years ago. People were growing stuff everywhere! Those who didn't own a balcony nailed containers to walls outside their windows. And in a country where people are able to squeeze a djungle into a balcony there ought to be some books written for indoor gardeners as well. Unfortunately few french gardening books are translated into swedish (or english I think). My plan is to read them in the original language.

And think what you kan learn if you read chinese! The chinese are famed for their knowledge in intensive cultivation and do grow vegetables in pots. So I'm altering my language course between french and chinese*, and plays with the courses for a while. My goal is to find one fun enough to make the tedious word studies worth it all the way to the glorious moment when you find that you speak fluently.

*mandarin or putonghua if you want the specific language.