Experiment

This sunflower was picked by mistake at the allotment yesterday. I'm no friend of big and bold flowers, so I'm surprised how well it fits into our kitchen - which is decorated in turqoise and mild yellow tones. And while the flowers lights up our kitchen table I can study its finer details fit for angel bookmarks.

Sunflower is said to be edible, and who am I to refuse an experiment? I picked a yellow leaf and put into my mouth - with a considerabel amount of suspicion. Mom taught me that flowers are poisonous, and the voice of your inner mom is never silent. In addition to that the leaf tasted like perfume, that oldfashion kind with lily of the valley and lilac base, and left a bitter aftertaste. I have to admit I wondered if I would be sick and spent the rest of the evening watching over my stomach. But, I survived!

If I would use sunflower in my cooking I would go for Middle East inspired food, where rosewater is used regularly and where that hint of perfume is desirable. Hm, perhaps it's already used? The climate is right for the plant down there, and there's a good will to use plants creativly.

The small bowl contains another experiment. I picked the tomatoes from my previous plants before I tore them all down. By then they where minute, and I wanted to see if they could ripe eventhough they where dark green. They've taken a few weeks to blush, and they collected some dust bunnies meanwhile. Like most tomatoes made for commersial cultivation their skinns is pretty thick, and it'll be interesting to see if there's something more inside when I try them out for lunch today. I'll post some further report tomorrow.

Big plans - small plants

These are soon ex-plants.

Big things are comming up in my indoor garden. I'm about to replant seedlings for the first time. Yepp, that's right; I've been growing stuff ever since I was a kid, and I've never replanted seedlings before. I have vague recollections of trying it out and failing misserably, and ever since the attitude of 'this is to complicated and troublesome' has stuck in my mind.

That attitude drives me crazy in others, so why should I save it for my self? I've decided to replant the purslanes when they are big enough. And they start to reach that stage now. I'm nervous...

Another thing I've realised is that I need to (*gasp*) throw away some plants. That christmas group that I've managed to keep alive, as well as the ponytail palm my grandmother gave me when I was ten has to go. They occupy valuable space, and are not eatable.

Adding to that is my behaviour ever since I read the instructions on how to grow potatoes in buckets. I'm walking around, eyeing empty floor spots trying to establish if I can squeeze in 14 potato buckets in this flat. Potatoes takes about 14 weeks to mature, see, and with 14 buckets I can sow and harvest a bucket a week. Sometimes I really don't know if I'm crazy or a genius....

Avatar of Roses cuttings, report #1

I don't know if the photo captures it, but the jars with fertilizers have slightly muckier water than the one without.

And that's about it.

I was hoping for greener leaves, and perhaps one or two roots. But the only thing happening seems to be that I have to change water more often. And I procrastinate that. I bet I wake up some day only to find two jars with dark green goo with a brown stump stuck into it.

I could by some hormones to speed up the rooting process, but I'm not happy about that. Since I have troubbles with my own hormones I do know how much that can go wrong.

At a second thought... [leaving the computer]

Now I've cleaned the jars. Wasn't that hard.

Interestingly enough the cutting in fresh water seems to be more healthy than those with added fertilizer. I have to take a closer look at fertilizing, maybe I'm overfeeding my babies? Well, if one of them survives I'm happy. Scented geraniums are good for flavouring sponge cakes.

Progress so far

Here we can see my little seedlings, looking at themselves in the window. They don't seem to have noticed the added light, so I have lowered the lamp at their half of the window. The tilted armature gives our library a somewhat anarchisitic look, which in a way adds to the austere book cases. I'm not a friend of too much order.

Today I had to fill the magazines in my homemade selfwatering containers, and I'm overjoyed! This means they are working like they should. The box with the instant herb garden was empty, whereas the seedling box had a few drips of water left. I took the risk of giving both herb garden and seedling box fertilizer to see what impact it'll have.

And my carrots have surfaced. Jay!

Little things...

Today has been a Big and Serious Study day (tm), which means I haven't been able to do much with my garden. The good thing about studies is that you have to move around every now and then to prevent falling to sleep over the keybord. This is a the ultimate incentive to, for exemple, clean up the balcony after the winter. Our two HOL benches bought at IKEA last year have started to disintegrate, so I finished the process quickly and put the remnants inside to dry (I'm planning to make toy storage out of them for my son - I guess I have to start a new blog recording my interior design projects). I checked the roses and put the stuff I've stored in the HOL benches into plastic boxes instead.

The shelf for the added light is up, did it meself - mostly. It's become the perfect place for my geraniums. The garden geranium that was given to me when we moved here needed some water and general care, as well as the cuttings from my "Avatar of Roses" - a scented geranium I like much. They had formed roots pretty nice and should have been planted in soil long ago. Very long ago. In fact several months ago. The pot was filled with muck and the surface of the water had started to mold. So I cut the tips of the cuttings and placed them individually in new pots. Their leaves were light green with darker nerves, and I suspect they've lost their "body fat" (or whatever it's called on a plant) due to their long time in water. As an experiment I added two drops of liquid fertilizer to two of the pots. This will probably make some algae happy, but I hope the nourishment will be of benefit for the cuttings too.


A tip from Colleen made me remove the plastic from my little kitchen garden. Turned out that eventhough purslane and turnip had put up their little leaves the carrot still stays under the surface. Note to self; sow carrot in a separate container from now on. Let's see if this round grows anyhow. In other case, well, I prefer turnip to carrot every time...

Added light for windowsill, part 2

Having proved that I am woman enough to fasten things to the walls I asked my hubby to put up the other bracket.

To be continued...

Indoor compost

This picture is called "Still life with compost", photografer is Kevin Saff,
you find more of his photos here, and can read his blog here.

There are people composting indoors, usually using a vermicomposting system. One of my friends and her mother deported their vermicompost to the furthermost corner of their terrace house garden when it started to stink. They are more of romantics than practically inclined, which makes me suspect that they didn't care for it in the right way. Knowledgeable people reassures that a working vermicompost don't stink. Hm.

In the long run I'm planning to try it out, but not before I've did some more studying on the subject. Perhaps I'd better start this summer, when it's possible to place the entire thing on the balcony while I figure out how to tend to it. But it doesn't seems so hard. You use three containers to be able to exchange composting bins in a steady pace, leaves a wet newspaper for the little worms to live in when you start up the compost, and then you only add as much waste as they are able to eat. Appart from citrus peals, almost everything seems to fit inside.

Keep your fingers crossed for me when I start...