Size do matter

Looky here. The library window looks tidy again. The Tiny Tim tomatoes seems to thrive and have already sprouted their first flower buds. Little chard seedlings are peeking up above the soil, and they'll soon grow to fill the window. On the other hand none of these plants will become as tall as their predecessors*. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a proportional window display this time.

*Chard reaches a modest height of fifty centimeters compared to the ten meter vines of the indian spinach. 'Tiny Tim' is a miniature tomato, and won't reach the two meter height of the plum tomatoes I grew here before.

Death of the indian spinach

The indian spinach is high yielding, but I have to admit that I'm not all that fond of it. It tastes stalk, much like some sallads do. That's why I decided to tear it down.



I tore some of it last week, that's why it has a thin 'waist'. If you look closely you can see its branches crawling all over the place with vines sneaking in behind the poster, snaring the plants on the second shelf and entangling themselvs in the chains to the growlights. When I did my first spinach tearing I accidentally pulled two plants from the upper shelf. There are still terracotta shatters spread across the library.



I'd spent half an hour cutting leaves and branches before I could relealse the net used as a trellis. Removing the vines became so much easier after this.



Here you can see the berries. Traditionally the berry juice is used as rouge, and it has indeed a nice blue-red tint. When I smeared it over the back of my hand it turned to hue close to a (normally) blushing cheek.



Since the roots are used in traditional medicin I dug them up to take a look. There are certainly not much food on them, which probably explains why they 'only' are used as medicine. Interestingly enough the roots are used against diarrhoea and the stalks and leaves are laxative. You'd better not mix those parts up...



Here are the collected stems and leaves. The stems filled an ordinary waste bag, so I tossed them into the composting bin in our communal "recycling house" (yeah, it's called that). I feel much better doing this since I got to know that the communal compost collected in Uppsala is fermented into biofuel, which powers some of the public busses (half of the fleet is powered by this gas, the other half uses ordinary diesel). My worms under the staircase will have other things to feast upon.

I parboiled the leaves and froze them. I'm not sure what to do with them. Like I said they taste like stalk, but they also give a nice asian flavour to soups and stews. I can't exactly tell what this asian flavour is, this just happen to be my associations when I use indian spinach in food. Probably I'll use these leaves in my winter meatloafs, which in their turn will be flavoured with fresh ginger, lots of garlic, sambal oelek and chinese soy.

Cut the indian spinach

Buy prints of the pic of today here. Look for older pics at Indoor Potager.

I woke up grouchy this morning; thunder, headache and a three year old with a temper... I'm lucky I can let my potted plants take the blows - in other words I started this day by cutting stray vines from the indian spinach. While I was at it I thinned it a bit too. That made enough for a lunch for me and half of the soup we had for dinner.

Since it looked cool I couldn't keep myself from giving you a bonus pic. Guess what's not grown indoors on this plate:

Buy prints of the pic of today here. Look for older pics at Indoor Potager.

The answer: The yoghurt, the salt, the garlic and sambal oelek. Indoor produce are; the tomatoes, the indian spinach leaves, the dill, the parsley, the sage, the chives and the basil.

Short statusreport June

I can now harvest tomatoes enough for a sallad from the plants I sowed the twentyfourth of february, and the indian spinach are out of control. That's why I went online and ordered more seeds for my gardens...

This and that sallad

Today two meals included homegrown vegetables. For lunch we had hotdogs, spagetti and a 'this and that sallad', ie. I cut leaves from those plants who could afford it and mixed them (the leaves I mean) in a bowl. The sallad of today consisted of nasturtium, chives, leafamaranth, indian spinach and mizuna, and I served it with a few drops of dressing. The taste of the amaranth has proved to be somewhat tough, and needs the muscles of a good red wine vinegar to stay in place and cooperate with the rest.

For dinner we had nettle- and indian spinach soup followed by (swedish) waffles. The indian spinach isn't big enough yet to provide food for a three person meal. But it's not far away; one of the leaves I cut today was A4 sized (about lettersize). An unforseen problem is that tenders leaves and sprouts tastes delicious. I've found myself nibbling them like candy and then try to smooth it over with an "at least it's healthy eating"...

(Yesterday I wrote a post on how I was affected by the collective hangover in Uppsala eventhough I'm a teetotaller. Apparently it was worse than I thought since I posted the text on the swedish motherblog Parkettodlaren. Sorry.)

A short trip in the fast lane

This picture was taken two hours after I put up the net. Two hours was what it took for the indian spinach to find and twist a creeper into it. Later that evening I called the person administering allotments in the allotment compound close by. We are to meet this Sunday, and if I understood correctly I'm about to get one on the spot (normally you have to wait for a couple of months if the queue is short).

I'm both thrilled and terrified.

When cooking goes boink

Today I decided to try some of the indian spinach to see if it's something to cook for the family. I cut three leaves, each of them bigger than a dvd-disk, and two tender stems and planned to fry them for a modest lunch.

All my sources recommend garlic for indian spinach, but we didn't have any. In my hunt for other spices I came across two packets of "Green and Garlic" from Max (dip for french fries from a swedish hamburger chain). I grabbed them, plus some sambal oelek, soy sauce and salt. I fried everything together with five meatballs from the freezer. The indian spinach was reduced into green threadlike scraps. The dip fell apart into several decilitres (or cups) of fat and some milkpowder. I'm not sure if I want to know how they manage to cram that much of fat into a half decilitre (1/3 cup) of dip.

Unfortunately I've been craving for fat since yesterday, so I cut a thick piece of bread and poured everything over it.

The result? It was so salty and fatty that I didn't feel the taste of the spinach - I couldn't even feel the leaves in my mouth. I'm not able to review the taste, and I spare you the cooking pictures. Fortunately the indian spinach grows fast. In about a week I'll have enough to do some real cooking.

Garlic and indian spinach

My flat reeks of garlic. I've chopped up some and put the slices on the soil in my pots. This seems to scare away the tiny mosquitoes thriving in wet soil (and eating seedling roots). I do understand why. Eventhough I am a garliclover the smell gives me headaches, and if I get a headache what wouldn't happen to a mosquito? Since only freshly chopped garlic will do this cure is expensive; the cloves disappears like snow in Sahara. I'm counting on replacing them every third day, but I think I'll leave the flat during those first fragrant hours.

Thanks to the indian spinach I've still got a cold. I was close to well when it decided to invade the neighbours. It grows so fast I could almost see a creeper extend itself into the nasturtium and wrap around the support. I realised that if I didn't repotted the indian spinach and gave it a trellis of its own I would soon have a shrubbery instead of separate plants. Maundy Thursday and Good Friday was spent sterilising better soil, repotting and building a trellis. I do hope the spinach is worth it, since I was whacked all through Easter Eve, -Day and Second day of Easter. My lungs were burning.

The only cure that seems to work is rest, so I'm chilling today. I pretend to not notice that the tomatoes desperately needs to be repotted, since if I do I want to replant every other plant too. It's not only a case of chore vanity (the chore has to be done in a special way) but also a question of space and light. Tomatoes in bigger pots means I have to plant other crops together in a container and that I need to give plants in the same window higher pots. Fluoroscent lights aren't flexible, after all.

More turf!

I've spent most of the weekend either sawing or cleaning. A jigsaw is extremely messy when you use it. And eventhough I told myself that "next time I'll attach the vacuum cleaner" I redid everything this morning. To be a gardener I have a remarcable lack of patience. This means two more things have emerged on my wishlist. Number one is only possible to fulfill of you are a very rich person; I want a woodworking shop. No, not a communal one (I've seen those), I want one of my own. A place where I can hang my tools neatly on the wall and where the workbench stays put! Right now half of the time carpenting is engulfed by carrying stuff and folding/unfolding the bench. Where I do the work? In the library of course! Sprinkle the books with sawdust will only liven them up... Wish number two is more modest, I want quick grip clamps. One clamp, two extra pads and two planks in one manuever are a test to patience and endurance. I'm lucky to be a mom in this case.

But now I do have two halfpainted shelves on my table. If I'm lucky I'll be able to put them up tomorrow evening and hang the grow lights under them. Then I'll be able to move my january seedlings from the nursery, repot the february seedlings and sow again. Wooot! I'm waiting for that moment! I suspect my plants do too, especially the tomatoes seems to be ready for some new turf.

The indian spinach makes me worry a bit. I hope it tastes good, because it seems to Grow A Lot. Plants For A Future mentions it can grow vines ten meters (11 yards) long. If you don't believe it you can take a look at the little video I found on YouTube where someone has filmed vines growing along the ground. (This is 'raw' film - no speaker, no music, just the sound of the photographer.) Well, if my own "Seymores" decides to walk down that road I promise you a recipe on indian spinach pie.

The tropics, elephant ears and oxalic acid

I'm pondering naming my two indian spinach plants Seymore 1 and Seymore 2. Have you ever seen more brutal seedlings? When Impecta mentioned that these needed big containers they weren't joking. I'll need to replant these, eventhough I put them in pots 14 cm wide (5 1/2").

Indian spinach are one of the plants I've started growing since I took some time evaluating my indoor climate. The most common temperature range in the flats I've lived in is 20-24¤C (68-75¤F), most often closer to 24¤ (75¤) eventhough we are shutting down all radiators. For some reason we've always chosen homes on top level, and are warmed by the flats below. Today we are living in an appartement with most windows to the south, so between ten o'clock and two o'clock in the afternoon we reach 26¤ (79¤) or higher.

Does this sound like swedish outdoor climate? Nope, it's closer to the tropics. So why not try out some tropical plants? I picked indian spinach (Basella alba) on the name. India is warm, right? I'm pretty exited about this experiment, and the plants seems to thrive so far.

Next plant will be elephant ear or taro (Colocasia esculenta). I picked it in the same way; one of our seed catalogues mentiones that it's used as food in the tropics. It resembles a monstera and I wouldn't be surprised if it's already grown as house plant in Sweden.

But if you are going to pick foreignish plants like that you have to do your resaerch. There are plants that are toxic in their raw forms and have to be treated to be edible. Yams is the most typical exemple; a root tuber which preparation takes days of pounding, leaching and drying before the toxins are removed.

I discovered that elephant ear is toxic in raw form due to high levels of oxalic acid. You find oxalic acid in vegetables as spinach and rhubarb, so it's hardly an unknown substance to swedish culture, and anyone who has eaten rhubarb pie (traditional swedish summer dessert) knows one survive. I do suspect elephant ear is easy to cook safely, but I'll do some more research before I buy the seeds.

And how's my wood working projects going? It's a slow but steady progress I'd say. Today I brought out our foldable workbench and cut out the bottom piece to the nursery. I took some time since I had to bring the bench out from its hiding place under the stairs. Can you see it? It's in the furthest corner...