Podcast for the eyes

Podcasts are good things! The last days I've had a severe eyeinfection. For most of the time I've only been able to lay down with my eyes shut. I asked hubby to download this year's Odla i P1 podcasts (Odla is a swedish radioshow for amateur gardeners) to at least have something to listen at. So I listened.

And listened.

And before I knew I was up and about, planting my new herb garden. That was not one minute too early since the plants had been left for some days in their plastic bags (I bought them shortly before I fell ill). Unfortunately this means that the plants doesn't feel well, but I'm still glad the job's done. I even put lables on the box recording the names of the plants, the dates they were planted, date for fertilizing and that I've forgotten to hollow out the layer of leca. The last thing irritates me, since this means the self watering container wont work properly. The soil in the hole is supposed to work as a wick, sucking up moist to the rest. I'll leave the container for now to see how it works out.

It was fun to use the new soil. "Änglamarks balkonglådejord" (Änglamark is Coop Sweden's ekological brand, and Coop is our second big grocery chain - think Walmart or Tesco) is the lable I use now, and the feel of it was different to the cheep seedling soil I've used earlier. It was softer and had a better texture. It will be interesting to see if I have a better result with this. To this soil I added a pellet of "osmocote tabs" per plant. I still don't own a vermicompost, so I have to make do with this.

And to answer an unspoken question; the nice doctor gave eye medicine yesterday. In the future I'll listen to Odla while tending to my plants.

Grow light for beginners

Grow light is a good thing to have when you are gardening indoors. If you're not buying that, take a look at the photo series on my small sage and mint garden. Today it looks like this:



In the beginning it looked like this. The plants had survived a long swedish winter in one of our darker windows.



After a few days with grow lights, it looked like this.



And now I have mint enough to drink tea made from fresh leaves several times a week, and have problems finding purposes for my amounts of sage. Clearly an indoor gardener, at least an indoor gardener with the ambition of growing eatable things, cannot do without extra light. But why?

The reason is that the plant need three things to survive; light+water+soil (ie. nutriants from...). It needs light of the right amount and quality in the same way it needs nutriants of right amount and quality.

During the summer in Sweden (we are roughly at the same longitude as Canada) most plants are doing pretty well since we have almost the same amount of lights as in the tropics. In the winter, however, we have only a third or in worst case a twohundredth part. Our human eye cannot register those big differences, but the plants do - and starves.

If you are gardening indoors you need to think both of the right amount of light for the season, and the right quality of light. Roughly light is divided into red and blue, where red gives long plants and blue compact and leafy ones. Gardeners deep into this field has long ago lost themselves into the world of lux, lumen and LED. I might join them in the future, but today we're looking at the basics.

The easisest way to get good light is to visit the apropriate chain in gardening or hardware or do it your self. I bought mine at a swedish hardware/do it yourself chain. When you find flourescent lights neetly labled "grow light", buy it. If you want to grow in big pots, buy a long 'normal' flourescent light and the appropriate armature.

Now, grow light tend to be expensive, so it may come as a relief that if you are keeping your plants in your windowsills you can make do with complementing the sunlight. In that case you can buy normal full colour flourescent light.

The last part was interesting for me. My instant herbgarden and sow box are endowed with a futuristic bluewhite light. Eventhough it's been up for several days I haven't noticed any difference like I did with the sage and mint. I guess the light is of inferiour quality, which means I have to change. Full colour light will dig a hole in my budget, but a far smaller one than 'real' grow light. I'll update on this subject.

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!

Instant herbgarden

The two things that have worked well so far is 1. added light and 2 selfwatering pots. Today I took the consequences of this and built two giant selfwatering pots, using the plastic box "Flaj" from IKEA. (We have an enormous amont of these, and they are used for everything, from wind shield to foot bath.) I sowed common purslane, turnip and carrot in one, and planted herbs and sallat in the other. A small spot that's green already makes gardening more fun. I bought the herbs and the sallat in the vegetable section at ICA (like Walmarts or Tesco), which is both a curse and a blessing. A curse since you have absolutely no guarantee that the plants are free from pests. A blessing since the herbs are big in size and cheap. Right now I'm looking at the result of my efforts and wonder how many of the plants that will recover once they realise that they are in a new garden. Some of them seems to be weak (should have been more picke at the mall), so I've already made a replacement plan.

Sowed in box 1
Common Purslane
Turnip
Carrot

Planted in box 2
Sallat
Basil
Sage
Tarragon