Tomatoes have nine lives

If you are considering starting indoor vegetable gardens, the first plant you should sow should be tomatoes, preferably 'Tiny Tim' or a similar variety for containers. Few plants are harder to kill than them. The reason why I say that? I stopped watering mine a month ago, and they are still setting fruits.

Of course, the fruits could have been better, but they are fully edible and still beats the ones you get at the grocery.

I've planned to butcher those uggly plants for a while, but things get in the way. Our family economy is still a catastrophy, so my attention is pointed to other things than gardening. On the other hand this has given me the chance to do something I've procrastinated for a long time; starve the thrips away. Every window will be emptied and cleaned, and then I'll leave it bare for a while (don't know how long yet) before I start the vegetable cultivation cycle again. I'll probably put a small seedling nursery in my study, to have nice plants for the house once the quarantine is over.

Keep your fingers crossed for my success.

And the family of indoor vegetable gardeners is growing. The Indoor Garden is an ambitious blog with lots of usefull information. Wellcome!

Thrips and fungusgnats are really trying it...

My oilseed pumpkin has been eaten. Soon, I say, soooooooooon, I'll have money to buy some biological antidotes*. The they'll get it!

*Or should that be "dotes"...?

Tomatoes and thrips

It'll be a short blogpost today since it's getting late. I've got two unexpected free days from my job and am planning to take one of them to tidy up my indoor gardens. My first plan was to pick nettles. With a loaded mp3player, clothes from head to toe (including gloves), a pair of scissors and a plastic bag I pick 10 - 15 liters (3-5 US gallons) in an hour. Cleaning and parboiling the harvest for the freezer takes the rest of the day. Remembering the summer by eating nettle soup in the winter is golden!

But

When I did my usual watering round today I could see that my gardens had been more neglected than they should have been. A lot of stuff had wiltered and should be taken away - other plants need repotting badly, or else they'll strangle themselves with their own roots. In addition the thrips have ruled the grounds to the extent that I almost feel like giving up. Big plants have shadows of leaves that waves sadly from wiltered stems. *Sigh*

Thus something has to be done. As far as the times allow I'll be throwing out the old and replanting the new. And there is light in the dark. Today I harvested 90g tomatoes (3.17 ounces). Judging by the state of the plants this is just a small taster of bigger future harvests, so I keep my fingers crossed. And the son happily ate the tomatoes he was given for dinner and the few left over after the meal. Is it possible that I've found a third vegetable that he likes?...

Plant care

The best tip I've ever heard was to have a tad fertiliser in the water every time you water the plants. Plants eats like us; a bit at the time. If you only had a meal a week you wouldn't feel so good, even if you had a thirty five course banquet. Plants works in the same way. Rather obvious really, but we tend to think that the soil will work as a larder, portioning out the nutrition evenly. Unfortunately it doesn't do that all the time, and the chance is that you water it out when you overflow the container.

I've been using a mild nutrient solution for two weeks. Have I noticed any difference? Well, the tomatoes has set more and bigger fruits. Now, tomatoes are hungry beeings, so I'm not that surprised. My other plants have not changed in the same obvious way, but they do look healthier. Right now I'm short of grown up plants, but it will be interesting to see how my 'gardens' fare when I've got all my beds up.

And it's time to crank up the pflantzensprüher to hunt thrips again. My chives have turned both curly and bald.

The thrips are back!

Ain't that the life! My gardens and I have become ill at the same time. Thrips for them, a heavy cold for me. I'm off for the worse though, and have to sit down an relax every now and then. Extremely irritating for someone who can juggle terracotta pots as if they are feather balls. Particularly irritating is that I know that if I do something about the thrips now this may be the only thing I need to do - but I don't have the strength to.

On the other hand I have the time to figure out a strategy, and that's not bad. I've tracked down simple, environmental friendly pesticides (softsoap mixed with water) and am pondering on how to work out a routine for spraying my plants regularly. Maj-Lis Pettersson recommends spraying houseplants with water under high pressure once a week to keep pests away. Because of the state of our bathroom (when it's not cluttered, wet laundry is drying there) this has not been possible. Now I'm able to work out how to declutter it and figure out how to be able to spray plants even when the laundry is drying.

My dream is to rebuild the bathroom and add a special table with a sink where I can spray my plants and clean my indoor gardening stuff. Since my hubby and I really isn't into renovating (planning renovations is another thing) I think I'll have to file this dream into the "theoretically possible" file - ie. together with the dream of covering all the roofs of our housing cooperative with solar panels and maybe add some some wind turbines on the most windy spots. What I could do is to build a table for the bathtub - hmmmmmmmm...

Everything but housemaid's knee

The illnesses of winter broke into my plans a few days ago. I've planned my lemon balm plantation for quite a while now, to have leaves enough for tea for cold and other viral diseases. Then vomiting disease struck our little family, and we put ourselves in voluntary quarantine. I'm ever so grateful that our friends Cicci and Monika did some shopping for us during that time. They called us from ICA (swedish equivalent of Walmart)
"Hallo, did we write the note wrong? Do you really want five lemon balm plants?"

Yes, that's what I wanted. I showered the plants brutally to rinse off most of the thrips, and planted them in my aging herb garden. Some day I'll have to empty the entire container and replant everything with fresh soil, but not untill I've got rid of this cold. My nose feels as thick as an elephant's trunk, and the container do look good on the windowsill.

Reading "Håll krukväxterna friska!" (transl: Keep your potted plants healthy!) by Maj-Lis Pettersson doesn't make this any better. There is an horrible amount of diseases and deficiences for a little plant to contract, and all of them results either in yellow leaves or dry leaf edges. Did you know that mealybugs can hide among roots? And I was so proud that my calamondin at least was free from them. The calamondin and my lemonbalm are currently suffering from all maladies in the book, except for, possibly, fungus as a result of a humid climate.

The cure Maj-Lis Pettersson recommends is simple and full of work; keep the soil humid and shower the plants once a week. My mother used to shower her plants twice a year, and I - well, let's just say that I do it even less often. Mrs Pettersson's methods involving ec-meters and luxmeters seems more fun, since I'm a gadgeteer on a grand scale. I don't care if these contraptions are expensive, I want one of each!

Well, it's time to nurse the cold and my fataly ill calamondin. I'll be back.

Next project

Doesn't look good, does it? Seems like only the lemon balm is doing fine. Lemon balm, on the other hand, is among those plants that grows uncontrollably once you've got them started. The only reason this plant is small is my habit of making lemon balm herbal tea every other day. I have no idea why the parsly is white (thrips?) or why the chives are ridiculously thin.

My ignorance is certainly a hindrance. Perhaps the best thing is to dig this garden up, sterilise the soil and start afresh. I dream about using plants from seeds this time, but I have no money to buy the seeds*. Next sowing will be strawberries instead (I have the seeds, the leaves are good for herbal tea and the fruit are good for bribing kids - perfect!)

My seedlings are mostly fine. In some dull thought of doing good I put on the plastic hood on the green house - and didn't see that mildew started to grow on the ice plant pots. I've removed the hood and I hope the molding will die as the air starts to circulate around it. If the ice plants survive they'll probably kill their 'guest' all by themselves. They have a habit of poisoning the soil around them with salt. (Hm, I realise this means I have to create a separate soil bin for ice plant soil. Yes! Another project to loose myself in!)

*If you want to make it possible for me to buy some more seeds do click the banner ads. Google AdSense is kind enough to convert my enourmous revenue from peanuts to swedish kronas ;-)

Autumn today, spring tomorrow...

My little gardens have reached their personal autumns. Won't last long; growing stuff indoors makes you less vulnerable too seasonal changes. The real autumn is noticable too, however, the plants don't press themeselves against the windows anymore, and the added light becomes more and more important.

The reasons behind the personal autumns are my lack of time for the gardens combined with bugs. I have thrips in two windows. At first I planned drastic cures; to empty the windows entirely, clean them and then leave them empty for two weeks. Felt boring though, I mean; two entire weeks without growing anything. So I decided on a milder version. I leave one of the windows be for the moment. I grow my herbs there, and they do fine as long as I spray them with water a few times a day. Thrips don't like a humid climate. The other window will host my tiger nuts. Tiger nuts grows like a weed (ahaha) thrips or no thrips, and since it's the tubers you eat I can spray the grass above as much as I like.

But spring is not far away. Today I brought out my seed envelopes to what I'll sow today or tomorrow. My plan is to do new sowing every other week during some months to see how well this meets the needs and demands for vegetables in this household. One or two times a week I can already add vegetables for my lunch completely out of the containers. The goal to feed the entire family comes closer.

As you see on the picture I have lots of envelopes. I buy seeds like others buy fabric, and I haven't even opened some of them. Adding to that is the seeds I took from my calamondin and a bunch of tasty grapes we bought. It was with a bit of anguish that I selected what to grow this time:

*Common purslane
*Iceplant
*Salad 'Frisée d'Amerique'
*Calamondin
*Grapes

I'm counting on the calamondin and the grapes to be difficult to grow, so I'll sow them only for fun. To be honest I don't even know what I'll do with a couple of calamondin plants - I guess I'll give them away. Grapeleaves are edible, so they do have a place in this garden. Gadgeteer as I am I'm already inventing contraptions to make it possible to move the plants and provide them with added light.

I'll replant the tiger nuts as well. This includes sterilising soil, boiling soil walls and cleaning boxes. My friends; I'll put my body through a training session a bodybuilder would be proud of.

So, how's it going? 2007-08-13

Time for a new suite of photos documenting my experiment.

Let's start with my thripsberidden herbgarden. I do apologise for the blured photo; I have a disagreement with my camera. I want to take nice close ups, it says it can't. However, I've sprayed this garden with clean water from the dryer several times a day this week. The plants seems to do better, although they are not 100% healthy yet. The new leaves of the parsley have less dry spots than the old ones. I still don't know if this treatment is enough, but it looks hopefull.

This is my root garden. Everything is growing like weeds. Time for another 'thinning sallad'. And I owe an apology to my hubby after the post complaining about him making sallad before I could photo the plants I thinned out. I did tell him to do so. My only excuse is that hunger tend to affect memory...

In this garden I worry about the tiger nuts. They seem to hang their leaves, and are thinning out. The nasturtiums are doing better, although I'm not content with their spindly look. Next time I sow them I'll have to plan and place them different.

Perhaps I should put them together with these. Tiger nuts are classified as a noxious weed in the US, and here you see why. These plants are about one and a half months old, and have already filled their pot as well as the space above. I'm playing with the thought of dividing the gang next time I get around to do bigger things.

My calamondin is blooming. It's for the sake of this plant that I keep dryerwater in my spray bottle nowadays. Dryerwater is almost 100% free from calcium, something citrus trees don't like. This week I've tried to spray the calamondin three times dayly, since this seems to be the right amount for it. Every time I keep my schedule it starts setting flowers like this one. My next purchase for my indoor gardening hobby will be plastic bottles to store water and fertilised water for this baby.

Lastly I'll show you why my indoor gardening has been low key this week; I'm tied up in another project. As you can see even some of my indoor gardening items has yielded to this, since my gigantic pot was a too god drying rack for our wood to be ignored. The strawberries for the kiddo are waiting on the balcony, and I do hope they'll survive the rough weather.

So, how's it going? 2007-08-04

Well, that's the question. I've taken pictures of all my working gardens to show the experiment in progress.

Here's my herbgarden. Currently I'm growing lemon balm, thai basil, parsly, chives and sage. As usual the lemon balm and basil are growing like crazy, but not the sage. The sage brought some kind of illness from the mall, and haven't recovered at all. The herbgarden is not to its best. I've been ill lately, and haven't been able to spray the gardens with water. The result is that thrips has taken over my lemon balm. Today I cut away the most affected ares (the buds, of course) and sprayed a lot. I'll do some extra spraying with water for three weeks to see if that's enough to scare those pests away.

This garden is also filled with gnats, who thrives in the moist soil. Their precense is probably stressing the plants, making them more vulnerable to other pests. One way of getting rid of gnats is to inplant nematodes, and I have tracked down the swedish company selling these things (worms, actually). It wasn't easy, since the full name of the company isn't "Predator" like everybody's calling them, they are called "Lindesro AB, parasiter och predatorer" and their website is minimalistic.

This week I cut down the thai basil and made pesto. It tastes like ordinary pesto, although more bitter since I had to thicken it with more pine nuts than was originally intended.

What I've learned from this garden so far:

1. Spray the plants with water at any cost.
2. Get rid of those gnats!
3. Learn to sow your own plants from seeds even for those cheap herbs available at the mall.
4. Do have some almonds at hand when you are making original pesto. (Oh boy, will the genovesians kill me for this...)

I couldn't resist this angle when I took this picture. This is the box where I grow tiger nut only. It's also the first box that is half the size of my ordinary boxes, and with a weed the garden seems to work fine. I may think these plants needs a haircut, but I keep my hands away. This is the special garden for my son. He has started to help me with the plants, and he's seen this ever since the seeds grew. Every day I bring it down from the shelf, show him how it's grown and then he sprays it with water. These are things twoyearolds like.

What I've learned from this garden so far:
1. A twoyearold can handle a spraying can and likes to see how the garden grows.
2. Using a box half as big is fine.
3. Weeds are growing like, well, weeds.

And here's my garden unbrushed. I've sown turnip, carrots and scallion close together and now the different leaves are tumbling over to each other making complicated braids. It's time to thinning this out for the first time. At this stage the roots are thin like threads, and pretty weedy, so I'll make a leaf sallad for the family. The scallions and the carrot leaves will be used raw, but I cook the turnip leaves like spinach (surprise!). In this box I have too few, and to much trouble picking them.

I have a few gnats in this garden too and one turnip leaves have a dry spot. On the other hand this is a lot less than I've had before.

What I've learned from this garden so far:

1. Spraying water to prevent thrips works.
2. Turnip should be grown in bigger quantities as single crop in their box.

Do you recognise my thripsgarden I complained about some time ago? Don't those nasturtium leaves look dashing? I sowed them after I'd torn up the garden and I've watched them like a hawk to see if any of the pest has survived in the tigernuts (which I left) and started to affect them. So far so good. The soft soap spray seems to have worked, eventhough I didn't follow the recipe to the letter.

I'm planning to thin this out a bit, but I haven't decided if I'll take entire plants or just cut some leaves. The tigernut plants survived their haircut, and are ready for another one.

What I've learned from this garden so far:
1. Soft soap and water is enough.
2. Tigernuts do survive haircuts.

And the calamondin. Since I started to spray it with water its leaves has stayed on the branches instead of falling off en masse. (I once swept the floor in the room and got a heap of leaves and some pine cones instead of dust...) It's still suffering from cloros and I have changed the water in my spraying can to softened water to see if that's making any difference. The water of Uppsala is heavy with calcium and I suspect the calamondin is absobing the calcium through the leaves. (Calcium makes it harder for the plant to absorb iron, which makes it 'anemic' - it gets cloros.) Most of the flowers has fallen off, and dark green fruitlings are hiding beneath the leaves.

What I've learned from this garden so far:
1. Calamondins wants to be sprayed with water.

As you can see I haven't included a picture on a gigantic pot filled with strawberries. I haven't planted it yet. My biggest challenge right now is to keep the plants alive untill I get started...

And don't forget the poll in the margin ;-)

Tiger nut haircut

First a photo from my own balcony. It's more minimalistic than the french balcony I showed you a couple of days ago. I had other things to do in April and May when I normally plan and plant my outdoor stuff. The strawberries had survived the winter and the pansies were coming along nice, so I decided to stay content. Right now I think it's boring and am planning the autumn and next summer (wine or blackberry, hmmmmmmm...). The chair is a gift from the company where my hubby works right now. They gave him two for the summer, and since they seemed to match the balcony I left them there. (If anyone from this company reads this I wouldn't be ungrateful if you decided to give us a complimentary folding table ;-) )

Today I made some major works on the garden haunted by thrips. After three weeks of treatment with soft soap spray it looked like this.


The common purslane had turned quite old and the nasturtium seemed to consist of withered leaves, eventhough green ones where budding at the end of the branches. The only things thriving was the tiger nuts, so I decided to tear everything away except them.


It's a shame throwing away such big heap of things that would do better in a compost. The longer I'm working with indoor gardening, the more I feel the need for composting. Unfortunately my flat often is too warm for a vermicompost, so I've started to look for ways to use a real one indoors instead. Colleens (In the Garden Online) variety seems promising, eventhough I have a feeling I'll have to store it on the balcony. (Since there are flats without balconies I feel like it's cheeting using mine.)


I gave the tiger nuts a haircut too. They looked like a dull tuss of grass (and that's what they are) so I decided to spiff them up a bit. Don't you think this hairdo looks nicer on the windowsill? I'm not sure the plants will survive the stress being cut down like this but the prognosis is good; tiger nut is a weed to fear. In the rest of the soil I sowed the last of my Alaska Scarlet nasturtium seeds. This time I didn't put up with 'frills' like putting seeds in water 24 hours and presow them, I just put them into the soil and covered them up. The last thing I did was to sprinkle osmocote tab fragments over the surface, and then realisie that they looked edible. I spent quite some time trying to cover them up without disturbing the seeds (twoyearold in da house...).


I took this picture to show how I've started to document my cultivations. I'm not sure on what to do with the facts gathered, or if I should copy them to something else, like a notebook. These days I'm only documenting to get a feeling for how long it takes between sowing and harvesting and how different kinds of soil and fertilizing are affecting the plants. (I haven't made a note on this box, but I do know that this contains the cheap seedling soil that packs together and suffocates the plants if I'm not keeping it moist.) Note the green line between the dry and the wet part of the barrier between the soil and the leca; it's algae. This is the last time I fluff the soil, sow some stuff and tell myself it's gonna work. The next time I'll have to empty the box, sterilize everything and start a new garden from scratch. This is something that will be an indoor gardener routine.

The good, the bad and the ugly

In general I try to stay away from memes, but I couldn't resist this one. Colleen with In the Garden Online invented it. In short I'm going to show those parts of my garden that didn't turn out quite right. You can't always succeed, aned sometimes the most accidental sowing or planting turns into a beautiful flower. This can be good to keep in mind when the yearning for perfection threatens to deaden your entusiasm. So, here they are

The ugly

Waily, waily! This is my calamondin. The branches in the middle are completely dry, it suffers from lack of iron, and dry spots on the leaves hint at another pest or illness. This is my constant reminder that, eventhough I've learned much, I'm still not an expert gardener. A good thing is that oodles of flowers are blooming right now.

The bad

Yes, this is bad. This is my thrips garden. I started spraying it with soft soap sollution regularly, but the soap burnt the leaves. As it is today I don't which damage are made by thrips, and which by soap. Perhaps I tear it all away - except for the tiger nuts, which grows like weeds.

The good

This is a pot full of things I didn't have the heart to throw away. The pansies are former table decorations sinced Easter. Every advice concerning pansies orders me to pick dried out flowers to enhance the flowering and my reaction to this is
"Do I have to?"
The marble leaves are nasturtiums, "Alaska Scarlet". Two plants were left when I had planted everything I needed indoors. I was tired, had overworked myself and was out of time so I just planted them in this bin on the balcony. No acclimatisation period or any other frills, I just put them there.
"If they live, they live!" was my only thought about it.
I hope they have time enough to sprout some flowers. The red will be perfect against the blue pansies.

Indoor gardening, some thoughts

If you read swedish you can take a look at "Livet i en lagom stor stad" (Uppsalaliv) has proclaimed Parkettodlaren (Indoor Gardener's mother blog) blog of the week. I'm honoured, and feel it's time to sum up the experiment so far.

My biggest enemy isn't a gardening thing at all. It spells boredom. You know; suddenly your interest in the subject dips and you start working on other things instead. I've had one serious dip so far. The causes were full time work and illnesses, but they could have been a need for playing the accordion, learning cymric or drinking non-alcoholic colourful drinks. These dips are one of the reasons I use selfwatering containers and long time working fertilizing tabs. In this way the basic needs are covered.

And how did my plants do during this dip. Not bad. My strawberry and iceplant seedlings died a dry dead. The others were replanted and lives pretty well. The nasturtiums I planted on the balcony are fighting a tough war against the pansies in the same container, on the other hand they are the healthiest of all plants. The nasturtiums inside are among the plants with thrips and are sprayed with soft soap every other day.

I've started to experiment with smaller containers - although I still build them myself out of plastic boxes from IKEA (cheaper that way). The bins you see on most of my pictures are dimensioned for growing root vegtetables - carrots, turnips and tiger nuts for exemple. The best crops for indoor gardening have turned out to be leaf vegetables, however, and they don't need as deep layer of soil. The question is if I ever will have patience to wait for a turnip to form its root. It doesn't matter that they grow fast, they grow very slowly anyhow. The last turnip I harvested had a root thick as a finger. The carrots did better though.

Two things have proved to be important; extensive notes and extreme hygiene. When it comes to notes I see myself bying a book with black covers and writing minute data with blue ink and longhand. Since I know myself the reality looks quite different. I write data with water proof black ink on paper tape and stick the strips directly onto the sides of the container. This really makes my gardens look like experimental cultivations, and for a long time now I've ponder on a way to make them look nicer. The plan involves fabric matching the curtains (which I plan to sew), velcro tabs and me getting off my butt...



Growing vegetables indoors are more like growing stuff in a greenhouse than outdoor gardening. You may know that a greenhouse should be washed thorougly at least once a year? You do that to get rid of different pests that are hiding in cracks and minute getaways. Perhaps it's good to do the same with indoor gardens? I've cleand the window where my thrips ridden garden is placed using soft soap. I haven't had an entirely problem free garden in years, so it will be interesting to see what'll come out of this insight.

The most important thing I've learnt is that nothing is A Big Catastrophy (tm). You are allowed to be the greenest of amateurs, and you are allowed to stay like that for as long time as you like, untill you feel ready for higher learning. You can even digest this higher learning in the smallest portions possible. As long as you provide the plants with enough water almost anything will grow.

Hmmm... thrips

Having thrips is no fun. I spray the affected plants with soap water, and I'm starting to suspect that all my gardens are contaminated. Thrips thrive in dry places so I've started to spray the plants with water a few times a day. I feel like an old aunt. You know, one who have prize perfect house plants (although unedible), who only gives them the best fertilizer and polishes the leaves. On the other hand it's worth it if I can escape having soap on all my plants.

A happy day

My bin haunted by thrips. I've just sprayed it with pesticide and am cutting away the leaves with most injuries.

I've had an outburst of energy today. Not only did I sterilize seven litres (two gallons) of leca (and I did it without burning down the house, jay!), I washed two plasticboxes, cleaned a window and boiled my bridal veil. (The veil is made of nylon and is normaly the separating barrier between leca and soil in my selwatering containers.) Appart from that I've treated my nasturtium/tiger nut/purslane garden for thrips. I was hoping to sow something in my boxes too, but the evening came faster than I thought.

You've reached an higher level of gardening when you recognize more pests than aphids and takes the trouble to fight them. It was a strange feeling to think
"Shiny, dry areas on the leaves... aren't that thrips?"
I took a look at the back side of an dry leaf, and when I knew what to look for I spotted those cigarrlike little animals at once. A quick glance in my small garden pest encyclopedia proved me right. I was right! I knew something! Spooky...

Tomorrow I'll plant a bin with vegetables - nothing special, just turnip, carrot and onions, if nothing gets in the way. When you spend your life together with a bearded man and a twoyearold anything can happen.