Tomorrow I'll take some serious rest...

Today has been one of those days when my head really hasn't been with me. You know the effect of too many nights burning midnight oil? I've lost things, started up new things and forgot all about them as soon as I left the room, found some other projects in the new room and continued working on them without any worries, untill I have to leave for the first room and finds the first chore, which I continue working on untill... etc. etc.

I've managed to water my plants, I've even nibbled some from my indian spinach jungle. But when I was about to walk to the kitchen for the herbgarden the waterbottle had disappeared into thin air. Myself I had mysteriously ended up in front of my computer in the library.
"Now, where did it go?" I thought as I looked up on the thing that happened to be right in front of me, namely the majestic double window.

There was the bottle, so symetrically wellplaced I had to snap a picture.

Oh bother!

Me picking leaves for the sallad.

The tomatoes drink more than two bottles of water each day. I refill the bottles, but I don't like the sound of roots breaking when I press them back into the soil. To solve the problem I cut off their bottoms to be able to fill them while they were still in the pot.

That was not a good idea. The water ran straight through bottle and soil in no time. I should have realised that it needed some sort of suspension to make the system work, but I've seen tomatoes watered this way outdoors. Outdoor tomatoes, on the other hand, have an endless buffert of soil beneath them. Duh!

This strikes me as a good exemple of mistakes you have to do in order to become a good gardener. The skill improves greatly by those few occasions when you do everything backwards. So, after wiping the water off the floor and replacing the bottles, both I and the tomatoes are happy.

Happy tomatoes for real

I've removed the pots with "Mini Happy Plant" from my tomatoes. That goo didn't have a chance to provide water fast enough for the plants. Instead I used an old, well established trick; you drill a hole in a soda bottle cap (I used small ones here), fill the bottle with water and shove it cap first into the soil. The hole in the cap allows the water to flow slowly and the plants can drink as much as they need. I could actually hear slurping sounds from the bottles when the sun was at its hottest.

Finally I'll won't wake up to discover that I'm minutes late for watering, and that the tomatoes have withered to the point that they seem dead as doornails. A hefty dose of water has revived them before, but it stresses the plants and I may end up with bitter tomatoes. Now it'll be interesting to see how often I'll need to refill the bottles.

Waterworries

Water! Neither we nor our plants survives without it, and now my plantations starts to be demanding. The indian spinach needs a filled magasin every other day, which means two litres (0,53 US liquid gallons) in one go. My different alliums are heavy drinkers too, and the tomatoes are growing like triffids. You may remember I put a Mini Happy Plant on one of them almost a week ago. (Happy Plant is a watering system using a cellulose goo you're splatting against the soil. The batch is protected by the plastic cup it arrives in, and is supposed to last for about thirty days.) Today I added another cup since I've been forced to add water twice after I started the first one. Let's see if that's enough; despite the stress the plant has sprouted its first flowers, and setting fruit is hardly something less needy.

The balcony season is about to start, and I've decided to use regular tapwater for the plants outdoors. I'm already softening more than ten litres (2.64 US liquid gallon) of water thrice a week for my indoor gardens. Fortunately the balcony plants will enjoy the luxury of rain every now and then - I hope. Our balcony faces south and lacks a roof, so if the summer is sunny I'll be running in and out with the pitcher (and the magasines will overflow, but I'm lucky enough to live above hardy and greenfingered neighbours). This year the plants will need quite a lot of water: I decided to set up a competition between different climbers - first plant to conquer the roof of the pergola wins.

To sum it up: every day I pour at least two litres (0,53 US liquid gallons) over my plants, 'big' days I use more than ten litres (2.64 US liquid gallons). When my balcony garden wakes up I'll add a round of twenty litres (5.28 US liquid gallon) every other day. I'll get my excercise, that's for sure!

Boiling and baking

Indoor vegetable gardening is very much about baking and boiling, not the vegetables themselves but the soil and the water. You may have noticed that I sometimes writes that I'm about to sterilise soil.

But why?

As to the soil it's because I recycle it, and will use the same lumps over and over again. To kill all pests, fungus and illnesses left from last time that may harm the plant I sterilise the soil in between uses. My method is quite simple; I put a pan of soil into a heated oven (200¤C/392¤F) and leave it there for twenty minutes. When I bring it out I pour the soil into a big terracotta pot for cooling. Most often I have so much soil I use an extra pan and have to find some extra big pots for the heated stuff. Changing pans and running for extras do give you your daily exercise.

Sterilised soil is completely dead, ie. it lacks germs and fungus that are good for the plants. In general I mix in some unused, unsterilised soil to add them again, but I'm not sure how well this works. Perhaps I should take a look on the specialty shelves for plant protection and see if they have cultures on a bottle (wouldn't be surprised). In the future my plan is to add vermicompost instead, it's not only nutricious but contains those friendly creatures as well.

Water is boiled for another reason. Sweden and Uppsala have very good tap water, you're able to drink it directly from the tap. But in Uppsala it also contains calcium. The calcium accumulates in the pots, forming uggly crusts that are harmful to the plants. To clean the water the easiest method is to give it a quick boil, which releases the calcium, and then let it cool. Then you can see small dustroses on the bottom of the cauldron as well as some flaky dust floating around on the surface – that's calcium. It forms a dustlayer on the sides of the cauldron as well, but you can't see it before you've emptied it.

To save time and energy I boil ten litres (2,6 gallons) of water at the time, and then collect it in a twentyfive litre (6.6 gallon) plastic can. As you may guess I just don't tilt the pot and pour the water directly into it. The weight is not so much of a problem as the fact that this stirs the calcium. Instead I use a siphon; I put the pot on a high place and the can lower, then I take a small hose and put one en into the pot a bit above its bottom. The other end is held lower then the pot and then I suck a bit on it which makes the water flow through the hose, and it'll continue to flow as long as that end is place lower than the highest water surface. Don't forget the cloth if you try this; it's easy to splash some water around when you're trying to get the hose into the can as fast as possible.

You could leave it like this, but I prefer to watch over the process to see that no calcium is sucked into the tube. This means I stand with the hose in hand those five to ten minutes it takes to collect the clear water out of the pot (to avoid being bored I read a book). When there are about two litres (half a gallon) left I stop siphoning and use the rest of the water for cleaning the cauldron – it takes on a milky white colour when I sweep the dish brush around.