Plant babble

I've spent twentyfour hours trying to figure out iTunes. By now we understand each other and that's good since I'm loading my mp3player with audioshows that'll make me a polyglot, educated, better mom, writer and gardener - among other things.

Music? Why on earth would I want music on my "pod"? But I have to admit that Ebba Grön, some 80s syrup (lovely syrup!), Lars Demian, Dire Straits and other artist have made their way to my player.

And what do I have on my player that are interesting for a gardener? Well, the french and the chinese course I added for repetition of languages I've already learnt. I chose them because both countries have interesting cultivation techniques and traditions, and you get the best information if you speak the native language. I'll never forget my visit to the revolutionary museum in Beijing. One board displayed a number of banknotes, and a sign where the chinese version explained at length that this was (I assume, since my chinese was bad even then) notes issued by the guomindang regime etc. etc. The english version was shorter. It said
"Paper money"

Still I was happy that there was an english explanation at all. The history museum next door had signs that were written in chinese only.

If it was different in Paris? Not much - both mandarin and french are world languages, even if the museums leaves the english language out there are still hundreds of millions of people that can read the signs. Knowing english alone makes you miss quite a lot of information.

But I digress. Appart from Odla, a swedish gardening radioshow available as podcast, I have added Wiggly Wigglers to my playlist. They've won Mouse & Trowel Awards for best gardening podcast for consecutive years, and I'm really looking forward to listen. Showtitles like "A Wiggly Carbon Footprint", "The Poodcast" and "Compost Flavoured Yoghurt" hints at a sense of humour.

My other shows don't have anything to do with gardening, but are good distraction during work. A good podcast in the ear makes weeding fun. For my own part I listen to a lot about religon, but there are something for everyone out there in cyberspace. Good gardening podcasts are easy to find via Mouse & Trowel. BBC is the place to start looking if you want high quality shows covering a diverse range of topics. A traditional googlesearch is another way if you take your time for it. Browsing through a lot of unwanted stuff may feel useless, but the one good show you find is worth it. With luck the new show links to other ones, and following those recommendations is one of the better ways to find interesting podcasts.

So, what are you waiting for? Add some babble to your music!

Another rite de passage

Today I boiled my first killer slugs.

Ew!

The Vatican Rag

This man taught mathematics at Harvard and political science at MIT. For a long time I couldn't go to communion without giggling, and that's his fault. Still I could have payed for listening to one of his lectures.

Home Vegetable Gardening Part I & II

You need some training in academic long sitting since these two videos are a two hour lecture from University of California. I have to admit that I pause the professor every now and then and read some webcomics instead (I'd died for this possibility when I was a student!) but the vids are well worth it. Here you get a two hour introduction, or repetition, on vegetable gardening. Many thanks to UCTV for posting these (and lots more fun) on YouTube!

Home Vegetable Gardening Part I



Home Vegetable Gardening Part II

Why my balcony looks... well..

Birds! They've eaten the first ripe cherry on my cherry tree. My move? To buy eight laserfoil windwheels. It's war!

Does the vermicompost smell?

Definately! And believe it or not, it smells lavendar. The understairs cupboard smells like granny's wardrobe when I open it to get something. However, this is not because of the worms, a few bouquets of dried lavendar were accidentaly left in the bedding, and I discovered them too late.

I cultivated lavendar on the balcony two years ago, but left the plants to die when I discovered that they were a hybrid with a strange, sharp smell. Since the original lavendar smells pretty sharp this was not a humdinger, and yet I dried some bouquets in my study. Interestingly enough they smell pretty good in the vermicompost.

If you feel the urge to throw fragrant herbs in your vermicompost I'll remind you that lavendar once was used to fend off moths, and is probably not a healthy diet for other insects and crawlies. For this reason I'm worried about my new multipet. I couldn't find any dead worms when I dug around in the compost an hour ago, which I think is a good sign. On the other hand I could'nt find any live ones either - only one that crept away surprisingly fast. This uncertainity about my wigglers' fate should make my compost a Schrödinger's vermicompost, at least until I've learned how to dig for worms.

Roses and worms

The worms arrived today! The company told me last week that this was the day, but it was still exiting to open a padded envelope to find a sealed plastic bag with some soil, white root fragments and a few motionless red worms. Gently I turned the bag around to see if any of them was alive. They couldn't be all dead, could they? Suddenly one of them stretched out and pointed its head (?) to burrow from the light.

Ew!

The sight made me shudder, eventhough I regard myself as tough when it comes to yucky things. I put the bag aside and started drilling holes in the vermicompost to be. Forgotten were the earpains and the feebleness, at least untill the battery of the driller died. Sometimes I dearly wish for better tools than this cheap mailorder stuff.

In the meantime the roses started to bud on the balcony, and I paused ever so often to look at them. I've waited for these flowers for over a year. The vermicompost has been planed for less than a year, it's only fair that they shared my attention. Then I moisturised the vermicompost bedding and the time had come for breaking the bag.

Inside the lump of soil I found wriggling worm spagetthi. And again I shuddered, but why give in to basic reactions like these? (They serve a purpose, I'm sure.) I broke the lump and scattered it over the bedding to leave the worms to fend for themselves. It's a way to find dead worms. Those who haven't burrowed after an hour are dead.

What I though were white root fragments proved to be worm babies wiggling their tails, or shaking their heads perhaps, against the light. Compost worms don't like light. After an hour I could see that all worms were live and well, since the only thing left on surface was the tip of a tail. I treated my new multipet to a generous prune core and put the vermicompost beneath our stairs. My next project is to build a trap for fruitflies...



(I haven't added a CafePresslink today because of technical trouble. I'll return to the routine shortly, with the addition of highdefinition CClicensed picture downloads.)

Small blessings

The rosebuds on my balcony are starting open! I'll return shortly with a picture!

Pondering water

A good thing about being ill is the time for thinking you get. Right now my thoughts circles around effectivisation of watering, planting, nutrition - well effectivisation of everything. Partly because this will give me more time to heal, partly because I'd appreciate some time off even when I'm healthy.

Watering steals most of my time and efforts. A nordic company (Gardena) sells a drip irrigation system that looks nice. (Sorry about the swedish link - this company do only have websites for their customers in the nordic countries, which means I could choose between swedish, norwegian and danish. I hope you have similar systems.)

And expensive.

I could start to use selfwatering containers again, or perhaps build my own drip irrigation system. Hmmmm... that last things speaks to my inner gadgeteer, I think I'll ponder this some more. Like I said, I have the time for it.

Dance off...

No wonder this vid became viral - and yes, I am a nerd...

Living Walls

Cool thing I'm pondering trying at home. There's more information on the webpage of ELT Living Walls. Their photo gallery is inspiring.

Happy Midsummer!

...from Indoor Gardener.

Plants for a future

Unfortunately my chronic ear inflation is on the go (while I'm not), which means I have to make short posts for a while. Today I'll share my favourite place for checking up on new crops I'm pondering to use for indoor gardening.

Plants for a future

You can do a search in their database on both common and latin name, and every plant is provided with a short fact box and a longer essay on cultivation and uses. I'm quite fond of their rating of edibility in one to five apples. They've added sources and footnotes, which is a very good sign although I have yet to check up on the works they've used.

The group behind the database have some research cultivation sites in Great Britain. Since they seem to have some economical trouble it's a good thing to donate to them - this site is really useful.

2008 is the International Year of the Potato!

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

This is exciting! Will my potato plant bloom in time for Midsummer? According to tradition swedes eats pickled herring and boiled new potatoes on this day (we eat pickled herring given the slightest chance, mind you), and it would be cool to slaughter the bucket plant for summer solstice...

Potatoes weren't my thing when I was a kid. I remember them as those big mellow lumps left when I had eaten everything that tasted good on my plate. This disgust was shared by all my friends. Spagetthi was held much higher in esteem. Only when I grew up I met persons in my age that actually liked potatoes. When I hade collected my chin from the floor I started to reevalue the thing I loved to hate.

Rårakor (potato pancakes similar to rösti but fried in smaller entities) tastes good. Boiled potatoes are a must when you eat pickled herring. I tried rice once and that... let's just say I won't repeat this. Bread is a better addition, but the herring marinade irritates the stomach - only potatoes will round it off perfectly. And, potatoes satisfy hunger better, whatever any GIguru will tell you. In scientish this is explained as high satiety index. (Unfortunately I have to stop this culinary tale, since my keyboard is in danger from me drooling too much.)

The UN has realised how magnificent the potato is and have proclaimed 2008 as the International Year of the Potato. I'm surprised I haven't heard more about it in Sweden. The only celebration seems to be a photo exhibition in Alingsås. Lame, especially when you think of how deep roots the potato have in our country's customs. Or is this a consequence of the fact that most swedes live today because our ancestors survived on potatoes and herring marinade? A sort of collective cultural fatigue?

I don't know, but I do think the potato deserves an International Year, and I hope I'll be able to eat a lot more tubers in the future. There are many tasty varieties you have to grow yourself to get a taster - and this is possible to do indoors...

Over a cup of tea

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

Isn't this a teacup with nice company? I grew tired of the turquoise table cloth and moved my photosessions temprarily. (Beware! I may become extremely creative and use a red table cloth instead...) It's mint tea in the cup, home picked and home dried. Soon I'll be able to say that it's homegrown too, but this batch is from runaway mint growing around the allotment.

It's been a day with setbacks, and eventhough I'm not a friend of those they certainly add to the flavour of a nice cuppa. Right now I'm pondering those things that's actually works for me when growing things indoors. When my thoughts are taking walkabouts like this the result is most often a mindmap, but for clarity's sake I'll use a list instead.

• Evaluate the indoor climate; dry? humid? warm all the year around? follows the seasons to some extent (cold while cold outside etc.)?
  
• Chosing plants according to the indoor climate
  
• Selfwatering containers
  
• Terracotta pots + water every day
  
• Weekly shower with clean water to wash away pests
  
• Eggshells as seed pots
  
• Tomatoes
  
• Leaf amaranth
  
• Indian spinach (works best in tall windows)
  
• Spices, especially basil and sage
  
• Nasturtiums
  
• Common purslane
  
• Ice plant
  

Now I'll lean back and savour the knowledge that I was wise enough to not water the allotment before the downpours of today.

Hamburgers, Cookie Monster and Martha Stewart

We had hamburgers today - homemade hamburgers on homebaked bread with homegrown vegetables and dressing made from homegrown spices, of course we had homemade lemonade to drink to that. After this orgy in homemade good role modelship I need something slightly different. A cookie, for exemple.

Finally something else than pie!

Jamie Oliver makes Rhubarb and Crispy Pork.

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.

Tactical rhubarb and mint

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

Not only do I have a master in religious studies, I'm a trained project manager too. Being a project manager I have a big favourit in Sun Zi. Now, you may ask what a general have to do with project management, and escpecially what he has to do with gardening.

Well, Sun Zi wrote down some of his knowledge in a small book called "the Art of War" (I own the comic version...). Two pieces of advice are seemingly contradictory; he thought careful planning to be necessary, otherwise all would be lost to the enemy. On the other hand he says that war is unpredictable, things that seems safe changes in microseconds, and you have to be "as versatile as water". In other words you need a plan you can turn around at the drop of a hat. This may sound difficult, and there are a reason the name of Sun Zi (several of them, actually) are remembered two and a half millenium later.

Yesterday was one of those days when I had to 'turn' my plans so often I pirouetted through life. An injury in my arm made me turn down weeding on the allotment for the choice of a watering session and then some paperwork indoors. Some fresh mint I spotted hiding in the middle of some nettle rugs proved too tempting (of course I'd brought gloves in case I'd need to stand heads down into stinging plants) as well as some rhubarb leaves, so I changed paperwork to handling a small harvest. The fact I couldn't tip the rinsing bowl to change waters made me siphon the water into a carboy for use on the balcony garden. I forgot that the buses has change timetable and missed my ride, but I stayed at the station since it seemed unusually crowded. Apparently the busdriver had forgot the new timetable too, and picked us all up in 'wintertime'.

This could have been the day when nothing worked; a hurting arm, loads of weeding to do and a missed bus. Instead this was a day when I gained a lot; some more lovely mint tea, some groundcover for the container with the cherry tree (I planted some mint roots I mistakenly dug up there), about a litre of frozen rhubarb, the warm and fuzzy feeling of being environmentally friendly when I saved water, and a miraculous catch up at the bus station. Eventhough few of these things went according to the original plan, few of them are entirely coincidences. Buy keeping an eye on my alternatives to the original plan I was able to change actions fast. I did also keep an eye on possible bonuses that may be the outcome, and geared myself to be ready to grab them (but only for them - I didn't carry any unnecessary tools).

As I write this I realise that my life doesn't seem to be the daily struggle it is. But I have to admit it's become more fun ever since I really learned to think
"Obstacles, hm, how can I turn this situation to my advantage?"
and use Sun Zis advice in a creative way.

Some pesticides

I've found three recipes that seems to be good (I've only needed to use one of them). The source is "Handbok för köksträdgården" ("Kitchengarden Handbook") by Lena Israelsson, and since these are reliable housewife knowledge I've decided to pass them on.

Soap water
1/2 dl soft soap (1/2 cup)
1 l water (10 cups)

The soft soap in question is soap made from pine oil - still a very popular all purpose cleaning agent in Sweden. Disolve the soft soap in the water and spray the solution on the plant. Spray all of it, including the undersides of the leaves, untill the liquid drips from it.

Use against: aphids, thrips, powdery mildew, soft skin larvae and other insekts.

Baking soda spray

2 tbsp baking soda (ie sodium bicarbonate)
2 tbsp soft soap
2 l water

Disolve baking soda and soft soap in the water. Spray on plant as described above.

Use against: powdery mildew

Chili spray

1 fresh and very HOT chili fruit
2 tbsp soft soap
1 l water

Cut and crush the chili fruit finely. NOTE: do use protective gloves while you do this! Mix the chili mash and the soap into the water. Spray on plant as described above.

Use against: all sorts of insects.

No smoke in the water

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

I don't use pesticides much. The last thing I want to do indoors is to puff around things that kills. And, I have do admit it, I'm a bit lazy and appreciates an excuse to avoid work.

Are you thinking of all "natural" pesticides that are available now? I do have a spraying can filled with soft soap sollution, ready to be used if the need arise. I have baking soda in my cupboards, and am willing to buy some chili. These are ordinary stuff, easy to mix and to use. They can be troublesome to rinse from the vegetables, and eventhough the body can handle this small amount of soft soap it doesn't taste that good. I write "soft soap" since every swedish recipe on homemade pest control seems to contain a dash of this miraculous substance.

I advice on a healthy scepsis towards things that's "natural". Natural is a selling lable that doesn't say much about how dangerous or how strong the substance is. You may remember my post with BBC's "Around the world in 80 gardens" where the host wanders around Havanna looking at gardens. In one he finds the person responsible for pest control (5:50 and forward) who says he uses, among other things, "smoke liquid" which the host translates as "natural pest control". And it's indeed natural. Since Cuba is big on cigarrs it's a big chance that smoke liquid is the same as nicotine water. Nicotine exists naturally in tobacco plants, even those ornamental varieties that are popular here in Sweden.

The last commersially produced pesticide with nicotine as active substance sold in Sweden, Nicotoxin (link in swedish), lost its aproval 1990 and was made entirely illegal New Years Eve 1992. This was for a good reason, nicotine is one of the strongest nerve toxins we know of, it affects the nerve cells of the entire body and stronger doses leads to paralysis and death. Nature is in many cases a mother with more in common with the violent aspects of Kali* than Mother Mary.

Believe it or not, but of all pesticides I've tried, clean water has proved to be the best. In addition it's non-toxic and may be easy to get and cheap too. You shower the plants with a high pressure spraying can once a week, flushing away any pests living on and on the underside of the leaves. If the water is soft were you live you can lift the plants into the bathroom and use the shower (and if you need to save the precious drops some creative use of the shower curtain and plastic tubs makes it possible to collect the excess). For my own part I soften the water and use my trusty "pflanzensprüher". Showering the underside of the leaves is crucial, and this may take a while. The advantage of indoor gardening though, is that the 'gardens' are so small that this isn't very timeconsuming anyhow. Keeping this routine religiously keeps most problem away - appart from mold that thrive in moist.

It is possible to use this method outdoors. When I finally put my New Dawn in the rose container, a few wads of fluff developed. My last rose, Polstjärnan, was lost to this disease, and I was in no mood for sacrificing another plant to it. I investigated one of the tufts closer, and found the shell of something spiderlike. Now, I don't have a clue of which pesticide to use for them, but I do know that few insects can do harm if they are removed from the plant. Armed with the pflanzensprüher (heeheehee) I attacked the wads and cleaned the rose completely, including the undersides of its leaves. (Remember that I only have one bush, and it's quite small.) I've done this for some days now, and intend to do it for a week or two.

If it works?

So far. No more wads, and as a bonus I have no green aphids feasting on the buds like they usually do. The cherry tree, too big to be sprayed at all, is infested with black aphids, so I know the little buggers are active. (Luckily some ladybugs has decided to make the tree their nursery. Sometimes nature is kind.)

*Kali is mostly known as the violant and destructive goddess she's portrayed as, but there is a school of hinduistic theology the worships her motherly love. This was one of my most fascinating encounters while I was in religious studies.

In a garden far, far away...

Somehow I wish some swedish horticulture expert would do this...

Travel with rooftop gardens

I found several of them on YouTube, so I couldn't resist giving you a journey around the world.

Kensington Roof Garden, London, United Kingdom (England)


Private rooftop garden, Korea


Private rooftop garden, Taipei, Taiwan


Shared garden on a multihome house, Sydney, Australia


Relax garden for bankemployees, Hongkong, China


Educational rooftop garden, East Oakland, California


Believe me, there are many more...

Strawberry Pancake Cake

• Pancakes of the swedish thin type, as many as you like
  
• Strawberry jam
  
• Whipped cream, 4-5dl/1 (1/2-2 cups)
  
• Fresh strawberries
  

Layer pancakes, whipped cream and jam together, use only whipped cream on the last pancake. Decorate with fresh strawberries. Ready to serve.

If you have any pansies (johny jump-ups) laying around you can use them as decoration - they are edible.

Strawberries are easy to grow indoors. I sugest chosing plants from a variety that sets fruits perpetually and filling a number of hanging baskets to get a seizable harvest. Polinating the flowers with a soft brush may also be a good idea - that's what I do.

***

I'm pretty fond of Cafe Press. The feeling of seeing one's pictures printed professionally on everything from teddybears to posters is hard to beat. That's why I started a small shop, Indoor Potager, to put up my pic of the day there. If you like the blog or the photo you can buy some prints. (I'm doing this for the fun of it, but this doesn't keep me from saying "Shop 'till you drop!" ;-) )

Prints of today's pic here.

World Environmental Day 2008

These last two days I've started in between fifty and sixty plants. Perhaps you're wondering why I presow such large quantities - it isn't exactly cold in Sweden now. No, but it's dry, and by presowing indoors I'll save water. This way I'll only water the seeds and a small amount of soil instead of an entire plot at my allotment. Plus I get a large number of plants to choose from when I'm about to select my indoor crops ;P

The drought concerns me. I do have water enough for the allotment and my containers, but I think over the last years a trend of raising temperatures in general are both clear and fast. Sometimes I look at my son and wonder if there'll be any of Earth left for him when he's grown up. The fact that we avoided destruction from global acid rain (the Big Threat when I was a kid) doesn't calm me much. The technology and the knowledge on how to change our foul habits are there, but will we do it in time?

Concern for our environment was one of the reasons I started this experiment. At that time (2006) I thought that the world needed to expand agricultural areas to produce more food. Now, with the food price crisis, I can lean back and say that I was right (but there's no joy in this 'victory'). And if you are to expand food growing areas, why not opt for a place close to the home (no fuel demanding transports), where lots of people already are growing things, and where most plants can live - namely the window sill?

Concern for our environment is also one of the reasons I go on. If I can inspire some more to grow food in their flat, if only a tomato and some basil, this will lighten the pressure on our world a tiny bit - and I get some friends who share my passion :)

Today is World Environmental Day. I haven't seen much about it in media, and I think the day deserves the same amount of celebrations as Earth Day. My melancholic post is not entirely up to partystandards, so I add a link to a swedish blogger's beautiful pictures from Kensington Roof Gardens - the text is in swedish but combine it with the texts on KRGs website and you'll be fine. This blogger (Trädgårdsperiodaren) has been to London, visited this magnificent place AND Chelsea Flower Show 2008. I do NOT envy her!

Nope!

Not at all!

***

I'm pretty fond of Cafe Press. The feeling of seeing one's pictures printed professionally on everything from teddybears to posters is hard to beat. That's why I started a small shop, Indoor Potager, to put up my pic of the day there. If you like the blog or the photo you can buy some prints. (I'm doing this for the fun of it, but this doesn't keep me from saying "Shop 'till you drop!" ;-) )

Prints of today's pic here.

At last!

I don't dare calculating how late I am, but now I have a new seedstarting round on the table! This time I didn't try plan something, rather I shopped around in my seed cartons.
"Let's see nooooow, what do I have here? Fennel, should be a good replacement for those carrots. Buck's-horns plantain, why did I buy that? Well, I'd better sow it and see what it is. Hmmmmm, some leftover sunflower seeds - I may need some new plants for the allotment. Tomatoes! I mustn't forget the tomatoes! And those nasturtium seeds are pretty old so I might as well sow them too."

Fiftyeight eggshells and plastic bottles are now crammed into my two greenhouses (see! I finally got use for that expensive storebought thing!) and tomorrow I'll add containers with beans and nasturtium to them.

I realise I should read my email more often. Last night I found out that this blog has been featured in the latest newsletter of Patti Moreno (GardenGirlTV). Cool! I'm really honoured!

***

I'm pretty fond of Cafe Press. The feeling of seeing one's pictures printed professionally on everything from teddybears to posters is hard to beat. That's why I started to put up my pic of the day there. If you like the blog or the photo you can buy some prints. (I'm doing this for the fun of it, but this doesn't keep me from saying "Shop 'till you drop!" ;-) )

Prints of today's pic here.

From chemical to natural

Have you ever wondered how healthy you would be if your food consisted of dextrose, vitamin and mineral pills, a shot of cooking oil every now and then and a daily pure fibre cookie? I've pondered this for some days, since it struck me that this is almost the 'mealplan' of plants fed with chemical fertilizer. The solution I use promise to provide every mineral and nutrient a plant needs. Since my plants stays healthy as long as they get their weekly clean water shower there may be some truth in that.

I use chemical fertilizer for two reasons; it's easy to store for a long time in room temperature, and there are limits to how advanced I can be when I'm starting something. In the beginning of this experiment the idea of growing vegetables indoors was odd in itself, I wasn't in the mood of experimenting with "natural" fertilizer too. Now I'm changing into nutrients I can make out of plants and plant waste, and are cheap and easy to produce.

Since I'm growing stuff indoors there are limits to what I can use - I'm reluctant to use anything that smells for example. The dark fluid in the glass above is the water left when I parboiled nettles a few days ago. This is what I use now, mixed one part to ten with clean water (you may remember that I think this fluid contains nutrients because of its colour). It doesn't smell much, and I hope it'll make my iceplant taste better. Since I've only used it once I can't say if it works or not. It's a temporary solution (ahaha), and when I've emptied my fertilizer carboys of this I'll replace it with something made from an old established recipe.

So, are there any old established recipes to use? Well, I know about two which involves fermenting, and one of them is known to have a smelly result (ie. nettle water). The other is easy to describe; you make a hole in the bottom of a bucket, fill it with comfrey leaves and place it over a tin. When the leaves rot a dark brown fluid drips into the tin, and this fuid is then diluted with water (one part to fifteen parts clean water, we are talking strong stuff here) to a liquid fertilizer. Neither do this sound as something sweetly fragrant. But since I live according to the motto "better living through reckless experimentation" I'll try it to see if the smell is something that stays or if it fades after a while.

I've also ordered some tiger worms to start up vermicomposting, and from this I count on having both dry and liquid fertilizer. If you keep your compost in plastic bins, which I intend to do, the worms and the waste will produce fluid that is good for making liquid fertilizer (and we could now say it together "dilute it with clean water"). The good thing about vermicompost is it doesn't smell much, the finished product is said to smell like soil (surprise). I don't know if this goes for the 'composttea' too, but this is my favorite candidate for a future standard solution.

Besides I think plants too deserve a cucumber decoration on their drinks every now and then.

***

I'm pretty fond of Cafe Press. The feeling of seeing one's pictures printed professionally on everything from teddybears to posters is hard to beat. That's why I started to put up my pic of the day there. If you like the blog or the photo you can buy some prints. (I'm doing this for the fun of it, but this doesn't keep me from saying "Shop 'till you drop!" ;-) )

Prints of today's pic here.

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...

Aquaculture again

This is one of the smarter systems I've seen (building instructions are available as a free download at Faith and Sustainable Technology). Hmmm, it may even fit in my study...

The secret behind my successfull gardening...

more cat pictures

Ahem, really, I spent most of my serious rest surfing lolcats at www.icanhascheezburger.com. Since I'm already into it I give you a bonus:


more cat pictures

Have a nice weekend!

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.

IKEA and mad potatoes

You're not allowed to take photos at IKEA. I suspect it's because they want to protect new patterns and furniture against pirating. Since I'm a nice person I left my camera at home when I went there to buy some plastic boxes. I WILL build that vermicompost I've planned for so long. After reviewing different kinds of boxes, evaluated wooden chests (I want a cover), taking meassures both inside and outside and had some lunch I stuck to my original plan anyhow.

IKEA isn't a furniturestore, by the way, it's a game were you're supposed to walk through the entire building without buying more than you came for. Today I almost succeeded, some terry towels followed me home. Even a master makes mistakes sometimes*.

To give you something to look at I went out and snapped some pictures on my potato instead. Do you see that it looks somewhat uptight and angry? Two days ago I raised the level in the bucket by scooping some more soil into it. The reason is that this is supposed to challenge the plant to grow higher and develop a longer root cluster with potatoes. Challenged it was - the plant nearly glared at me from the bucket, and it had become five centimeters (two inches) taller in two days.

So I scooped some more soil in the bucket. By Midsummers Eve I'll have filled the bucket and in addition to that raised the maddest potatoes of the neighbourhood.

*Several times I've walked through the entire IKEA without buying anything. That should make me eligible for some sort of diploma.

Embarrassment of riches

Today I woke up suffering from 'no wanna'. I contract this condition after I've worked hard doing manual labour. Since this was the case today I decided to go nettle picking. It's easy and fast; it took me one hour to harvest seven litres (about one and a half dry gallon). On the other hand it's a snag, those seven litres was reduced to seven decilitres (three cups) when I boiled them. What makes it worth it is that nettles works like stock cubes, two deciliters (one and a third cup) is enough to make a thick soup for four.

Once again I saved the water used for parboiling the nettles. Almost five litres (more than a gallon) I hope will be a good base for liquid fertilizer. Ordinary nettle water is mixed one part to ten with clean water, and if I use this recipe my batch will be enough to make fifty to sixty litres of fluid. Yikes! My plan is to pick a LOT of nettles - I'll be drowning in this! I won't have the heart to throw away perfectly good fertilizer...

Flash of genius?

Not nettles but my own window herb garden, waiting in line for a taster.

Right now I'm picking nettles like crazy - nettle soup is really a humdinger! I still use gloves and cook my harvest before I eat it (last time I played HaRd Woman my thumbs were swollen for two days). Today, when I boiled three to four litres (about a gallon) of leaves, it struck me that some of the nourishment flows into the first boiling water, the water you normally poor off in the sink. Wouldn't it be possible to use as liquid fertilizer instead? Sure, it isn't a classical recipe for "nettle water"*, but it's worth a try.

Thus I brought out a bucket and cleaned it thoroughly with soft soap, hanged our colander over the rim and drained the nettles. The water proved to be dark brown - definately nutricious. I took the cool water I'd used for cooling the leaves and diluted it (recycling, cooling and diluting in one go - what a hat trick!). Now I had a 'middle brown' solution to pour on a defenless plant.

The choice fell on the cherry tree on the balcony - it'll have its first cherries this year and signals an acute need for nourishment. It helped that the container is big enough to take the entire bucket of liquid. However I poured some on the rose and the watermelon plant since they seemed to need it.

I'll pick more nettles tomorrow, and I have to admit I have plans for the harvest of a month. I hope I'll be able to give every indoor plant a ration a week, and it'll be interesting to see how this works out. Later in the summer the nettles will become bitter, according to consulted expertise, and then I can resort to classic nettle water.

*Nettle water is made by leaving nettles in water for some days. Apparently it smells bad but sustainable growers in Sweden swears by it.

NightShades: Potato and Tomato

Patti Moreno again, she has uploaded one of the few serious vids on tomato cultivation, topped up with facts on potatoes.



(And yes, I fell for the cartoon version of "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes". Yesterday I spent at least one and a half hour watching old episodes on YouTube. B-movies have a special place in my heart.)

Serious tomatoes...

I knew about "Attac of the Killer Tomatoes", but I didn't know that the film was so popular that a cartoon was made from it. It's amazing what you learn from YouTube.

Tomato From the Black Lagoon

Disposable pallets for the garden

I've spent my day cutting up pallets. Globalen in Uppsala has given me their disposable pallets and I plan to rebuild them into raised beds for my allotment. I do realise it's ironic I want to raise vegetables in containers outdoors too - I'm a lazy person. Raised bed gardening makes it easier to weed, and you have more possibilities to fend off slugs. And it's possible to mix a supersoil for dense planting. However, I'll put them up this autumn, I need to build them first.

The big news of today is that the first tomato is blushing. This may be a small thing for others, but I'm so excited I'm jumping. Soon we'll have fresh indoor tomatoes!

The importance of chosing the right kind of seeds

The first thing you need to do if you want to grow a giant pumpkin is to buy seeds from giant pumpkins. Simple as that, some of this wisdom also applies to indoorvegetable gardening, but in our case we need to look for "suitable for containers" or "miniature" on the envelope (note that the last term is relative, a miniature redwood is still as big as an ordinary pine). To be honest I'm quite generous on myself in this case, still I say it's an rule worth following.

Take a close look at the photo above and you'll realise why. My tomatoes hails from commersially grown plants - as you may recall I got the seeds from an sustainably grown tomato from the mall. In commersial gardening tall plants are good, in most cases you have good greenhouses and an army of persons willing to climb ladders during the harvest. Indoors in a normal flat the same qualities turns out to be troublesome. I'm lucky to have a 'two story' room, since my plants are about 150cm (five feet) tall both of them.

So I'm sad to tell you this, my dear plants, but you won't be the parents for future indoor tomatoes. My next round of plants will be 'Tiny Tim'.

Wishing for a gardener fairy godmother...

Oh well. What's a Chelsea Flower Show? After all I suppose it would be frightfully dull, and.. and boring and completely...

*sigh*

...completely wonderful.

How do you find time for this?

I've been asked this a couple of times, and I think the question needs a good answer, both on how I do it myself and more generally on how to gain time.

I have to admit that I cheat a bit; I have a company and work from home. No boss can complain if I take two hours to water my houseplants (however I have to hit my milestones and deadlines properly). Working from home makes my life flexible; I can do some of my chores when my son is present, and I can work for a couple of hours in the evening. This means I can take care of my plants when I feel for it, and not being forced to handle them when I'm exhausted after work.

But how do you do in general to gain time for fun stuff? Here are my most used methods which can be used by anyone.

#1 Split every work into graspable units.
Graspable means two things; you should be able to do the thing in a fixed period of time (fifteen minutes, half an hour or a full one depending on the work and the available amount of time) and the results should be clearly visible when the work is done. This makes it easy to fit the work into the available ratio of minutes (thus saving you time). Above that, this makes it easy to start the job; you know you'll finish in time, and your confidence gets a boost by seeing the result.

Let me use my allotment as an exemple. I split the area into eight patches. Each time I visited my plot I worked one of them, did thorough weeding, raked, sowed, watered and covered it with fibre cloth. This took me an hour (a big unit - I aim to have units of fifteen to thirty minutes), and when I left I could savour the knowledge that one of the patches was done. The result was clearly visible through the white rectangle of cloth on the ground.

#2 Take every chance to keep the chores on low level.
Do small things often instead of heaping them into a giant chore demanding a he-man.

I was lucky when I was alloted my plot. The previous renter works with park maintenance in this area, and had worked the soil perfectly last autumn. This means I have clay soil where I can drag up dandelions with their entire roots using my bare hand. Everyone gardening in clay soil knows this to be a miracle (usualy you end up with the weeding tool stuck in the ground and some ridiculous scraps of the leaves in your hand). I could hardly find any weed.

To keep the plot in this condition I decided to keep the chores on a low level. The first thing I did was to mark walking paths, and told the family that the rest of the allotment was a 'no walk' area (my son didn't grasp the idea, but he only weighs twelwe kilos/twentysix and half pound so I wasn't harsh on him). I take half an hour each day to remove the few weeds I found and look under the fibercloth for spanish slugs. This is much more easy to handle than to expect an entire day of pulling quick grass in the heat of the sun or grey rain.

#3 Streamline the chores.
This goes both for gardening and for everyday business that steals time from it. Me planting waterbottles in the tomatocontainers is a good exemple of stremalining the gardening. Instead of bringing out the watercan thrice a day I refill the bottles once, and can do it during the ordinary watering round.

I can almost hear a few of you exclaim "But bringing out the watercan won't take many seconds!". True, but don't underestimate those extra seconds. Remeber that you, at best, have four hours after work a normal day. If you have a family two of those are earmarked for the kids in the form of help with clothes, general upbringing, bathing and putting to bed. Thirty minutes to an hour goes to preparing dinner, and the same span will be used for other household chores like cleaning the table and do the dishes. A normal day you'll be happy if you have any private time at all* (no wonder people sleep badly these days - most burns midnight oil to at least be able to watch some tv). Every second of the evening have value equal to a dollar, don't waste that on unnecessary work - even if you are single.

Since I have a family and my amount of time is firmly set I spend a lot of effort streamlining our life (use the following list as an inspiration). We have the normal set of household appliances, and have added a dryer (saves a lot of time compared to hang the laundry, we use an energy efficiant one with a heat pump), a baking machine and a roomba. As soon as I find an european retailer for scooba I'll by one of those too. (Swedes are not big on practical household machines - save the vacuum cleaner, dryer, washing machine and dishwasher - so this is an unusual list of appliances.)

Instead of weekly grocery shopping we do a monthly raid to shop everything that'll last a month or are possible to freeze (I've prepared an extensive checklist to make sure everything we need gets bought). We've subscribed to ecological fruits and vegetables and get them delivered to the door once a week. I still have to buy milk at the store, but heading in for a few parcels takes a lot less time than a full shopping round.

I try to keep important tools and important stuff within reach but out of daily life. My soilbins and watercarboy are kept in a closet close to the windows with most plants. The smaller tools and the seeds are kept on a shelf in the library (close to the working table). This may seem like an obvious thing to do, but many times a thing is put where there's an available spot instead on the best place. We do so too, that's why we regularly reorganise rooms and storage space (one unit at the time) and we always start by thoroughly analysing its use and how maximise its functions.

#4 Ignore unessential things
It's not possible to have it all, you'll be forced to leave some things to pile up untill you pry away time for it. As you can see from the photo above I'm deep into this business, letting working space clutter up with things that should be done. This irritates me since I want a home cut from the pages of an interior design magazine. At the same time I know that there are only twentyfour hours to a day. Each day I do what needs to be done, if I can find time for something that should be done I consider this a bonus. My longterm plan is to clean the home using method 1 and 3, so I can apply method 2 on our entire life. And I count on more cluttered periods in the future - life do always bring surprises.


*This is a swedish scenario. STAHMs and STAHDs are extremely rare due to the fact that it's impossible to live on one salary here.

Leading the youth astray...

...as I said I don't do it willingly. I even spared my son's favourite window when I surveyed how many windows I had available for gardening. He loves to stand there looking out on the world and I hadn't the heart to take this spot away from him.

You can see the window above - and all the plants are his.

We sowed the strawberries first, and when I realised how slow they grow I let him plant some nasturtium too - he needed to remember that he had sown a plant when he saw the first seedling. Two containers could stand in that window without covering his view. For his birthday I bought him "Castor odlar" ("Castor is gardening" - ok, I admit I lead him astray a teensy weensy bit), which made him want to plant white beans just like the main character in the book. White beans were purchased and planted. When I visited the Nordic Gardens Fair I promised him a flower - that's the little pansy between the two big terracotta pots. He specifically asked for an orange flower. Then the teachers at his daycare started a "little green thumbs" project and made him start up some parsley and lemon balm.

You can still look through the window, but I have to admit that I mostly look at the windowsill thinking
"How did this happen?"

Cabbage patch kids...

...that's what I found on YouTube when I did a "cabbage" search. I can't help wishing for a tad of irony, but this is a kid show after all.

Nettles

If you've just started your indoor vegetable garden and want some free greens (and are living on the northern hemisphere), then this is the time to go out and pick nettles. Just remember to put on some gloves before you start and keep them on untill you're sure the nettles are cooked. I've tried all of the tricks to pick them barehanded, so nowadays I cover my entire body and use a pair of old leather gloves.

(This vid is shot in Norway, what you see is a very norwegian landscape. The ingrediens, however, are as common in Sweden.)

The Indoor Gardener partying on friday night...

It's been a long week for the entire family. I noticed that my son was a bit tired when I picked him up at daycare, so I promised him prolonged movie time "since it's friday". One and a half hour later hubby finds us asleep with Maisy Mouse on autorepeat.

(It was the dvd where Maisy harvests vegetables in the garden in one episode. No, I'm not willingly leading the youth astray, it just happens.)

Oh well, but my vegetables are thriving, both indoors and outdoors, so I think this home is ready for the weekend.

Edible?

The iceplant has been the biggest disappointment so far, it didn't taste good at all. I'll give it another chance when I've started up the vermicompost. Right now I give it syntetisized fertilizer, and that ought to affect the taste. Everything else has been edible, and by now I've developed useful routines around harvest and cooking.

My biggest discovery is that we don't eat sallad to every meal. When I started gardening I just assumed that this was the case. Now I know that we eat meals that don't need greenery at least twice a week, ie. porridges, soups and pancakes. (In Sweden pancakes are a meal for dinner or supper, traditionally served after a bowl of thick peasoup (I can't really call that an entrée, it's half of the meal). Some of us cheat and eat only pancakes, but you get the general idea.) Some days you don't feel like a leaf sallad and chop up some carrots instead.

My other discovery is that you need to have the sallad ready already in the pots. In other words: you need to grow several kinds of vegetables at the same time. Right now I only have indian spinach, leaf amaranth and nasturtium wich makes variation hard. So the experiment continues, now with the goal to find more kinds of vegetables useful for indoor gardening.

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.

Inspiration and engergy

We all have days when gardening is a chore rather than a pleasure. Most of the times this is because we are literally tired or bored with something we've done for too many days. So what do you do to get back the geist?

Start with a good day of rest. Take twentyfour hours of doing something completely different, like staying in bed eating icecream (don't mind the sheets, we live in the age of washing machines and laundromats). Then decide to have days like this in the future too. It's not a coincidence that christianity (as well as jews (jewiality?... my dictionary fails me on this one) and islam) have a sabbath every seventh day, and that its observance is among the most important decrees of the religion. You don't have to be religious to copy this custom - we are all tempted to nibble on the battery loading when something important is to be done*.

Don't be surprised if your day of rest brings along a host of new ideas. When you work a lot with something (gardening in our case) the brain gets overloaded. As soon as those important thoughts (I need to weed, boil more water, plant hundreds of potatoes and call my mother in law) aren't thought the periferal ones (why don't I ask my inlaw to help me garden?) surface, and they can be rather good.

In addition to rest you need some inspiration. In general I read gardening books and magazines with a lot of colourful pictures and, if possible, good and well written articles with lots of facts. And I surf YouTube for chreative gardening. Patti Moreno is a case in point - I may never raise pygora goats, but I get a kick out of her doing it. If she manage a thing like that I can probably grow a slightly different carrot or tomato without too much trouble.



But, what if you've tried all of the above and you still are fed up? I have to admit that I keep on working anyhow - I can't expect to be in glimmering form every day. If the feeling persist I'd probably change interest gradually, but it hasn't happened yet, and I hope observing the sabbath will keep me vaccinated against fatigue.

*I we were mobile phones we would all have worn and almost empty batteries.

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.

Potatoes...

...deserves at least one song of their own.

The turnip...

...is your friend.

Twenty degrees in the soil

Hey dude! Could you spare some room up there?

Today I dug down some cheap themometers at my allotment. This because I've learnt that different crops are to be sown according to the temperature of the soil. Twenty degrees Celcius (68¤F) means you can grow everything you want - including beans.

This solves one of my big problems; how am I supposed to find space for presowing outdoor crops at the same time as I sow a new round of indoor crops? All available windows are filled, and all the other spaces are tagged for different purposes. I've looked thoughtfully at beds and kitchentables several times, but we need space for living too - and that without hitting our heads on growlights every now and then. This warmth means I can sow outdoors at once and save my precious presowing area for the plants that really need it.

So, now I onle need to build those nurseries I've talked about for so long, at the same time as I sow a new round of indoor crops and take care of my allotment.

When I'm planning I always think there are seventy minutes to the hour.

First fullgrown carrot harvested

It's a variety that grows in spherical form rather than as a long root (that's why it's good in containers). I have no idea why this one developed a waist, but it was a tasty addition the lunch sallad of today.

Better than a gym card

Divas due for the allotment.

I'm experiencing a downperiod right now. On earlier occasions this has meant that all my indoor plants has withered and died. This time I've actually watered them as I should. I regard this as a step forward and plan to continue this way. Perhaps it's the extra time in open air that my allotment gives me that's doing me good. I go there every day and try to find something to do - even if I only spend half an hour on the place this means a lot of outdoor hours on a week.

Tomorrow my indoor divas really needs attention though. I plan to indulge in one big cup of hot cocoa from hell and then tapdance through the common procedures of watering and showering. After that I'll rest, I hope...

The first potato planted!

I bought seed potatoes which were full of sprouts already at the plantmall. Most of the customers had ignored them, but the other varieties were out and this one is slightly frost hardy, so I decided to take the chance. Most of the taters stands proudly in a window to grow better sprouts while they wait for the day they'll be planted. One, however, is already in soil. I can't do anything without adding at least one experiment, and this one sprouted (ahaha) balconypotatoes.

My neighbours subscribe to washingpowder in buckets, and were kind enough to give me one of the empty ones. The proportions compared to a normal bucket are slightly different - it's a bit taller. This means you can make a selfwatering container out of it with plenty of room for the water and still have big enough space for serious cultivation.



But why end the experiment there? Those disks of cocosfibre I bought at the latest faire have been searching for their purpose over the last weeks. (Yes, I know I bought them to use them as bedding in my vermicompost, but being able to change plans at the drop of a hat is a virtue.) I decided to sacrifice one of them.



According to the instructions I put the disk in lukewarm water for ten minutes. Everyone who's used peat pellets knows what's happening; you put a flat little disk into water and a tower of fluffy 'soil' raises to greet your seeds. I have to admit, though, that it's somewhat scary when the disk says "vooom!" and a thirty centimeter (one foot) tower erupts from the bucket.

The cocos fibres was enough for the layer under the potato, so what should I use for the top layer? I took a look at the bag with balcony soil. It was icecold, dripping wet and slimey since it's been left out for the entire winter. Unfortunately this was the only soil I could use. I decided to make this quality a part of the experiment. To bolster the chock I fluffed the soil thoroughly and refrained from watering. Usually I fill the water magazine this way, but I can do it some other day with this one.

Watermelon Nights

Happy melons are what I expect to show up on my balcony in a few weeks...

Taters...

Today I left one of the gardening malls carrying (among other things) a small bag of seed potatoes 'Marine'. In search for inspiration I took a look at how Patti Moreno grows hers. It's interesting to see that she doesn't 'presprout' her potatoes before she plants them - this is common, almost compulsory procedure in Sweden. To get some meat on the bones I then looked at a person I've never before seen in action (believe it or not). I have to admit that I'm now tempted to grow some in a bucket on my balcony too.

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.)