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.

Planning continues..

"The Indoor Kitchen Garden" by Joy O.I. Spoczynska has given me some ideas, although it isn't easy planning plant successions for indoor gardening (full review on the book will be given soon). I've realised I need to plant a lot more lemon balm during cold season. Partly because they are have an impact on virus growth, and mostly because they grow very slowly during winter. I simply need more plants to pick leaves from. Another idea is to make an overview over different crops, their needs and the time from sowing to harvest. Another thing I've understood is that I need to focus on tropical plants that can stand me spraying them with water every day.

Oh, and flouroscent lights, oodles of flouroscent lights.

Garlic and sciriadae

I spread cut up garlic leaves in my containers today. The smell of a tasty spagetti bolognese spread through the house and I got a headache. I hope the sciriadae ahces too. Usually they get upset when I do this, and apparently loose their apetite for sex, since they disappear for a short while after my attacs. Earlier times I haven't had enough garlic to follow up, but now I've planted cloves from half a bulb in my gardens. It's war...

Closer to Paradise on Earth

Here's a gardeningblogger who've come closer to Paradise on Earth

"A Gardening Section of One's Own"

Shop, books and gardening at the same time! Add one of the most beatiful bookshop interiours I've ever seen. Congratulations to both of you! I'll come and visit as soon as I figured out* where the shop is.

*Geography is not my forte.

If books are medecine...

...then they've started to work. I'm planning my new and bigger cultivation areas right now.

So, what did I borrow?

One book about growing vegetables indoors ("The Indoor Kitchen Garden" Joy O.I. Spoczynska) that I didn't own myself! One book about growing herbs indoors ("Fönster med basilika" Marguerite Walfridsson, title translated "Window with basil", probably only available in swedish) where the use in food for the herbs are thoroughly discussed. I still have a problem with bountiful harvests where I know nothing about what to do with the stuff.

The third book was called (translated from swedish) "Keep your container plants healthy!" ("Håll krukväxterna friska! Maj-Lis Pewttersson). I took the title as an order and borrowed it, eventhough I had only returned two other books. My second excuse was that the books I was borrowing was awfully thin...

How to cure gardening blues on an empty pocket.

Go to the library and borrow a lot of colourful and funny gardening books. That's what I'm doing. See ya! :-)

Gardening blues...

...that's what I think it is. Jodi (Bloomingwriter) calls it winter-itis, which is another good name for it. Nothing is fun, nothing works out well and I don't feel like anything.

There is a cure, though.

Shopping.

If I only had money I could buy some new seeds (the ones I already have are JUST the wrong kind) and every kind of scented geranium Wibrants Trädgård (link in swedish only - sorry)* are selling - their catalogue arrived today. Plus a small intricate gadget just to cheer me up...

...but I don't have any money. Meh.

(Don't worry. I'll pick myself up tomorrow.)

*Wibrants Trädgård are specialising in geraniums and fuchsias. Not that they have the biggest assortment, but scented geraniums and fuchsias of all kinds hits a soft spot in my gardening heart.

Mineral deficiencies - a homepage

Mineral deficiency. No one wants that - it weakens the plant and makes it vulnerable to other diseases and pests. If you grow stuff in containers or hydrocultures it's particurlary important to be able to diagnose it, since you can't count on Mother Earth to provide what's needed via the soil. And since Mother Earth sometimes can be pretty tight-fisted I think we all can benefit from this homepage

Color Pictures of Mineral Deficiencies in Plants

Thanks to Parkettmaken (the Indoor Gardener Hubby) who found the link!

Another thing about winter...

... is that my lust for gardening is hibernating. I look at my tufty containers and my dried out precultivations and instead of feeling that rush of
"Hi ho, lets go, clean this up!"
I think
"Meh."

Winter

You won't stand free from seasonal changes, even when you are growing stuff indoors under plant lights (as I said before). My lemon balm growth has slowed down to a fourth of the summer pace. On the other hand its leaves are much darker.

Quick update

The tigernuts and the sciriadaes have regained strength in almost equal pace. I've sown some more garlic to fend them of (the sciriadaes, I mean), they keep diminishing as long as I put fresh chopped garlic or garlic leaves on the soil.

A one week paus...

...for business planning. Will be back next Monday.

Gah! Yet another batch of dead seedlings!

Oh well, the seedlings died as soon as they sprouted. I suspect a combination of bad light and lack of interest to be fatal. (Who wants to water something that doesn't grow?) Should I give up my attempts to pregrow plants in special little pots? When I think of the fact that I'm fully able to get plants when I sow directly into normal soil I am tempted to change policy. But I still want to learn to pregrow plants.

Harumpf! I'm going to the library tomorrow. I'll borrow a book on precultivation - a good one. In the meantime I'll water my seedlings, it looks like the common purslane is still alive...

It's blooming!

The calamondin! The buds are opening! And there are loads of them! Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah!

That's MY blog!

This spring I reviewed a new swedish gardening/interior design magazine called Rosie. I did subscribe to it too, since I liked it. Now, a few days ago the last issue arrived. I flip through it in that semiconsiuos stage the parent of a toddler experience in the evening. Today I finally read the copy. To be honest I had a plan to plug my blog by sending a letter to the editor and include my url in the text.

Someone else had already done that. (Do read her blog if you know swedish.)

"Dang." I thought and was about to go on with my chores when this huge, praising citation printed in orange on the letters page caught my eye. There was a reference, with url, to Parkettodlaren (the swedish version of Indoor Gardener)!

Now I'll lean back and enjoy my fifteen minutes of fame before I go back to my plants. For you I'll sample my tips for the season, enjoy!

• Extra light
  
• Selfwatering containers
  
• Chopped garlic on the soil to scare away the sciriadae
  
• Common purslane survives most mishaps and you can harvest it for a long period of time.
  
• Sprouts (if you are not oversensitive to them - I am, but the sprouts are in general a great indoor crop)
  

(You can buy the picture as a poster or on a mug in my Cafe Press shop btw.)

A small afterthought

Hm, from now on I'll let the seedlings grow big enough to have broken their little egg cardboard with their roots. In this batch the egg carton dries out instead of sucking up moist (like I thought it would do), which makes the soil around the seedlings dry and they become more thirsty than an alcoholic at a godtemplar meeting. Rats! Ah well, sometimes we learn best from mistakes...

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 ;-)

Replanting recycling

I've replanted my little seedlings and couldn't resist making a 'photo reportage' out of the process. Enjoy!

1

Clean out the greenhouse. As you can see there were soil left in it, which can carry diseases. This is a fancy factory made greenhouse for seedlings I bought before I realised the coolness in using odd stuff left at home. Ah well, at least I had use for it now.

2

You need; old newspapers, some form of tray for the pots, a spoon you can dedicate entirely for soildigging, soil and something to role the paper around. I used a plastic bottle that hid behind the plastic bucket on this shot. PET Garbo!

3

These are my little seedlings grown in eggboxes made out of cardboard put in plastic trays originally used for takeaway food. (Sorry about the lousy picture. They probably said something funny in the podcast I was listening to.)

4

This is one of the boxes I'll use for the plants when they grow bigger. I took it out to meassure the size of the pots I was about to make. The layer of soil will be thin; no more than ten centimetres (four inches). It'll be interesting to see how the common purslane and the iceplants adhere to that. The tigernuts had no problems with it.

5

Potterytime! Tear a strip of paper roughly twice the size of the pot you are making. Tear in the most easy direction (paper has an easy and a hard tearing direction due to the fiber alignment), rather than according to the form of the paper. You can manage with a rather short strip.

6

Role the strip around a cylinder of some sort. I'm using a plastic bottle here, the ideal is a small yamjar of glas.

7

Fold in the paper like this.

8

Go on until you've formed a bottom.

9

Gently pull the thing off the cylinder. (I did mention that the cylinder should be next to 100% smooth? My bottle had a small speck of glue that hooked the paper all the time - don't do the same mistake.) Fold the top edge too. This stabilises the pot and makes it possible to further adjust the size.

10

Fill with soil for potted plants or perennials.

11

Put the pot on the tray and pour water on the soil. Once wet the pot will soften and will be hard to move around without damaging it. Here I'm using water from our dryer (if you read swedish you can see that it's written on the carboy) since it free from lime. I've had a problem with white crusts in my pots.

A few words on stuff in the soil are in place here. As you can see most of the papers I'm using are bright purple. I don't like it, since the colours are definately not made for eating. If I continue using these kind of pots these colours will bleed into the soil, and since I'm reusing it and are planning to wermicompost leftover vegetables the percentage will get higher over time. When I replant this for the second (and last) time I'll tear away most paper to limit the bleeding. For the next round I consider experimenting with tigernut grass and vegetable glue. Let's see if I get around to it.

Back to the story.

12

Cut out and trim one of the cups of the eggbox.

13

Put the little 'bowl' in the bigger pot. The cardboard is porous enough to allow the roots to pass, so I don't do much more than this. This is the first time I experiment with this kind of method, so I don't know how well it works.

The greenhouse is filled with pots and I've used the old trays for collecting the garbage. Trashbin next!

14

Remember to lable your seedlings. These lables are hard to see from above (mostly you look down on this kind of greenhouse), but you won't accidentaly switch them if you happen to put on the transparent roof the wrong way. Yes, I've done that, and I don't intend to do it again.

Tadaa! My little seedlings have more soil around their roots, won't need constant watering and can grow big and strong.

Besides, my calamondin are growing oodles of buds.

Tiger nuts and garlic

Tiger nuts, tufty tiger nuts. I replanted them a week ago, and I'm checking them out several times a day to see if they are growing or withering. It's hard to tell so far. The grass is slightly greener in one of the boxes, the other seems less lively. On the other hand the straws haven't turned completely yellow, so I guess it's hope left for it. I didn't think repotting would be so exciting.

The little white things you can see between the straws are chopped garlic cloves. Perhaps you remember my discovery that sciriadae disappeared when I planted garlic in one of my gardens. I've been experimenting a bit and found that sliced cloves spread on the soil does the trick. My guess is that the little gnats don't like some of the volatiles in the bulb. To be on the safe side I've planted garlic in the boxes anyhow. My plan is to pick the leaves when they're big enough, crush them and spread them on the soil. If that works out I'll save up on garlic.