Alaska Scarlett can't take criticism

Apparently it pays off to complain on the blog. Today two of my alaska scarlett raised above surface.

Selfwatering containers are gold...

To the right a perfectly healthy garden, to the left no Alaska Scarlet seedlings

Yesterday I donated blood for the first time in my life and I feel tired, much to my own surprise. Somehow I always think that things that are stressfull to the body wont affect me. After all I lost half a liter of blood (a pint) and was entitled to chose a small gift. Unfortunately the donors' giftshop doesn't have containers and other gardening related items, so I got myself a steel thermos instead. I've always needed a thermos free from tea and coffee residues. Now I can drink my hot water in a more environmentaly friendly way since I can boil and save a bigger amount at the time.

To celebrate my valiant sacrifice to humanity I went to the library and borrowed books about composting. I meant to borrow one - as you may remember my ration is one gardening book and one language course, but the first composting book I found was rather thin. After a small quest I found two more that were thin too. When I realised that I wont be able to visit the library two weeks from now I kind of lost it. I borrowed all the books about composting and four more. Plus a language course.

My gardens have been neglected these last two days. I'm sitting in the sofa corner feeling good, faint and beautiful. They're fine anyway. The selfwatering containers are doing an outstanding job. On the other hand my Alaska Scarlet won't raise above the soil. When I soaked nasturtium seeds they've grown in about two days, now I've waited for five. That's a big difference. The most frustrating thing about it is that the osmocote balls looks exactly like a seedling trying to get above the surface. I confuse them every time I take a peek into the container.

Don't forget to vote in the poll on what I should grow in my giant terracotta pot. Interestingly enough the standings are the same on Parkettodlaren and Indoor Gardener. In both polls the strawberries for the kiddo takes the lead.

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.

What's in a carrot...

So I was featured on the frontpage of Uppsalatidningen, and got at chance to count my collection of chins. The hubby and I are discussing in which way we are going to loose weight this time (we became goldmembers of the Weightwatchers three years ago, and then I got pregnant...). To leave questions about my weight the article was good. I've nevered been interviewed by real journalists before and was a bit nervous. How would I look in another person's eye - or two persons' since there were a photografer involved. And the text turned out to be very good, as well as the pictures. Since Uppsalatidningen is a free newspaper we picked three copies, just to be able to send some to elderly relatives that might be interested.

To grow seeds in leftover cardboardboxes for eggs and boxes for takeaway turned out to be a good idea. They are easy to handle and watering the seeds is a piece of cake; you only remove the cardboard and pour a small amount of water in the plastic box - just enough to cover the bottom, return cardboard and let it soak for a while. Seems to dry out fast, though, I may be forced to water twice dayly. I hope my little seedling will grow so fast that I can replant them into bigger pots soon.

Newly 'hatched' seedlings:

• Tigernut (two out of six, perhaps a few more will sprout, but one of the nuts are definately going moldy).
  
• Alaska Scarlet, nasturtium (six out of six)
  
• St Clements, nasturtium (five out of three, I put two seeds in each bowl if I have enough of them)
  

This week I harvested the first carrot that actually looked like a carrot. It was about five centimeters (two inches) long, and slightly orange. I haven't planned for the carrots to grow much bigger since this will shorten the time it takes between sowing and harvest, and I have a vague memory of baby carrots tasting sweeter. Hm, I'll think twice about this. After taking its' picture I ate the carrot and some of the tops since I now know that the tops are edible too. To tell you the truth the tops tasted much better than the carrot - that was bitter as ****.

Now I have two mysteries to solve; why do my carrots taste bitter, and why don't we eat carrot tops, when the tops actually tastes good? What have I missed?

The sage, the hubby and the wardrobe

I manicured my sage yesterday. The reason was that I expected a visit from a journalist and a photografer who wanted to write an article for Uppsalatidningen (local weekly paper) - about my indoor gardening. I spent the forenoon looming over my plants making sure they would behave. The journalist and the photografer turned out to be very nice. The only thing that bugged me was that my newly sown seeds hadn't come up yet. Seedlings are photogenique. The photografer took some pictures of the soilfilled boxes anyhow. (I have to add that she, like every good photografer, had a kind of feeding frenzy, photografing just about anything that could pass as a motif and didn't fought back.)

But I was about to talk about sage. I have found a recipe that requires big amounts of sage, but I hadn't the time to use it this day. (Basically you drench a chicken in bacon and sage, and bake it in the oven wrapped in dough.) I decided to dry my surplus instead. To dry herbs you need darkness, special containers and an airy space. Those special containers are very hard to fit into a normal flat. Perhaps I should have given up the idea.

But we do have a walk-in closet. It's dark. Perhaps not airy, but we do go in there ever so often (and I could swing the door a couple of times each day...). I had no possibility to build those special containers, so I made bouquets out of my sage (and mint) instead. Then I placed a pole on the shelves in the closet, crossing the empty space between them and tied the herbs to it. This morning when my hubby went in there he shouted.
"Arrgh! I'm attacked by wild sage!"
"It happens to be garden sage." was my reply.
"Can be wild anyhow!"

Today the iceplant and broccoli seedlings have showed their pretty little faces, and the Alaska Scarlet are comming along too...

Ah well, there are plenty of other pretty pictures for this article.

Sowing, April

I finally did it. I've sown a new round of seeds. The nasturtiums and tiger nuts needed soaking, so the round stretched over three days.

The first day I put seeds in water and made sowing boxes for all my plants to be. I've found out that cardboardboxes for eggs, when split into four parts, fits into a plastic take away box - and since those boxes have transparent lids they make out perfect (?) mini greenhouses. In an attac of being minute I portioned the other seeds into their egg boxes, put them into their respective take away box and labeled them carefully. The iceplant seeds were ittybittytiny.

The second day I sowed everything except for the tigernuts - they needed some extra soaking time. Preportioning iceplant seeds turned out to be a mistake. The cardboad boxes needed some soaking too, since they would suck up moist from the soil otherwise. In other words I needed to empty the boxes in order to put them in water - and how do you do that without loosing the minute seeds among the grains on the table? I poured them onto the lid and with some extra detective work I only lost one of them.

With a plastic spoon from Max (swedish hamburger chain) I distributed soil into the egg compartments and put seeds on top. Those where then cosied with a thin blanket of extra soil and then I put on the lid upside down to ensure some ventilation. Since I have a twoyearold in the house I secured the lids loosely with some tape. I removed the lableling from the box and put it on the box instead.

The third day I sowed the tigernut, using the same method as described above, although I had very few nuts to use and had to be economical.

What I sowed this time was

• broccoli
  
• ice plant
  
• nasturtium
  
  
  
  • Garden cress
    
  • St. Clements
    
  • Alaska Scarlet
    
  
  
• strawberry
  
• tiger nut
  

Now I only have to sit and wait....