Light, please!

When someone is hinting like this you have to take action. My stevia "Steve" was placed in the darkest corner of the darkest window I use. As you can see he's gone far to make clear that he wanted change. The plant have reached from one corner to another, becoming entangled with chives, sage and basil in the process. In the meantime I've been busy with other things.

I'm still busy with other things, but you can't ignore a plea for too long. Today I cut down Steve completely and put what's left of him in the sunniest window available. The tops of the branches were put in a glas of water to be used as cuttings. Putting them directly into soil works better, but I had to budget my strength and opted for the lightweight alternative. The rest of the branches were stripped of leaves, and I put the leaves in a netbag to dry them for further experiments.

Now, when I had gained speed I used the excess basil to make a litre of spicy oil, using basil (surprise), a fresh chilifruit, garlic and olive oil. This oil is great to use when making baked root vegetables, and has become the saving recipe when I need to trim my herb garden. We will eat yummy root vegetables until October.

Now I can lean back and enjoy the nice sight of oil jars in a kitchen that is twice as bright as before. Wow!

Stuck in life, stuck in reality

My rose almost dried out, but the pansies (Johnny Jump-Ups) do very well.

I haven't been posting here for a long time. It's because I've got Other Things To Do In My Life (tm). A full time job steals a lot of time from the hours you thought you had for your hobbies; cooking, cleaning, caring for children and laundry, everything are supposed to fit into the few hours you have left. My flowers have suffered from it, and some of my home made selfwatering pots are a sad sight to see. But I'm not ready to give up on the project. A fulltime job is a reality for most of us, and I want indoor gardening to be a possibility for all of us. The problems I'm pondering most on right now are how to fit in the gardening into the Real Life.

An other thing that keeps me going are all those nice comments you've written on my posts. Thanks to everyone who tried to save my basil and sage with various recipes and suggestions on freezing the surplus. The thing with indoor gardening is, though, that you'll (hopefully) have access to the plants all the time. If you start saving the surplus you'll soon drown. I'll plant new herbgardens, and when I do I'll plant sage and basil in an amount more fit to our needs. And I'll add chives, dill and parsley - herbs used in the kitchen by my grandma and quite the ordinary stuff in Sweden. Exotic herbs are fun to grow, but in the end I don't know what to do with them, so I've learnt the hard way to stick to the 'boring' common routine.

All those weeks...

You may have noticed that I've been absent for a week, and that's for a reason. Last week was the week from hell. I've started a new job, a nice one so that's not the problem. The problem was that my son fell ill and kept me awake during the nights. I had forgotten how sluggish you become by not sleeping at night. Things was so bad I even forgot to water my seedlings and they bent like overcooked spagetti over their boxes. I watered them anyway, and most of them recovered.

Other plants have flourished while I turned my back. The basil for exemple. It's so big that when I log it next time I'll have twice the amount I had last, ie two (2) litres (or four pints). I'm going to dig it out of the box and replace it with chives and parsly, mark my words! I have pesto enough for a year.

I've found a nice recipe for the sage that will keep it in check in the future. It's called "Icelandic chicken" (if anyone of my readers are interested in the middle ages you may recognize Cariadoc's miscellany).

My two biggest challenges for now is to replant my seedlings - I have a replant phobia, and to get a vermicompost. The last thing is a bit like getting a cat; you need to care for it, feed it and take care of the poop. Good thing it doesn't have fur; my hubby is allergic.

Plans and pesto

Yesterday I logged the basil and made a litre (a quart) of pesto. Today I have a headache, since I'm sensitive to garlic in those amounts you eat when you try ti finish of large amounts of pesto. Heh, I knew what I did and I have to admit that it was worth it. Pesto is freezable fortunately, and our friends on the potluck today all agreed that if you have to priorotize between nuts and garlic you choose garlic.

Today I've planned next round of sowing. Ie. I've spread my seed bags over the table top and written down the names of the plants to sow on the backside of an envelope. I concluded that I need to document more of my efforts. This week I've had my first bigger harvests, but I'm not sure when I sowed them. If I'm not sure on how long the interval is between sowing and harvesting I can't accurately calculate sowing cycles and how to overlap the 'generations' of the different sowing boxes. Next sowing round will in other words be properly documented - och the backside of an envelope, since old envelopes are an infinite source of paper (as well as documentation is an infinite source of notes).

And I wrote a small wish list to myself on what to buy from Impecta next time.

• Strawberry sticks
  
• Sugar plant
  
• Okra
  
• Sorrel
  

I'll see if I'll be kind to myself next time I get money...

Curiosity stage

I can't resist posting a picture of the greenery part of the chicken casserole I made yesterday. All green parts have been grown in our flat. I put purslane, french tarragon and a turnip leaf in there. They look so good before the cooking has reduced them to green threads.

My gardening has reached the curiosity stage. I drink tea from my own mint ever so often and will soon cut the basil forest to make pesto. Small citrus fruits are occupying our kitchen while waiting to become marmalade. Or rather season marmalade, since their own taste are much too bitter. I think I'll dry the sage and hand it out in small bags to my friends - I have way too much of it. This stage is nice, but it's far away from supplying an entire family with vegetables. The good thing is that I'm now able to make a first count on how long it will take me to get everything going in full harvest cycles.

I think it'll take about two years, although the mileage will vary.

It's beginning to grow on me...

I couldn't resist posting a better photo on my pansies. The last one's got a horrible reddish tint. Turned out they weren't that much of a bummer. Pansies are edible, and thus they have a place in this home. I haven't tried them yet, though, since I'm not sure how much poison and other muck the retailer have used on them. In my copious free time (ahahah*) I may some day call them and find out.

I'm definately starting to get a surplus. The basil will soon ask for citizenship or house mimmoths unless I'll find out how to make pesto soon. I still haven't found out what to do with the sage - and even the tarragon are putting on airs.

And of course; I didn't come around to replant the purslane. I have to stay content thinning it out instead. But I wont need to worry about finding a purpose - it can be used as spinach...

You may have noticed that this blog have hiccupped the last week. I've gotten a new job, and are rearranging my schedule. I'm trying to cram five entities into a time space where only three can fit. Believe or not - I'm about to make it. Jay!

Smoked pork and tomato pytt, recipe

So, I've cooked our first meal using home grown herbs. It turned out tasty, so I decided to share. Unfortunately I can't give you exact messures, since I seldom use messures myself. Besides, I don't want to spoil the fun in experimenting to get the right proportions according to your tastes :-).

("Pytt" is the swedish version of paella, ie. a dish made from a little bit of this and a little bit of that, mostly leftovers, everything diced. In general a swedish pytt has root vegetables and potatos, but I omitted them here.)

Smoked pork and tomato pytt

Smoked pork, diced
Cherry tomatoes, split
Onions, chopped
Fresh sage
Fresh basil
Pepper, freshly ground
A hint of tabasco
Salt

Fry the pork and onions together until the onion is soft, add cherry tomatoes, spices and salt. Fry until the tomato looks soft enough. If you like you can put a lid on the pan and let the dish 'simmer' for a while on low heat.

Serve with homemade potato mash

Instant herbgarden

The two things that have worked well so far is 1. added light and 2 selfwatering pots. Today I took the consequences of this and built two giant selfwatering pots, using the plastic box "Flaj" from IKEA. (We have an enormous amont of these, and they are used for everything, from wind shield to foot bath.) I sowed common purslane, turnip and carrot in one, and planted herbs and sallat in the other. A small spot that's green already makes gardening more fun. I bought the herbs and the sallat in the vegetable section at ICA (like Walmarts or Tesco), which is both a curse and a blessing. A curse since you have absolutely no guarantee that the plants are free from pests. A blessing since the herbs are big in size and cheap. Right now I'm looking at the result of my efforts and wonder how many of the plants that will recover once they realise that they are in a new garden. Some of them seems to be weak (should have been more picke at the mall), so I've already made a replacement plan.

Sowed in box 1
Common Purslane
Turnip
Carrot

Planted in box 2
Sallat
Basil
Sage
Tarragon

My little herb garden - an update

I thought I would post a picture on how my herb garden  has 
developed after two to three weeks of added light. The sage 
and the mint have both sprouted new and greener leaves, perhaps a bit 
smaller than they should, but they are definately on the right track. 
The mint are eagerly trying to crawl over to the empty space where 
I'm planning to sow basil - given I can find my basil seeds again.

If you don't remember how my herb garden looked like before I'm 
reposting a picture where the withered leaves and such recently
have been cut, and the additional light have been up for only two days.