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.

Autumn today, spring tomorrow...

My little gardens have reached their personal autumns. Won't last long; growing stuff indoors makes you less vulnerable too seasonal changes. The real autumn is noticable too, however, the plants don't press themeselves against the windows anymore, and the added light becomes more and more important.

The reasons behind the personal autumns are my lack of time for the gardens combined with bugs. I have thrips in two windows. At first I planned drastic cures; to empty the windows entirely, clean them and then leave them empty for two weeks. Felt boring though, I mean; two entire weeks without growing anything. So I decided on a milder version. I leave one of the windows be for the moment. I grow my herbs there, and they do fine as long as I spray them with water a few times a day. Thrips don't like a humid climate. The other window will host my tiger nuts. Tiger nuts grows like a weed (ahaha) thrips or no thrips, and since it's the tubers you eat I can spray the grass above as much as I like.

But spring is not far away. Today I brought out my seed envelopes to what I'll sow today or tomorrow. My plan is to do new sowing every other week during some months to see how well this meets the needs and demands for vegetables in this household. One or two times a week I can already add vegetables for my lunch completely out of the containers. The goal to feed the entire family comes closer.

As you see on the picture I have lots of envelopes. I buy seeds like others buy fabric, and I haven't even opened some of them. Adding to that is the seeds I took from my calamondin and a bunch of tasty grapes we bought. It was with a bit of anguish that I selected what to grow this time:

*Common purslane
*Iceplant
*Salad 'Frisée d'Amerique'
*Calamondin
*Grapes

I'm counting on the calamondin and the grapes to be difficult to grow, so I'll sow them only for fun. To be honest I don't even know what I'll do with a couple of calamondin plants - I guess I'll give them away. Grapeleaves are edible, so they do have a place in this garden. Gadgeteer as I am I'm already inventing contraptions to make it possible to move the plants and provide them with added light.

I'll replant the tiger nuts as well. This includes sterilising soil, boiling soil walls and cleaning boxes. My friends; I'll put my body through a training session a bodybuilder would be proud of.

Indoor gardening, some thoughts

If you read swedish you can take a look at "Livet i en lagom stor stad" (Uppsalaliv) has proclaimed Parkettodlaren (Indoor Gardener's mother blog) blog of the week. I'm honoured, and feel it's time to sum up the experiment so far.

My biggest enemy isn't a gardening thing at all. It spells boredom. You know; suddenly your interest in the subject dips and you start working on other things instead. I've had one serious dip so far. The causes were full time work and illnesses, but they could have been a need for playing the accordion, learning cymric or drinking non-alcoholic colourful drinks. These dips are one of the reasons I use selfwatering containers and long time working fertilizing tabs. In this way the basic needs are covered.

And how did my plants do during this dip. Not bad. My strawberry and iceplant seedlings died a dry dead. The others were replanted and lives pretty well. The nasturtiums I planted on the balcony are fighting a tough war against the pansies in the same container, on the other hand they are the healthiest of all plants. The nasturtiums inside are among the plants with thrips and are sprayed with soft soap every other day.

I've started to experiment with smaller containers - although I still build them myself out of plastic boxes from IKEA (cheaper that way). The bins you see on most of my pictures are dimensioned for growing root vegtetables - carrots, turnips and tiger nuts for exemple. The best crops for indoor gardening have turned out to be leaf vegetables, however, and they don't need as deep layer of soil. The question is if I ever will have patience to wait for a turnip to form its root. It doesn't matter that they grow fast, they grow very slowly anyhow. The last turnip I harvested had a root thick as a finger. The carrots did better though.

Two things have proved to be important; extensive notes and extreme hygiene. When it comes to notes I see myself bying a book with black covers and writing minute data with blue ink and longhand. Since I know myself the reality looks quite different. I write data with water proof black ink on paper tape and stick the strips directly onto the sides of the container. This really makes my gardens look like experimental cultivations, and for a long time now I've ponder on a way to make them look nicer. The plan involves fabric matching the curtains (which I plan to sew), velcro tabs and me getting off my butt...



Growing vegetables indoors are more like growing stuff in a greenhouse than outdoor gardening. You may know that a greenhouse should be washed thorougly at least once a year? You do that to get rid of different pests that are hiding in cracks and minute getaways. Perhaps it's good to do the same with indoor gardens? I've cleand the window where my thrips ridden garden is placed using soft soap. I haven't had an entirely problem free garden in years, so it will be interesting to see what'll come out of this insight.

The most important thing I've learnt is that nothing is A Big Catastrophy (tm). You are allowed to be the greenest of amateurs, and you are allowed to stay like that for as long time as you like, untill you feel ready for higher learning. You can even digest this higher learning in the smallest portions possible. As long as you provide the plants with enough water almost anything will grow.

The first salad

From left to right: carrot tops, common purslane and turnip tops.

When I started this experiment I had an idea of neat pots with vegetables growing to the right size and then stopped, kind of. Whenever I felt for it I could harvest a salad or perhaps some tigernuts to give my family healthy eating and my friends allergy friendly culinary experiences. Whenever I felt for it...

However, the project is more and more coming to this:
"Oh my GOD! The basil/purslane/turnip/carrot will soon ask for citizen rights! We have to have a sallad before they are taking over the flat!"
That's why we had a salad today.

The salad was a bit heavy on the turnip side - turnip tops are hairy and will probably do better in a warm dish (prepared "like spinach", no doubt). The son made faces. I was more prepared and mixed my greenery with the rice and got a kind of pilaff that was surprisingly filling. Can't recommend the taste, though, I'm looking forward to the day when my nasturtiums have grown big enough to loose some leaves. And perhaps I should sow some more purslane - and some more carrot tops would be nice too. Ice plant will be interesting to taste as soon as the plants are grown. Add some strawberry sticks to that...

If you ever read an article about a flat where the windows were burst by a galopping djungle, then you'll know it's about mine.

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....

Ice plant

The picture was taken by Naomi Ibuki, you find her Flickr profile and links to more of her photos here.

Heh. Ice plant proved to be a cool vegetable, although a bit slow to grow. It stays in its juvenile growth for six weeks before turning adult, a stage that can be prolonged for months in a lab (hopefully this is valid for a windowsill too). Then it blooms and start the seed production, and once the seeds are mature the plant dies, roots first. Since the plant collects salt in its leaves the withering plant will contaminate the underlying soil. The seeds can grow in this saltyness, but other herbs and vegetables will not survive, hence competitors for the earth are taken care of. The plant can grow in almost any soil, from well-drained sandy soils (including sand dunes), to loams and clays. Since it absorbs salt and other minerals from the soils it's a candidate for using as 'clean up plant' on polluted grounds.

Ice plant have thick leaves covered with big bladders, it do look frosted. It's hardly a surprise that it taste salt, and sour. You can eat it raw, in woks or treat as spinach (gee, have we heard that one before?), and you can crush the leaves to use them as a soap substitute. Seeds and fruits are edible too. If you collect ice plant leaves, fruits and seeds in the wild, DO CHECK THAT THE GROUND IS CLEAN, since every poison in a poluted ground will be amassed in the plant. Having done that, try this recipe I manage to find.

GREEN ICE BLT SANDWICH
(serves 4)

In origin, this recipe is from the book ”Het Trädgård — odling & recept” (translates as ”Hot garden – cultivation and recipes”)

8-12 slices of bacon
2-3 tomatos, sliced
A giant handfull och ice plant (it says so!)
8 slices of whole grain bread
Gourmet quarg
salt and black pepper
Barbecue blues sauce

Fry the bacon in the oven (200¤C or approx 400¤F) for 7-8 min. Take it out and drain it from fat on domestic paper. Roast the bread in the meantime. Spread the quarg over four of the bread slices, cover with iceplant and add the tomato slices. Spice up the tomatos with salt and pepper, cover them with bacon and pour over the barbecue blue sauce. Add the last bread slices and cut the sandwiches into triangles.

(This is a recipe translatedfrom swedish, you can find the original here.)

Hm, ice plant needs added light, but appart from that it seems to be so hardy you'd have to jump on it several times before it dies. This is a candidate for sowing in that cheap seedling soil I've complained about so much.