Finally I've started to make a dream come true!

I've started to write a small handbook in indoor vegetable gardening. Today I spent some happy hours planning the content and making the first sketches. I'll publish the first part on the blog next week. And I'm even more happy with the new online possibilities to publish a text; the plain text will be available as a free download and I'll upload luxury versions (both paper and digital) that'll be cheap to buy. I may even be able to post it as an audio book. All of this is possible because of sites like Podiobooks and Lulu.


The only snag is that I can't put up my own gardens since we are moving in June. Last time I moved with them up tomatoes flew and branches broke, so I've decided to spare myself by starting my indoor gardening after we relocated. Untill then I'm 'stuck' with making plans. We'll get two extra windows for one thing. And I'll have a really good handbook as a help :P .


Also, today I became tenant of two allotments, which means I have a place to dig down bokashi compost when it's ready. This last year I haven't been able to use my bokashi buckets and it've bothered me. Spring will be full of work - but fun!

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?"

Spring, sprang, sprung...

Wait a minute, wait a minute! Wasn't the buds big as applepips yesterday, and I had to stroke the trunk to feel if the tree was alive or frozen?

Gah! I swear it's just hours since I removed the dead leaves to see if there was any living greenery beneath. Now the first strawberry flower has opened. And my plan was to make major rearrangements in these containers!

When I started this experiment I thought indoor vegetable gardeners were free to ignore the seasons. This has proved to be wrong. Even if you can keep indoor temperature at an even level you have to take the sunlight into the account. During the darkest months of the year you need strong grow lights, and personally I loose interest in growing stuff (the biological clock is a strange thing indeed). In addition I start to realise that an indoor vegetable gardener endowed with a balcony should add that extra space to the 'garden' as soon as it's warm enough. My own extra produce won't be counted in the record, but for indoor vegetable gardening in general it's better to add those extra square foots - this is a compact hobby where every inch counts.

This means that with spring comes extra work for me as well as for 'normal' gardeners. The floor design of the balcony needs to be decided and new plants will be planted (think strawberries...). The terracotta pots needs some tlc, and the floor under the plastic tiles needs some vacuuming. The last part is something hubby came up with, and I won't stand in the way. Since I'm overly ambitious I'll grow plants for my allotment and drag home some pallets for my eeeevil plans. Strange as it may seem I look forward to brake the latter with a crowbar...

There are many hours of hard body work to come, but it's that and chocolate that keeps me alive.

How's it goin'?

This is what it looks like when you use Mini Happy Plant. The tomato still doesn't get enough water, so I'll add another cup soon.

I'm getting closer. Now it's possible for me to say that we'll have fresh herbs for cooking as well as one sallad a day from my four window garden. The question is if this is enough to be "an amount big enough to feed a family of three". For my own part I feel it's cheating, and I can do that since I see the possibility of growing more than that.

Root vegetables is hard to grow indoors, and so far we get them on subscription from a swedish company delivering ecological fruits and vegetables to the door once a week. We're saving a few pennies on that, partly because we know where we put our money and we're not running around in shops making impulse buys. The big reason I want ecological produce is that I don't want to throw leftover vegetables with pesticides in the vermicompost; when I start the planned soil circulation these poisons will soon amass in the plants, and later on in our bodies.

Something that worried me in the beginning was that it would look like a kitchen garden in our windows. Kitchengardens are not appreciated for their aesthetic values in the first place, and I do want a beautiful home. But the plants looks like any other window plants, and because I've taken great care in chosing different vegetables and nice pots (ie. terracotta pots and plastic boxes without scratches) the gardens are lovely.

Most important

The more you work with something, the more gadgets you amass. Sometimes you even forget that you made do with a few simple things in the beginning, and start write manuals with pages and pages of 'must have' items as well as instructions in thirty steps or more. I hope I'll be able to avoid that when I talk about indoor vegetable gardening. After all, this is the most important things to know: