A look in the green book 090313

It's been Friday 13th in Uppsala, which means I'm writing this late at night. Let's take a peek on my records from the last week.

Monday March 9th
Repotted the first 'Enorma' runnerbean. The cheap potting soil is mostly peat moss, bark and sand (surprise). I need to buy some new.
I already knew it! Cheap potting soil is mostly peat, still I was 'thrifty' when I bought my last fourty liters (one bushel). Guess the difference in price; nine kronas (about one dollar)! Bah! And rubbing this soil (which I do when I pondering something during the repotting process) is downright uncomfortable; it's prickly.

Conclusion: Go for the expensive potting soil - the difference in price is not that big.

Tuesday March 10th
Pepper #4 about to break surface
Suger melon 'Early Silverline' #33 about to break surface
Scallions about to break surface
Onion "47, 50 & 51" about to break surface
Yes, I number my seeds. It's easy when you are sowing into eggshell pots; you just take a pencil and write on the shell. Using a pencil is important, since the graphite is nonpoisonous. Then you can write a lot about the plants on a paper using the numbers as references - this way you won't worry about fitting everything in on a small stick of wood (or plastic).

Wednesday March 11th
Looked for branches on the way home. Picked a minor forest which I defrosted, cut of the thinnest twigs and pointed at the bottom end.
You should have seen the look on my neighbours face when I met him! I picked the branches from a thining area in our local wood, and was careful to just pick ones that wouldn't be of any real use. Not that I know what the county wants to do with the stuff the remove from the woods, but bigger logs could sure be sold as timber. Minor branches works better in an indoor gardening project, and my plants actually looks trendy with their new trellises. (Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Since when am I trendy?! Curse you, Shabby Chick!)

I promise I'll get you a photo later on!

To conclude I can say I've spent most of the week repotting plants. As you already know the oil seed pumpkins almost burst through their shells before I repotted them. Their vigour is fearsome! Yesterday and today I took some vacation from this job, but tommorrow I have at least three plants to work with - if I have enough soil...

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A small vid for the weekend. Since herbs are one of the top indoor gardening crops I post Patti Moreno's tip on how to freeze herbs, using this you can rotate your herbgarden and won't be locked to grow everything at once.

Help, they are growing!

Guess who are the bullies at school? Yes, the oilseed pumpkins. I've put them in individual terracotta pots, which seems to keep them happy - for now. Almost everything I've sowed needs replanting immediately and a new problem looms; where will I put everything once I've put it into 'grown up' containers?

Yet another of those days

In most women's lives there are periods, about once in a month, when life is hard. No big drama, but things don't work out the way you want them to. Yesterday was the beginning of one of those for me. I couldn't remember a chore untill I was completely finished, and had to pick up 'leftovers' all day through. Blogger kept hanging up while I was answering comments on the last post, my head was heavy and my mind was low. When I went to the toilet (sorry for the indiscretion), I concluded, sitting on the throne, that the last scrap of toilet paper wasn't enough and that the box with extra rolls was empty.

That's when I ate all chocolate chip cookies left from the weekend, and spent the rest of the day watching major Uggla*.

On the plus side I managed to repot my seedlings, so the day wasn't completely lost.

*Major Uggla was the first one to lead morning exercises in swedish radio, and are (among those who remember him) famous for his breathing exercises. Swedish television have an open archive with a film clip where he doing his routine in silk pajama. If you take a look: don't try to use his methods! Knowledge about how human body reacts to movements have improved since the 1930s. No sixpack are shown (sorry girls), but he looks remarcably young.

Growing stuff

Time to replant. I've lost the rythm. My goal is to replant and sow every other or third week, these seedlings are well into the third to fourth week period. The reason is that I don't have everything I need yet. The nurseries I've planned for giving the replantations light are not built yet. In addition to that I have a new company that nags for my attention by wanting contacts with the authorities, neat paperwork and things like that. Against common advice I do everything at once. Eventhough some of the things will be done a tad late, it also means everything'll be finished in an acceptable time. Time management is an art.

Meanwhile the indian spinach is growing. Yikes!

Finally replanted

Jeez, I've grown tired just because I cleaned twelve terracotta pots, sterilised them in three rows, soaked them in water, emptied a ten litre cauldron of water, showered five plants, dug through the attic only to find out that the perfect rod in the innermost corner really was a molding, replanted twenty plants into fourteen containers, cleaned the worst in panic, run to the bus only to see it disappear in the far distance, pushed a stroller through the grocery store hunting milk, packed food in bags side by side with glaring, grumpy men, maneuvered the stroller through the pharmacy without pushing anything from the shelves, hopped off the bus to catch a parcel at the corner shop, almost tilted the line by entering (imagine a line of memory tiles if you like - it's a small place where even a foldable stroller is too big), and then returned home. I've probably caught a new cold.

Last post was an april fool's joke; there are no ISO, CEN or CT rules for gardens. I did, however, borrow some of the actual projects from SIS's homepage; "Portable machines and pedestrian controlled machines" and "Powered lawn and garden equipment", but I do suspect they are most working with machine standards. It's also true that SIS issued standards for Christmas some years in a row a long time ago. I do remember their standards for christmas gifts, plus the fact noone in Sweden cared a dime about them.

First replanting for the spring

So, I've replanted my first batch of plants for the spring. The nasturtiums were about to jump out of their tp-rolls and demand eligibility to vote, while other seeds hadn't even poked a sprout above the soil. All the plants that had been in the glas bell were moldy and I realised today that I should have lifted it off for a quarter or so every day to allow for some ventilation. Duh! I already knew that! Why didn't that piece of knowledge surface earlier? Well, I'll use it the next time I sow something - which ought to be tomorrow.

I've used terracotta pots for this batch as you can see. I'll running around and water the plants every other second, but I grew tired of finding rotten soil at the bottom of my selfwatering containers. And these pots looks good, which is a big plus when you are gardening indoors. The climbing aid I made for the nasturtiums is my big pride this time - don't you love the charmingly charred look barely noticeable here? I used sticks left from the fireworks at New Year's Eve. With a bit of luck I'll become a trendsetter and Wal-mart will start sell hobby craftsmen precharred sticks by the dozen :-)

Since it's friday I'll end this post with a small film. It has nothing to do with gardening, I just found it fitting since I have recieved compliments on blogging in both english and swedish. Enjoy!

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.