The Indoor Gardener is silly tonight...

see Obama pictures

I admit it! Mea culpa! Instead of watering and doting on my plants I spent my precious time reading Pundit Kitchen, a blog making "Lol news and lol politics fun". When I came across this picture I realised I wouldn't write much about flowers tonight. (And since I'm a christian I can't help thinking things like "My, that is a gorgeous chasuble in the front line. We should get one for the dome.")

But I should return to the general vegetable theme of this blog;


see Obama pictures

Well, yes, George W Bush often turns up on pictures where he makes funny faces and seems to have a low IQ. I think I need to even things out a little. What do you think of this?


see Obama pictures

That's enough! If I continue I'll track down the respective lol for every politician in the world (I actually found one with former swedish prime minister Göran Svensson). I'll return to my normal me on monday.

Tomatoes and softener

Well, those tomatoes didn't taste much. I have a feeling that if this fruit* are put to ripe in a bowl instead of on the plant loose the ability to form taste, which means I may have been prejudiced. Or I may have picked one that wasn't ready yet. In any way I can rely on the fact that we'll have new tomatoes in a few weeks. Cultivating Tiny Tim is pure joy, the plants are dark green and of the modest height of fifty centimeters (about one and a half foot). The first flower clusters have lost their leaves, which mean I'm watch over them to see when the first fruit forms - I never grow tired of that.

The advantage of growing tomatoes is that they are sensitive to pollution. If there is anything unhealthy in the air or the water they'll start wither. The interesting thing with these and my previous plants is that neither seems to suffer. The first plants were watered with water from our dryer - water that smelled of non-ecofriendly softener. I've changed to an ecofriendly one; you tends to be squeamish when the softener returns to your own stomach via the vegetables you grow. Perhaps I didn't need to worry since my old tomates did fine. However, I can now bask in the warm and cosy feeling of being ecofriendly.

*Yes, tomato is a fruit, but used as a vegetable.

Experiment

This sunflower was picked by mistake at the allotment yesterday. I'm no friend of big and bold flowers, so I'm surprised how well it fits into our kitchen - which is decorated in turqoise and mild yellow tones. And while the flowers lights up our kitchen table I can study its finer details fit for angel bookmarks.

Sunflower is said to be edible, and who am I to refuse an experiment? I picked a yellow leaf and put into my mouth - with a considerabel amount of suspicion. Mom taught me that flowers are poisonous, and the voice of your inner mom is never silent. In addition to that the leaf tasted like perfume, that oldfashion kind with lily of the valley and lilac base, and left a bitter aftertaste. I have to admit I wondered if I would be sick and spent the rest of the evening watching over my stomach. But, I survived!

If I would use sunflower in my cooking I would go for Middle East inspired food, where rosewater is used regularly and where that hint of perfume is desirable. Hm, perhaps it's already used? The climate is right for the plant down there, and there's a good will to use plants creativly.

The small bowl contains another experiment. I picked the tomatoes from my previous plants before I tore them all down. By then they where minute, and I wanted to see if they could ripe eventhough they where dark green. They've taken a few weeks to blush, and they collected some dust bunnies meanwhile. Like most tomatoes made for commersial cultivation their skinns is pretty thick, and it'll be interesting to see if there's something more inside when I try them out for lunch today. I'll post some further report tomorrow.

Finally back to reality...

Aaaaaah! Daycare's open after summer vacation. The flat is silent and I can work. The son is probably as much relieved as I am, since he finally get to meet other children - where we live they are in rare supply during summer. Regardless of that I'll pick him up early since too much of a good thing is overwhelming in the beginning. After all we can visit the neighbour and take a look at the rabbit, something he like as long as I don't chat too much with its owner...

We'll have to visit the allotment wether he likes it or not, since we need to pick some more potatoes for dinner. I've taken the decision to not weed with him in tow - today my nerves won't stand explaining the difference between a weed and a usuful plant.
"Here we have a thistle, we are going to... NO! LEAVE THAT SUNFLOWER ALONE! Right, this thistle... Oh, you're a crane! And a pretty strong one too! Go for it! Now, this thistle... NO! THAT'S THE RHUBARB!"

Teaching threeyearolds to garden is not for the fainthearted. I think I take the easy way out and ask him to choose new plants for his window.

Snake + weatherman...

Well, they managed to pry him loose, I've seen the entire vid on CNN (the weatherman works for KCCI Des Moines). I admit to not understand why he's carrying a albino python in the first place, they are not that dangerous to humans and surrealisticly stupid. On the other hand, you can't understand everything, so in this case I think you are allowed to smile a bit.

Sunbrewed Mint Iced Tea

Hmmm, if we have another heatwave I'll try this on my balcony.

Those little things...

It's time to sow for new indoor gardens, which means I have to clear the Table, which means I have to tidy.

Bleh!

Herb oil

It's cold, rainy and windy today. I should be out there hunting killer snails, but I don't really feel like it. Instead I study chinese in the warm comfort of our home - it's really important to know how to call a cab in China right now...

I've finally found a way to use the surplus of herbs in my kitchen window. I make herb oil following a simple formula; cut off anything that's too much, stuff it in a jar and pour olive oil over it - sometimes I add some cloves of garlic and sambal oelek too. The end result has a mild taste, but apparantly a delicious one. We tested the first round on some roasted vegetables yesterday, and we both had two helpings and used some bread to get that last oil on the plate.

Fruit and Vegetable Creatures

Harvest time for outdoor vegetables is starting in Sweden. If you have some knife skills you may find some ideas for banquet displays here ;-)

The Vertical Garden

This one looks promising. I actually hope some of our plantmalls buys it. (If you want more information you can look at www.theverticalgarden.com.)

Mud pie...

There's one thing that has disturbed me a few days. By "disturb" I don't mean shaken and slightly appalled, I mean a thought that moves me deeply and that keeps returning untill I can't keep quiet. It's the fact that people on Haiti are eating mudcakes. No, they're not having desserts, they're eating slices of chalk clay to survive. Real food are imported and too expensive for many.

When I did my research for this post I soon encountered an all too familiar pattern, clumsy free trade policies (the flow of cheap, imported food have crushed the national farmers), unstable government, corruption and bad infrastructure that makes most of the aid from relief organisations stay in the harbour storehouses of Port au Prince. Plus, of course, the inflation, that made the crisis grave. A complicated background to a catastrophy, with a lot of others to blame, which makes it easy to not help at all (since there's allways something better to do or someone with still redder hands to hang).

And that's how the world is. Complicated. But while we are bickering about the bestest packages of measures, political colour of antagonists and who to blame people are starving, not only in Haiti but over the entire world - and they're doing it now.

Usually I keep this blog on easy reading level; everyday topics and nothing deeper than a plant pot (unless I'm deep digging my allotment), which is why I'm going to concentrate on those tiny things that helps in tiny ways. There may be a big wastage on the way, but I hope that the more that is sent, the bigger the chance that some food parcels arrives to the right reciever.

Nut revival

This week I'm pretty tired due to some undefined illness, but I can't resist showing you this photo. This spring I tidied a contianer with dead tigernuts, they had been left without water for too long. I removed every nut I could find in the root systems, then I planted the remnants in the old soil, just for the thought of it. The container was put on the balcony, and I forgot about it, save for the occasional splash of leftover water and thought "Perhaps I ought to remove these dull straw tufts."

The result? Green leaves. Fact is, these are the happiest and healthiest tiger nut plants I ever grown. Weed species are a treat - when you grow them in containers.

Size do matter

Looky here. The library window looks tidy again. The Tiny Tim tomatoes seems to thrive and have already sprouted their first flower buds. Little chard seedlings are peeking up above the soil, and they'll soon grow to fill the window. On the other hand none of these plants will become as tall as their predecessors*. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a proportional window display this time.

*Chard reaches a modest height of fifty centimeters compared to the ten meter vines of the indian spinach. 'Tiny Tim' is a miniature tomato, and won't reach the two meter height of the plum tomatoes I grew here before.

You say 'Tomato', I say...

Here's the original song, and even if I find it pretty cute I admit that it's the ending that impresses me most.

Crash course on soil from GardenGirlTV

After indian spinach comes...

...chard. 'Bright lights' to be specific. Part of me whispers that these colours don't match my carfully planned colour scheme for our home...



...but I have already planted the variety on my allotment, and know that the hues are brightening up the day. So I ignore my inner perfectionist - for now.

Death of the indian spinach

The indian spinach is high yielding, but I have to admit that I'm not all that fond of it. It tastes stalk, much like some sallads do. That's why I decided to tear it down.



I tore some of it last week, that's why it has a thin 'waist'. If you look closely you can see its branches crawling all over the place with vines sneaking in behind the poster, snaring the plants on the second shelf and entangling themselvs in the chains to the growlights. When I did my first spinach tearing I accidentally pulled two plants from the upper shelf. There are still terracotta shatters spread across the library.



I'd spent half an hour cutting leaves and branches before I could relealse the net used as a trellis. Removing the vines became so much easier after this.



Here you can see the berries. Traditionally the berry juice is used as rouge, and it has indeed a nice blue-red tint. When I smeared it over the back of my hand it turned to hue close to a (normally) blushing cheek.



Since the roots are used in traditional medicin I dug them up to take a look. There are certainly not much food on them, which probably explains why they 'only' are used as medicine. Interestingly enough the roots are used against diarrhoea and the stalks and leaves are laxative. You'd better not mix those parts up...



Here are the collected stems and leaves. The stems filled an ordinary waste bag, so I tossed them into the composting bin in our communal "recycling house" (yeah, it's called that). I feel much better doing this since I got to know that the communal compost collected in Uppsala is fermented into biofuel, which powers some of the public busses (half of the fleet is powered by this gas, the other half uses ordinary diesel). My worms under the staircase will have other things to feast upon.

I parboiled the leaves and froze them. I'm not sure what to do with them. Like I said they taste like stalk, but they also give a nice asian flavour to soups and stews. I can't exactly tell what this asian flavour is, this just happen to be my associations when I use indian spinach in food. Probably I'll use these leaves in my winter meatloafs, which in their turn will be flavoured with fresh ginger, lots of garlic, sambal oelek and chinese soy.

The Indoor Gardener's vacation

Weeding, watering, hunt for killer slugs, fika, resting, watering, fika, build toolshed, fika, reload the mp3player, weeding, fika, pick rhubarb, lunch, resting, listen to Wiggly Wigglers, watering, chinese, pick sugar snaps, fika, resting, chinese, interior design, shopping, chinese, Babylon5, watering, weeding, watering, resting, shopping, watering, watering, fend off some thrips, pick sugar snaps, dry some mint, resting, fika, Furuviksparken (swedish zoo and amusement park), watering, weeding, shop for weeding tool, Lennakatten, visit friends, look for wallpapers with roses, resting, fika, watering....

Cairns Botanic Gardens

So, it's time! Indoor Gardener goes on vacation for two weeks and will be back the twentyfirst of July. I wish you all a happy summer with a small vid from Cairns Botanic Gardens.

Potato slaughter

I've harvested the balcony potatoes. They were few and somewhat watery, but still tasty. I think I'll plant some more soon...