The Indoor Gardener should be packing...

I seem to have forgotten to update this blog last week. Dumb mistake on my part! I'm spoiled with my other blogs were I can prewrite my posts and have the host publish them at the right date. When Indoor Gardener moves these hickups won't happen again. Kind of doubble, though - the posts won't always be the latest news, but they will be posted in due time, and most often be better than the scribblings I cobble together becauser thursday has arrived and I'm in a hurry.

There's a lot of cobbling in my life. We are spring farming the three allotments and moving to a new place at the same time. The allotments have gotten most of our attention, and now I'm sitting here wondering how on EARTH we are to be able to move the entire household on Saturday. This Saturday. Bit of a luck that we don't have any indoor gardens to move. I try to plan what I'm going to grow in the windows in the new flat, but I find it hard to concentrate on the subject.

Thanks to an impuls purchase I know what to do with the balcony, though. We bought roses for Precious at Funbo Plantskola (link in swedish), and they hade placed grapes close to their roses. I've always wanted to grow grapes. While I was standing in front of the plants I didn't at all remember why I haven't bought one earlier, and picked a hardy labrusca plant. In the car my memory returned when I read the cultivating advice. Labrusca shuns lime. Not what you want when the water is so calciferous it's almost crunchy (or was - nowadays it's soften by the city, but is still rather limy). Luckily enough I've kept some of my big plastic grow crates, and peat moss is cheap.

The Indoor Gardening hubby have been eyeing the domestic arctic brambles every now and then. He's from the nothernmost parts of sweden, and grew up with arctic brambles like southerners do with strawberries. He'd love to have a few plants. Unfortunately they too shun lime, and don't work here at all. My father tried to grow arctic brambles for years in a similar soil. After a long struggle he got one (1) flower on one plant, and no berry. But if I would plant a grape in a big crate on the balcony, why not add some domestic arctic brambles too? They get beautiful, pink flowers that'll match my only fuchsia perfectly. (Only one fuchsia this year - there has to be something wrong with me...) With that my plan for the balcony was more or less finished. For a while I pondered adding american blueberries to the collection. They taste good and want acidic soil too. Then I remembered how BIG the bushes become... A pink balcony filled with grapes, domestic arctic brambles and one fuchsia will do fine.

Tiger nut haircut

First a photo from my own balcony. It's more minimalistic than the french balcony I showed you a couple of days ago. I had other things to do in April and May when I normally plan and plant my outdoor stuff. The strawberries had survived the winter and the pansies were coming along nice, so I decided to stay content. Right now I think it's boring and am planning the autumn and next summer (wine or blackberry, hmmmmmmm...). The chair is a gift from the company where my hubby works right now. They gave him two for the summer, and since they seemed to match the balcony I left them there. (If anyone from this company reads this I wouldn't be ungrateful if you decided to give us a complimentary folding table ;-) )

Today I made some major works on the garden haunted by thrips. After three weeks of treatment with soft soap spray it looked like this.


The common purslane had turned quite old and the nasturtium seemed to consist of withered leaves, eventhough green ones where budding at the end of the branches. The only things thriving was the tiger nuts, so I decided to tear everything away except them.


It's a shame throwing away such big heap of things that would do better in a compost. The longer I'm working with indoor gardening, the more I feel the need for composting. Unfortunately my flat often is too warm for a vermicompost, so I've started to look for ways to use a real one indoors instead. Colleens (In the Garden Online) variety seems promising, eventhough I have a feeling I'll have to store it on the balcony. (Since there are flats without balconies I feel like it's cheeting using mine.)


I gave the tiger nuts a haircut too. They looked like a dull tuss of grass (and that's what they are) so I decided to spiff them up a bit. Don't you think this hairdo looks nicer on the windowsill? I'm not sure the plants will survive the stress being cut down like this but the prognosis is good; tiger nut is a weed to fear. In the rest of the soil I sowed the last of my Alaska Scarlet nasturtium seeds. This time I didn't put up with 'frills' like putting seeds in water 24 hours and presow them, I just put them into the soil and covered them up. The last thing I did was to sprinkle osmocote tab fragments over the surface, and then realisie that they looked edible. I spent quite some time trying to cover them up without disturbing the seeds (twoyearold in da house...).


I took this picture to show how I've started to document my cultivations. I'm not sure on what to do with the facts gathered, or if I should copy them to something else, like a notebook. These days I'm only documenting to get a feeling for how long it takes between sowing and harvesting and how different kinds of soil and fertilizing are affecting the plants. (I haven't made a note on this box, but I do know that this contains the cheap seedling soil that packs together and suffocates the plants if I'm not keeping it moist.) Note the green line between the dry and the wet part of the barrier between the soil and the leca; it's algae. This is the last time I fluff the soil, sow some stuff and tell myself it's gonna work. The next time I'll have to empty the box, sterilize everything and start a new garden from scratch. This is something that will be an indoor gardener routine.

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.

Progress at the end of March

I took a look at my purslane seedlings the other day and realised that quite a few of them had fallen. The bigger part of their lines looks like Uppsala students the last day of April*. Only a few plants close to the window seemed to be thriving.

Hmmm....

Was there anything wrong with the grow light? I didn't need any special machine to find out what was lacking. I put my hand under the armature. The lamp was shadowing the plants from the sunlight. We may be in the last days of March and the sunlight reaches amounts close to tropical, but I do expect more 'bite' from a grow light. I've myself to blame, currently I'm using the flourescent light that was enclosed with the armature, and that was not meant to be a grow light in the first place, plus it's rather old. My new quest is therefore to get out there and buy a bright full colour flourescent light.

In the last days of March I'm adding outdoor gardener to my identity. My balcony is starting to come alive. Every day I walk out and take a look at the different buds. You may recall that my mints and lavendar have died - sic transit gloria mundi. The strawberries have survided, though, and needs some weeding and general shape up. The leaves have brown brims, which is a bad sign, but I hope to find some way to make them thrive anyway. What makes me most happy is that my big ones seems to have survived. The buds of both my roses are swelling, and soon they will be leaves instead. The same is happening to the cherry tree that I'm giving a close study every day. Can I hope for home grown cherries this autumn?

*In Uppsala the last day of April is celebrated with "sillfrukost" (breakfast with pickled herring, small glases of strong liquor are more or less required to this), champagne gallop down Carolina Rediviva hill at noon and spring ball in the evening. Not all students are making it all through the day.

Little things...

Today has been a Big and Serious Study day (tm), which means I haven't been able to do much with my garden. The good thing about studies is that you have to move around every now and then to prevent falling to sleep over the keybord. This is a the ultimate incentive to, for exemple, clean up the balcony after the winter. Our two HOL benches bought at IKEA last year have started to disintegrate, so I finished the process quickly and put the remnants inside to dry (I'm planning to make toy storage out of them for my son - I guess I have to start a new blog recording my interior design projects). I checked the roses and put the stuff I've stored in the HOL benches into plastic boxes instead.

The shelf for the added light is up, did it meself - mostly. It's become the perfect place for my geraniums. The garden geranium that was given to me when we moved here needed some water and general care, as well as the cuttings from my "Avatar of Roses" - a scented geranium I like much. They had formed roots pretty nice and should have been planted in soil long ago. Very long ago. In fact several months ago. The pot was filled with muck and the surface of the water had started to mold. So I cut the tips of the cuttings and placed them individually in new pots. Their leaves were light green with darker nerves, and I suspect they've lost their "body fat" (or whatever it's called on a plant) due to their long time in water. As an experiment I added two drops of liquid fertilizer to two of the pots. This will probably make some algae happy, but I hope the nourishment will be of benefit for the cuttings too.


A tip from Colleen made me remove the plastic from my little kitchen garden. Turned out that eventhough purslane and turnip had put up their little leaves the carrot still stays under the surface. Note to self; sow carrot in a separate container from now on. Let's see if this round grows anyhow. In other case, well, I prefer turnip to carrot every time...

In the beginning

One of the good things about gardening is that you get so many beginnings. I just took a peak into my box with purslane, turnip and carrot, and they all had put up little leaves above the soil. It's only two days since I sowed them. This time I did exactly as one should (instead of "this will do"...) and apparently this payed off. I have to look up if there are any instructions on when I should remove the transparent plastic, else I will be very nervous. What if I remove the plastic too early? Or worse, to late so the tender plants get mouldy. I'll watch this poor plants almost as close as I watch over my son...

The balcony season is beginning too. I'm writing this with my feet in a bath (aaaaaaaah) and the door open to the balcony. I can see the rose "Polstjärnan" ("polaris"). It's hardy up to swedish zone 7 (approx. US zone 4) and it will be interesting to see if it survives my recklessness. I have a feeling that roses should be covered in the spring to prevent them from budding early and then freeze in an late frost attac. This doesn't mean that I've got my acts together and actually done so. The other rose is a read hybrid rose I bought on an impuls because it was red. Unfortunately it doesn't smell right, so I wont shed any tears if it dies. I'll already decided to replace it with a "Dubbel kanelros" ("doubble cinnamon rose") in that case...

Most of my lavendar plants seems to have died. They were hybrids with the wrong smell too, so I'm not that sorry. Last, but not least; my strawberries and the cherry tree have survived! Yippeee!