Fluorescent Light Party

I have gotten a BIT smarter with cucumbers.  On the left....   Bush cucumber Spacemaster.  On the right....   Bush cucumber Picklebush.  Small cucumbers....  that I can MAYBE keep indoors!

I'm still determined to grow mini bell peppers indoors.  Here's another batch.

Little pots of Tonda Di Parigi carrots .... doing great indoors!

Special carrots - under fluorescent lights.  Purple Dragon and Carnival.  I hope they do well.  These are little plugs that I can transplant into gallon pots.

Ever wondered what would happen if you cut off a stick of tomato plant and put it in a cup of water for 5 days?

Transplanted the swiss chard this morning.... aww, they're cute as babies.

Did I mention that I was going insane over basil?

Here's a happy generic bunch of plants.

The new basil planter.

Swiss chard is beautiful and delicious.  Who needs the sun?  They love fluorescent lights.

A new basil experiment.  "Bun" gets only nasty tap water with over 300 ppm of questionable particles. "Weem" gets 10 ppm reverse osmosis water, with happy nutrients, at the perfect pH.  Who do you think will win?

One of my most favorite sights...  CARROT FLUFF!  And, it's indoors.

The latest round of peat pellets, each row with a different happy type of plant:

Row 1:  Alyssum
Row 2:  Catnip (for Noel)
Row 3:  Marjoram
Row 4:  Ruby Swiss Chard
Row 5:  Cucumber Picklebush
Row 6:  Black Cherry Tomato

Row 7:  Green towers romaine
Row 8:  Mustard
Row 9:  Geofure basil
Row 10:  Green basil
Row 11:  Arugula

Another tomato experiment....  cuttings, shoved into dirt : )

Today's Transplanting

So many plants, so few fluorescent lights!

Actually, this first pic is a bucket of collards.  They do fine outside, so they stay out here.  SO yummy steamed in the microwave for a few minutes, with ghee.

I am over-tomato-ing.  What can I say?  I'm now giving them away to anyone who will take them.  Healthy little cherry tomato plants, prematurely ready to go out in the garden.

I moved these carrots outside, hoping they would do well.  The hot sun made them look sad, so back under the fluorescent lights they go!  I may end up growing carrots totally indoors, we'll see.

They look so sad!

I have taken to pruning some of the cherry tomato plants, and yes, I'm very amused with how hardy they are and how they fill out in days after a hard pruning.

These guys just keep coming back, no matter how much I cut off.

Another happy cherry tomato.

More collards - pretty !

Here's a couple of oddities:

1. Strawberry spinach... who knew?

2.  Gooseberry!  Lets see if it survives.  It's supposed to be a huge thorny bush covered in gooseberries in the summer.

Tomatoes and Cucumbers in Pots

There are some really good reasons why I germinated cherry tomato and cucumber "Marketer" seeds in February...  Something to do with trial and error, propagation, hydroponics, etc.   Okay, I was just anxious.  What can I say.  So now, it's March 15th, last frost is April 20th, and I have buckets of tomatoes and cucumbers.   Now I get to put them outside every morning and bring them in every night.

Here's three cherry tomato plants in one bucket, loving the sunshine today.

Cucumbers need to climb, and these guys are ready to do just that.

This is a very special tomato, nurtured indoors.  It already has a few tomatoes (yes, I polinated them).

Another shot of special Tom.

Cucumber, close up.  It's a robust little plant!

Hopefully I can keep these beautiful guys alive until the end of April, when they get to stay outside all the time.

Front Veg Garden Still Going Strong

The little "vietnam" patch of greens out front are excelling, as usual.  I love the way these guys look.  The combination of the kyoto mizuna, cabbage, chard, red india mustard, celery, and romaine is GORGEOUS.  Right? 

Here it is.... my cabbage.  I'll give it one more week, then I'm going to pull this thing out of the ground and make some cole slaw.  YUM.  It's not the most beautiful head, but I grew it, so I love it.

More sexy shots of red india mustard.  This plant grew at 12 degrees, no problem.

Mustard zoom - awesome colors.

A happy green patch.  Yes, it's half weeds.  I bought a 30 dollar weed whacker last weekend, but this morning I got sunburnt outside and lost the motivation to weed whack.  Tomorrow...

Happy carrots, chard, lettuce, and...... weeds : )

This MIGHT be kohlrabi... I've tried hard to grow it, but just not sure if this is it.  It's a beautiful plant though.

More MAYBE kohlrabi : )

Nothing more lovely than carrot fluff.

Collards - awesome plant!  Delicious, easy, and pretty.

More lovely carrot fluff.... weeeeeeeeeee

Carrots Growing in Winter - March Update!

In December, I planted carrots seeds outside before it got REALLY cold.  This was before I had any idea that it might get down to under 20 degrees for a week straight here.  I expected a couple of subfreezing nights, and the rest rather temperate.  Ha!  Not so much.  So, these carrot seeds hung around outside in the cold all winter, and now that the weather has warmed up (it was 85 today), they are germinating and growing happily.  Yes, I know there will still be a few more freezes, but I think these carrots can handle it.  These were special carrots - Carnival and Purple Dragon!  The ones you see here germinated a few weeks ago and are doing well.

Here also.  I filled in the blank spaces with some more seeds, so lets hope for a zillion carrots in 60 days!

This plastic half whiskey barrel did the best.... quite a few carrots from December.

Look at this pretty carrot fluff!

The seeds I added were not the special ones... they are standard hybrid Burpee carrots.  I'm waiting until the last freeze before I put the special seeds that are left in the raised bed.   Short 'n Sweet...   YUM

Here's what they look like today - March 15th.   I expect fluff by mid April and carrots in May.

Here's another half whiskey barrel.  This is another result altogether.  These carrots germinated in December, and have been pathetically struggling through the cold weather.  The difference here is that the greens never died off, they just froze every night and kept going.  I expect in 30 days I could have some nice carrots here, but we'll see.

March 1st Indoor Garden Update!

The weather outside is starting to look amazing... it was 75 degrees today!  But I learned last year not to be fooled by the early warmth, as it can still freeze up until the 3rd week of April.

So, until late April, we'll grow what we can indoors!

Here's a nice collection of greens.  I had the most delicious salad this weekend, all with various types of lettuce from the indoor and outdoor gardens.  There is LOTS of spinach everywhere, and mixed with mustard greens, kyoto mizuna, kale, and chard, hot steamed green in the microwave with ghee are AMAZING.

Ok, I couldn't wait for late April to plant carrots outside...   Here you see Purple Dragon and Carnival carrots in a multi-plug tray of peat and vermiculite, grown under fluorescent lights.  With any luck, each of these plugs will turn into a carrot when I put them outside in April!

As Mark says, I'm "over tomato-ing".  I can't stop!  I'm going to have to give these away to people that live in San Diego : )

More carrots, this time in Peat Pellets.  I transplanted these today to gallon pots (more pics of that next weekend).

Carrots - Tonda Di Parigi - in 4" plastic square pots.  These adorable little carrots are very shallow, like 1" deep, so I think they'll grow fine in this size pot under fluorescent pots.  We'll see!  If this works, I'm going to grow HUNDREDS of Tonda Di Parigi carrots indoors.

The picture isn't that clear, but this is my first basil plant.  It smells SO good... I'm going to probably damage the leaves, because every time I walk by it I have to touch the leaves and smell them.  Incredible!  Again, if this grows well, you guessed it.... HUNDREDS of Basil indoor plants!  LOL

Cucumber Marketmore... indoors...  in March.  Not very smart!  I'm going to have to prune these several times to keep them under control until they can actually go outside in late April!  It was more for fun that I germinated them early, and for data.  Cucumber seeds germinate SO fast.  I have actually since bought and germinated some tiny bush cucumber plants.  The Picklebush only grows to 2' high.  Now THAT is going to be cute!

Yummy yummy chard... I have NEVER eaten chard before this year, and it's delicious cooked with Spinach and Mustard Greens and Mizuna....  NOM!

And now... tomato jungle.  Again, for data, I germinated cherry tomato seeds WAY too early, and now I'm going to have give them away and prune them and deal with this jungle.

Still trying to get mini sweet peppers out of mini pepper seeds.  They are sure slow growing... hopefully they'll go crazy when it heats up more.

And now.... Tomato Jungle!

Look how beautiful the hydroponic veggies are doing.  Green tower romaine lettuce, cherry tomato, sweet mini pepper, cucumber, and red sails romaine lettuce.

I'm really hoping the peppers do well hydroponically.   They sure didn't like growing outside last summer.

Cute hydroponic peppers.

See you next weekend!