In the nature of a confession

Last summer, someone passed some grow lights on to me. They'd never used them & I'd been mumbling about my desire for all-weather salads for a while. I thought grow lights would be the answer.

I haven't ever set them up. This is definitely not the way to make all-weather fresh arugula. I had a dream that I could "clean up" the basement and set up a nice little table of plants down there. They could get the fake sun I provided and all would be well. But cleaning up the basement isn't trivial. There's a cat who thinks it's all hers, all the time, for starters. And, for some reason, even though we hate the thought of moving ever, ever, EVER, we have been keeping boxes. Pretty much any time we get something that comes in a box, the box gets lovingly put downstairs on a shelf. I grant you that this is insanity.

But it's my insanity, dagnabbit and it's what I have to start from.

Right, back on topic now.

Indoor planting using grow lights. I would like to do it. I would like to have pretty little lettuces sprouting. I would like to have fragrant basil and chives and parsley. I feel that it should be not only possible, but not difficult to make this dream a reality, but I don't even know where to start.

Where could I put these plants? Where could I put the lights? What would help me remember to water them, frequently? What would help me remember to pinch off their leaves so that they grow bushy, not leggy? What would help me remember to raise the lights appropriately? How can I save them from the cat?

I don't know the answer to any of these questions. I just think that, as a smart person of resources, I should finally confess to being completely incapable of managing even this simple task.

That's how I got to be the inconsistent gardener, I guess.

cheating, again

I got some bulbs in a pot the other day. They are just starting to bloom, much to my delight.

My poor crocuses, the ones I am relying on to be out in 3 weeks, are under several feet of snow. I don't know if that much snow can melt in the next 3 weeks. I need some reminders of the coming spring. I desperately need some reminders of the coming spring.

Sure, I had my cheater's trip to California, but it was short. While it is nice to see things in bloom, it's not the same as seeing things blooming. I do like to see the change; I like to see the flower break through. It's nice to see the flower, but watching it emerge is just fantastic.

Yellow at work

I don't think that I've confessed, yet, to having purchased another little pot of bulbs. They're so pleasing, and not terribly expensive on the scale of, say, cut flowers. They're $4 for a 4" pot. Seems reasonable to me. This time: daffodils.

The office tulips are coming out, but they are very top heavy.

One tulip is fully open.

One tulip I despair of ever opening. It looks too scrunched up to ever make it.

Tulips in the office

My office tulips were just about to open when I left on Friday (typical!). They seem to have been given a little too much booze; they are very short. The flower is not really above the leaf. On Monday I'll try to use a real camera to take a picture rather than the crappy photoBooth cheat shown above. They don't get any real sun, but they do get indirect sunlight and nominal full-spectrum light when I remember to flick a switch.

More cheating

The crocuses in my office are done now, and so I popped to the shop and dropped another 4 bucks on 3 tulips. They're supposed to be yellow, too. I fished through quite a number of pink ones to get myself a yellow set. I don't know why I'm so anti-pink. Probably it's just that I'm violently pro-yellow when it comes to little pots of spring to enliven my workspace. Why would I go for any colour but that of the sun?

I'm especially in need of my spring fling because it's gone all grey again. We had a week of lovely bright sunshine (and bitter cold). Unfortunately, we're not getting pots and pots of snow like some of the Atlantic coast to the south of us. We're just getting plain old wintery weather. I can't complain endlessly about the little dribs and drabs of snow, though. I'm glad I'm not digging out 1m of snow. As you can see, our snow amounts to so little that even a pigeon can put a footprint right through it.

In other cheating news, I had a terrible trip to the local seed store over the weekend! What a bummer. They over-charged me by $15 on a $40 bill (did they think I wouldn't notice?) and were really quite evilly reluctant to correct their "mistake". They took a little pile of seed packets, found the most expensive, and scanned that in 4 times instead of actually scanning in all the packets. When I complained that they hadn't scanned in the packets correctly, they then scanned in each packet individually without removing the 4 times scan charge! Humph. When I finally got out, I was very angry indeed. And needless to say, I didn't complete my purchase. So I'm looking for a good on-line mail order source for seeds because I can't trust the local rotters. It really did get me down. Still does.

cheating

That's as good a picture as I can supply, I'm afraid. It's of my cheating flowers. I plopped $4 on a little pot of forced yellow crocuses, and it was well worth it. I haven't done anything to make them happen except spend four dollars. I know I KNOW I should be buying bulbs in bulk and forcing them myself, but I haven't, so this is what I get. It makes me happy to see yellow flowers in my office on a cold January day.

Even if they are a cheat.

On and on

I will go on and on about the Christmas cactus. It is fantastic. I don't think I've ever had a year like this. It turns out that the thing to do with Christmas cactuses is to NOT WATER them for all of October. It's on fire with flowers.

Goose is getting fat

The Christmas cactus is doing really quite well now. There are two fully-opened flowers and luscious cerise buds on pretty much every terminus. What a good cactus.

Now I just need to figure out when would be a good time to propagate it. Surely after it's bloomed would be the right time. No worries about depleting its resources before it puts out exotic flowers.

Getting my hopes up

Just as all is dying in the outside world, the Xmas cactus is causing me to get my hopes up. It is positively dripping with buds. I don't water it very often, and I think that helps with the blooming (perverse plant that it is). But there have been years when the buds came to naught, so I really shouldn't get my hopes up.

Too late! My hopes are up!

C & E?

Many years ago, before we moved to Halifax, we thought maybe it was time to give up on the Christmas cactus for good.  It hadn't bloomed in some time, we were planning to move, and it's not a small plant; not easy to transport.  But it comes from a cutting from my great-grandmother's plant which sat in a bay window in her house and grew to fill the entire space.  It's got sentimental claims, if nothing else.  

That was the occasion  on which I learned that threats do work on houseplants.  The cactus, threatened with destruction, sent forth a stream of bright blossoms (although it was Easter, not Christmas).   It got a reprieve.  Instead of trying to move it, we entrusted it to the care of some friends.   The next time we went through Hamilton we picked up the cactus and brought it home with us.  It has bloomed reliably every year since I made those cruel threats.

It has lived up to its name, too.  It started blooming at Christmas time, and in fact put forth an absolutely dazzling display this year. 

I don't know what to make of this new blossom, but it's very pretty.   It's been coming on slowly but between yesterday

and today it's burst out into a lovely triple-barrelled display.  It's neither C nor E, so I guess this cactus has some other religious affiliation.   I wonder what it is?

Pinching for profit

The last set of basil we had growing in the windowsill was tall and not a prolific leaf-producer.  I am not height-ist when it comes to the plants, but the whole point of their existence is to provide me with pungent leaves for tasty treats.  

To remedy the situation this time around, I am letting lots grow in a single pot (in the manner recommended by the now-defunct blog yarnstorm) and I've been experimenting with pinching them back (recommended by pretty much everyone who has a clue).  

The un-pinched plants grow up by putting out two leaves and a stem between them.  At the join of the most recent leaves are the next two in baby form.  There isn't any branching.

The pinched plants also put out two leaves and a stem between them, but where they've been pinched, a branch forms.  

The pinch-point is a mass of new-forming leaves.  

Yum.

Rehabilitated Coriander

I wonder if there are any kids out there named "Coriander".  I think it would be a good name. 

Anyway, I thought I'd provide photographic evidence that the coriander on my windowsill did perk up once I'd watered it.  It never stands very tall.  It's too leggy for that.  I guess I just don't live in a climate that can support coriander well.  It probably needs 8 or 9 hours of sunshine per day.  Nonetheless, on my windowsill I get something which can provide me with leaves for my soups.  

Window greenery

The herbs in the window are now doing quite well.  When we got back from our trip, I was expecting to find them all dead, but our nice cat sitter had watered them without being asked.  Lucky plants.

The parsley is positively running amok.

The basil I am carefully and sternly pinching back in the hopes that we'll have some nice bushy plants instead of the stilts we had last time.

The chive, singular, is looking pretty nice for a chive, singular.  

The coriander is suffering terribly because it's in a small pot that I didn't water enough.  The good news is that as soon as I'd taken this picture (honesty, full disclosure and all that) I did water it and water it well.  Hopefully it'll stand up again (as much as it does, anyway) shortly.

I have a dream of setting up time-lapse photography on the windowsill to document the plants reaching for the sun.  I turn them when I'm home, and a quarter turn every day leads to dramatic results.  They are such neat things!

On the windowsill

The sprouting report continues with some not very up-to-date pictures:

The solo chive is ... OK, I guess?  Actually, the sweary one noticed a new shoot this morning, so we've got chives plural now.  I think it's all from the same seed, though.  

The basil really is fine.  It's not growing like wildfires, but it is chugging along contentedly.  Some of the sprouts seem to be producing their first true leaves.  It's slow going, though. 

The coriander is as leggy as all get out.  I suppose that is a risk of growing it in a not-sunny season in an east-facing windowsill and generally being non-tropical.  Hopefully the stems will be able to support the growth.  Many of the coriander plants have true leaves now; I am waiting for the second burst of leaves before I start pinching them back to discourage this legginess.  

The coriander plants flop all over the pot.  It makes it hard to turn the pot (to prevent the plant(s) from leaning in one direction) because they grow braided together.  I haven't worked out the best solution to the problem (except maybe to give up on growing coriander from seed).  

Finally, the windowsill-full of plants continues to be, shall we say "of interest" to a certain carnivorous member of the household.  She hasn't been caught eating them, which is good.  On the other hand, she does give them more attention than they merit, which is bad.  She can't possibly enjoy the flavour of chives, basil and coriander.  Cat food wouldn't smell the way it does if cats liked herbs (and this cat absolutely slavishly loves her cat food).  Her interest is a mystery.  

Sprouting report

Unfortunately, I still haven't got around to taking pictures of the sprouts.  The small pot I think has basil is positively bursting with sprouts.  The small pot with chives is actually the small pot with chive.  It's a good chive, but a couple more are required to make it a viable herb source.  The big pot of parsley, into which I put a few other-herb seeds for fun, is showing some (presumably) basil and some probably coriander.  There's no coriander anywhere else.  

I am very interested by the success of the coriander in the already-occupied pot.  I know I put some seeds in their own pots.  I wonder if coriander likes friends.  Or if the big pot gives it a better view of the tiny, weak, winter sun. Whatever the reason, the sprouts in the parsley pot represent a greater number of coriander sprouts than I have seen in all of my previous attempts to grow coriander from seed, combined.  

I have been looking at seed catalogues and thinking (droolingly) about the summer.  It seems like it might already be time to start broccoli, if we're going to do it.  

Up, up, up!

The seeds from last weekend have started to sprout!  I suspect it's the basil that's popping up so eagerly, despite the snowstorms and our not-very-warm windowsill.  One small seedling pot is alive with little green duckbills and another seedling pot is showing some of those little bent white swan's necks that come before the leaves make their way out.  The second pot might be the chives, but I thought they took longer than that to sprout the first time.  

No sign of other things yet, but I'm not going to cover the pots because I am so encouraged by the dudes who haven't been coddled coming up that I think maybe we should be selecting un-coddled only.  

I have to say that one of the huge advantages of having started seeds last year (and let's be honest, in terms of impact in the garden, there wasn't much impact so it's a good thing I can see an advantage somewhere else) is that I now have a better understanding of which seeds behave in which way.  Knowing that coriander doesn't sprout much is useful.   The first garden we tried to grow included a planterful of coriander and when it failed, I thought the planter and the position and all was flawed.  Now I know that it's the coriander and I can put that planter back up and fill it with marigolds and it'll be fine.  Hooray!  

In other news, the pace of the leaf-yellowing in the new parsley seems to be reducing.  It's still happening, though. 

Parsley update

The old parsley is fine and plentiful.  It's not quite plentiful enough to provide us with parsley for, say tabouli (which we're having for dinner tonight) but it'll do for a garnish pretty much every night.

The new parsley is in its new pots but still distressingly producing yellow leaves.  Or rather, its old leaves go yellow distressingly.

I don't know what it is.  I wonder if the folks at the market sold me a bum plant (gasp).  

No sign of seedlings in the other pots, of course.  I should cover over the pots to make 'em greenhouse-y.  

Winter Indoor Gardening (with apologies to my father)

I did, finally, get around to re-potting the boughten parsley.  I suspect that it's an old, old plant.  It's got positively carrot-like roots beneath.  There were a few plants squished in together and growing into each other, which I ruthlessly cut apart.  There was nothing for it.  They couldn't be expected to keep going as they were.  The leaves on the sprigs were going brown at a quite alarming rate, which I took to mean that there just wasn't enough room for the roots.  

Anyway, I spread the new parsley around and as I did so, I looked at my culinary herb seeds and decided that there would be absolutely no harm in giving them a go.  So, I popped a few seeds in a few pots (including some in the parsley pots) and hopefully in a couple of months we'll have a healthy indoor garden.  

We got rid of everything but the parsley we had before now because it had acquired little friends.  I suspect the mint was really to blame.  There were insidious little webs all over the bottoms of the leaves.  Let's hope the new batch do better.   The seeds were: basil (which did amazingly well in tiny pots), coriander (which barely germinated at all when the seeds were new, so I don't know what I think will happen this time), chives (also not keen to come up), and mint (which I think took a long time, but then did come up before I neglected them and they all died).  

My plan is to put some of the annuals outside when the summer comes.  The mint is most definitely destined for the outside.  I have a dream of putting mint in the difficult little triangle to the left of our front door.  I think a nice-smelling, aggressive as all get out plant will be just right for that sad patch.  I'll even spread out some compost for it.  But not much!  I don't want its roots to break through the house foundations.  

For shame

I'm using the blog as a motivator (I hope):  I got a parsley plant on Saturday with which I intend to supplement the old one.  The old one is such a success that I'm starting to feel bad about harvesting its stalks ... only a few junior ones remain.  Anyway, I need to put the new one in a proper-sized pot (or two) and that apparently will only happen if I give myself a good kick in the pants.  

*kick*

coriander up

The coriander seeds I planted have started to sprout.  As of today, there are only 3 sprouts (and I planted many more than 3 seeds, let me tell you) but we are not yet at the far end of the sprouting schedule listed on the packet.