The Lustful Vegan

Last week C asked how my mini garden was doing. It’s doing quite well!

Let’s see…so far I have two* small planters (10×22″) filled with seeds and seedlings. There’s the spinach I started several weeks ago in one, along with a second round of spinach seeds and a mesclun mix. In the other planter I have seedling pots, which are also full of seeds — yellow beans, tomatoes, brussel sprouts, chard, turnips, coriander, chives, lemon balm, peppermint, and three kinds of basil. (Pretty ambitious given I only have a small balcony, hunh?)

The spinach are still quite wee given how long they’ve been growing — they’re just starting their first true leaves now. They seemed to stall last week, and I’m not sure why. They’re healthy-looking though.

The mesclun mix seems…eager. That third of the planter is dotted with a spray of different greens, mystery plants poking their way through to sunlight. The mystery element amuses me; I look forward to seeing what the mix actually contains.

As for the other planter, it’s also doing quite well. Both containers have clear covers, and every time I lift the one on the seedling plantery I’m hit with a wave of super-warm, moist, earthy-smelling air (which I love). The turnip and brussel sprout seeds went in last Friday, and they fairly leapt from the earth — they had seedlings up the very next day! The other seeds took a bit more time. The chard came up next, complete with glorious little red stems. The basil was next, and the opal basil seedlings are a 50-50 mixture of green and purple. Neat. =) Yesterday I saw the first hint of a bean seedling starting to emerge. Today the first tomato peeked back at me, and also the first lemon balm and coriander — a nice sight to start the day.

They’re all still tiny and young, but tending my little mini garden makes me happy each morning. They have three whole weeks to grow before it will (probably) be safe to plant them outside, so I expect to see a lot of growth in the next little while. Hmmmm…that means I’d better start sorting out permanent homes for them, doesn’t it? Otherwise they’ll have nowhere to grow three weeks from now. And I’ll be away for part of the month**. Eep!

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* Of course there’s also the sprouter, which continues to produce weekly mini crops of salad sprouts. Does that count as part of the garden? And also my recently potted basil plant, and two pots of coriander and chive seeds that don’t seem to like the soil they’re in.

** Anyone know of good vegan restos in Boston?

Our balcony contains exactly one piece of furniture — a well-worn bamboo table. This table is wasp nirvana. Every spring the stripy little buggers come from who-knows-where to gnaw on it. You can hear them chewing. Seriously! They land, feast, fly off, and repeat ad nauseum. Obviously they’re using it for nest-building material.

Have I mentioned I’m virtually phobic about bees, wasps, and stinging things in general? This is not a good combination. Normally this means I run inside a lot, but this year I decided to try something new. Lee Valley and Home Hardware sell this thing called a Waspinator. No, it’s not a Transformer, though a wasp-fighting robot would be kinda cool, if needlessly violent. This thing is basically a blow-up nest. The idea is that wasps are territorial*, so if you make it look like your area is already occupied, they’ll stay clear. Excellent, a solution that harms none of us.

Today I was outside planting some seeds. Sure enough, *gnawgnawgnaw*, there was one of my stripy friends on the table beside me, whittling it down as I watched. Aha, I thought, and reached inside for my as-yet-undeployed Waspinator. A few seconds later I returned and deployed The Solution.

The wasp gnawed away. I shuffled closer. The wasp continued gnawing. I shuffled a bit further. The wasp went for a buzzing flight, came at me…and veered off. Then it went back to its original spot and resumed its business, while I stood over it with my fake nest going “ahem…ahem.”

I can’t claim this is a good test of The Solution, but I did find it pretty darned amusing. Next step: find a way to secure el Waspinator someplace semi-permanent outside, and see if that starts having a more general effect.

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* This is only supposed to work on ’social’ wasps, since those are the kind that build nests. ‘Solitary’ wasps need not apply.

Today our nice local veggie people dropped off our nice local veggies. I’d ordered basil (mmmm, pesto!), but to my surprise I didn’t find a bunch of cut herbs — I found an entire plant! A nice, bushy little basil plant, complete with roots. It doesn’t get fresher than that. Given that just yesterday I bought seeds to grow my own, I have to admit I’m tempted to plant it and see what happens. It’s so fresh and healthy looking. I can go without pesto for a bit…

On another random note, today I realized just how much my eating patterns have shifted in the past four months. I was cleaning the fridge (*shudder*), and found no less than three unopened packages of tofu, plus another of veggie ground. Three of those were significantly past their best-before date. Apparently I’ve really moved away from eating fake meat and tofu. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them — I’ve just been eating more beans and nuts, and meals more centered around vegetables than meat substitutes. I miss my tofu though — tonight I’m making tofu quiche dammit. There’s still pie dough left over from a massive pie-making foray (veggie and curry pot pies, mmmmmm), so it shouldn’t be too difficult. The pies were supposed to stock the freezer, but there are only two left! I used this recipe for “no fail pie crust”, and it delivered as promised even with my substitution of 1/3 whole wheat flour. The best part was not having to roll the dough (except for the pie tops). Once upon a time I was pretty darned good at making and rolling pie crusts…but then I didn’t do it for years and now I’ve lost the knack.

It’s 26C outside at the moment, sunny, with just a hint of a breeze. In other words, nigh perfect weather. I may need to skive off work an hour early and go enjoy it. There’s some vanilla frozen soy yogurt calling my name, and blueberries to go on top.

In the meantime, my garden is already enjoying the sun. There’s not much to see so far — just a single tray of ‘dirt’ on a trolley we can wheel outside when it’s nice like today. And actually it’s full of coco coir, not dirt. Coco coir is a planting medium made from coconut husks — a renewable resource, woohoo, without the environmentally nasty pricetag of more traditional peat moss. It’s also just plain nifty, because it comes in a small-ish block (6×4x4″), but puffs out to fill a 10×20″ tray when you add water. Poof! Instant garden!

So as I was saying, I have just one of these trays started so far, currently occupied by 150 pre-sprouted spinach seeds. My goal is to grow baby spinach, so these seeds are planted fairly close together. They take up the gridded area of the planter. In a couple weeks I’ll fill half of the remaining area, and the last third will go in two weeks after that. I suspect it won’t produce enough for our needs, but that’s okay, I’ll just start another tray.

We’ve decided that all our balcony and indoor gardening projects for this summer will be experiments, to see what we can and can’t grow in containers, to see what works for us as a composting system, and to see what we actually use. The nice thing about that approach is that it’s guaranteed to succeed, because what we’re after is information. Even if something doesn’t grow, we still learn something. Though I admit, I’d rather learn something and get tasty vegetables too — I’m just greedy that way.

That frozen soy yogurt is calling again. Time for some sun.

It’s a wet, grey day outside, and rather cool and dark inside. It might seem bleak if it weren’t harvest day. Yep, today my wee little sprouts became food, and their crisp greenness offered a nice reminder that spring’s lying just beneath that melting snow out there.

The mung beans went into cilantro tabbouleh. Even though I’ve been nibbling those for days and throwing some in everything I’ve cooked, I still had a good two loose cups for the salad. Not bad considering I started with just two tablespoons of seed! They turned out a little bitter, apparently because I didn’t hide them away in the dark while they were sprouting. That’s okay, though — I still found them tasty, and the flavour went well with the salad, so it all worked out well.

The broccoli sprouts I used as a garnish. They’re light and fluffy compared to the mung sprouts, and taste like, well, little fiery broccoli bursts. Go figure. I didn’t touch them until today, and what you see in the photos is the entire ‘crop’ — a single spoonful! From an entire seed pack! (I’m not sure how much the packet contained, but definitely less than 2 T.) Must see if I can find a bulk source of seed so that I can sprout more, because otherwise I just won’t be able to grow enough.

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My sprouts are sprouting, hurray!

The mung beans have actually been very sprouty for a while — I’ve been nibbling them already, and threw a good half cup into last night’s vegan Kung Pao Chik’n. The broccoli sprouts were proving more reticent, but today they seemed to hit critical mass and I can really see them bursting out of their seeds. Very cool.

On the sprouters themselves, I can see why stacked multi-tiered sprouters are popular. They let you sprout different kinds of seeds simultaneously, and/or stagger your sprouting to get a more regular ‘crop.’ With my two sprouters I can’t start any new seeds until the current ones are ready. Or until I get more mason jars.

The one specially-made sprouter I’m using is a “Tony Hornick’s sprouter.” It’s basically a metal sieve that sits on top of a plastic dish, with a plastic dome to go overtop. You put your seeds into the sieve, and put water in the dish below. Rinse the seeds/sprouts twice daily, and in a few days you get sprouts. This works well for big seeds like my mungs, but the sieve would never work for the broccoli — the seeds are too small and would fall through. Also, a couple spots on the sieve are already starting to rust from the constant moisture! So while I was originally impressed by its ease of use, I don’t think it’ll be an ideal solution in the long run.

Growing up, one of the first signs of spring was always the arrival of our seed catalogs. We’d have snow on the ground, but summer in our daydreams as we covered our fingers in newsprint, thumbing the pages, planning the garden. I didn’t realize how much I missed that until today, when I wandered through the cozy little garden section of our local hardware store. It’s an old-fashioned kinda place, as much a seed store as a hardware store. Wandering the aisles of seed packets made me miss the old excitement of garden planning.

Of course, the whole reason I was there was because I was garden planning. Sort of. Kinda. This winter a lot of factors came together and my housemate and I found ourselves trying to eat more vegetables, more local vegetables, and more organic vegetables. But winter being winter, our options were a bit limited. By some miracle our little indoor cherry tomato plant kept producing all season, but one or two wee tomatoes a week didn’t sate us, and a steadier supply meant buying tomatoes from Mexico or California. Ditto for peppers, and even organic spinach. I think we’ve done pretty well, making some compromises, some dietary changes. But still…I got to dreaming. What if we could have a small, steady supply of fresh greens next winter? Tomatoes might be too much to hope for…but spinach? Basil? Salad greens?

Yeah, I started dreaming of gardening without a garden. Condo gardening. Hydroponics.

I think I’m crazy. It’s probably just a bad case of spring fever. And yet…

The “and yet” was what lured me into the garden area earlier today. I figured I’d try a very small scale experiment, the absolute easiest and cheapest way of dipping my toes in the water — sprouting. So I picked up some mung beans and broccoli seeds (and learned from the helpful Garden Guy to look for “untreated” seeds when sprouting). These promptly went into one premade sprouter (I’ll take a picture later) and one homemade sprouter (like this, but using cheesecloth and an elastic band instead of a premade mesh strainer). In three days I should have sprouts, a veritable garden in a bottle.

I know I have at least 72 hours to wait, but I’ve turned into a five year old. I swear I’ve poked at the sprouts every hour. Sprouted yet? Now? Now? Now? Now?…