Down and dirty
Oh. Ow. Gardening is hard work.
I’m partway through assembling my balcony garden. On the weekend my gf and I went to one last gardening workshop (bio-intensive gardening) and then made a run to Canadian Tire for supplies. I snagged all their remaining bags of aged compost (for a total of seven, since I already had one), two giganto-bricks of coco coir, and five bags of vermiculite. So far I believe I’ve used one and a half bags of compost, one brick of coco, and three and bit bags of the vermiculite. These have filled seven large pots, three long narrow planters, and one huuuuuuge apple basket (already planted with potatoes). I’d still be out there, but I ran out of coco. Good enough reason for taking a break — the other brick is rehydrating as I type this. The add-water-and-stir nature of Coco coir makes me laugh — instant garden!
It’s too bad I don’t dare plant any of my seedlings tonight, but we have a frost warning! What the hell? We’re only three days from June! Getting frost warnings now is just crazy.
I have this terrible suspicion that I don’t have enough pots for all my seedlings. *le sigh* So far I have two large cherry tomato seedlings (yellow cherry), two sweet mini bell pepper plants, one cucumber plant (‘salad bush’), a cayenne pepper, and an anaheim ‘salsa pepper’. Oh, and a wee oregano plant. All those came from the seedling sale we went to on the weekend, and if those were all I had to plant, all would be well. But, um, there are also the seedlings I grew myself — two yellow bean plants (doing very well), brussel sprouts, chard, turnips, more cherry tomatoes (all very wee), and a bunch of herbs. So yes, Not Enough Pots.
In addition to the pots for planting, I now have two large-ish rectangular containers full of last year’s dirt. Coupled with the fact that I’m attending a vermiculture workshop on Friday, I’m having composty ideas for those.
On the indoor front, my spinach experiment has gone awry in the strangest way. After a good start, the wee plants sort of…faltered. They didn’t die, but they didn’t thrive either. The first set is now 5 1/2 weeks old, and here’s the thing — they’re only a couple inches high, and they only have a few teeny leaves each…but they’re flowering. That’s just so not right. Flowering, to me, suggests that a plant has found all the nutrients it needs, reached the peak of its growth, and is ready to reproduce. There’s no way these spindly seedlings look ready for that, and yet there they go. I can’t explain it. The mesclun mix in the same container is all bushy and leafy. Maybe a bit pale, but definitely not failing in the same way as the spinach. I’m stumped. Maybe it’s a light issue, or maybe it’s the soil (they’re planted in pure coco coir), or maybe it’s the seeds themselves. My plan is to plant some more outside, and perhaps set up a daylight lamp next to the existing indoor planter, and see if either does better. Hopefully I’ll figure out what’s going on, because I really would like to be able to grow greens indoors year ’round.
Okay, time to go finish rehydrating the coco coir. Ta!
The great spinach experiment
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 (6x4x4″), 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.
Random lusts
My eyes are always bigger than my stomach. Right now I’m craving at least three different things, plus there are a half dozen recipes I’m itching to try. By the time I get around to fulfilling/testing all those I’ll have another dozen desires driving me mad. So it goes. 😉
Currently leading the list of Things to Make:
- Oven-baked potato chips
- Pea salad with smoked almonds (or the variation that my friend and I brainstormed today — edamame and crushed smoked almonds, with just a little bit of rice wine vinegar
- Roasted parsnips with horseradish
- Spinach with sesame and garlic
- Kale with ginger, sesame, and garlic
I was all set to make the parsnips today, but when I went shopping last night I discovered that all the prepared horseradish contains modified milk ingredients. *pine* Guess I’ll be making my own. On the bright side, I saw a comment on another blog recently, saying that riced parsnips make a great rice substitute for raw sushi. And fresh horseradish might be an interesting variation on wasabi. I have no idea if that would work or not, but we’ll see; I’m just thinking out loud here.
I have the smoked almonds for the pea salad, but better make that soon because they’re proving addictive as hell.
Tomorrow’s lunch will be the kale-arame salad with grilled faux tuna. Mmmmm, arame. I <B arame. It’s yummy and nutty.
The Lustful Vegan 