..:grow things::....

lunapads: non-disposable

2007-11-26T19:12:00.000+01:00

lunapads are not disposables... who needs more things sitting in the landfill? a friend has told me these are great and I'm really looking forward to trying them. They look cool and they're not made of plastic, and they're actually quite easy to wash. Lunapads also sells organic cotton handkerchiefs!

I've used reusable organic cotton pads for a couple of months now. They're easy to wash. I use ecover stain remover on them and then soak them in water and a bit of baking soda overnight. In the morning I just rinse and hang. No hard scrubbing. You can also throw them in the machine, but honestly they were clean overnight for me, so I haven't bothered yet. I have no desire to switch back to plastic feeling pads that I use for a few hours and then they sit in a landfill for the rest of my life.

paris market carrots

2007-11-15T00:34:00.000+01:00

grown on the balcony in a grow box
these were fantastic! very tasty. i probably left them about two weeks too long but i can highly recommend growing them. yum!

growbox

2007-08-20T15:50:00.000+02:00

here are some leeks growing in something like a growbox summer 2006, this box that you water through the pipes. The water sits in a reservoir in the bottom and the roots suck it up when needed. make your own with these or these instructions.
the leeks grew massive, here they are only little.

i've learned that

2007-02-21T03:01:00.000+01:00

- planting some basil from the supermarket can turn into a serious hobby
- there are always people willing to take extra tomato plants
- the people at the allotments will think i'm nuts if i follow the advice from other gardeners online
- allotment sites are a brilliant mix of kind people from all ages and cultures
- i simply don't have enough mulch to maintain 'lasagne gardening'
- couch grass is a battle i continue to fight
- organic is a good way to go
- compost bins can be made from old wooden pallets
- many things can be grown on the balcony, provided the soil and containers are good
- seeds can be saved or traded
- i really like growing things

allotment update, one month on

2006-08-28T03:01:00.000+02:00

well! we have one bed going now with radishes planted from seed and quite a few red beet plants given to us. the spinach never sprouted (or its so tiny still that it blends with the tiny weeds) and three of the dill plants transplanted.

we've been working on building the double compost bin from old pallets and with a month away i still feel like there's so much to do. we also built a wooden box for shovels and the hose and whatvere else while we were on holiday. it is quite large, if you stand it on its end i can stand up inside of it. we have oiled it and still need to attach the lid with hinges. the plus is that it has a back and doubles as a bench!

i'd like to organize a bit more, laying out beds and making paths. getting more tarps to cover the weeded areas.

this fall's to do list contains:
get the compost bins lined and going, get the lid on the bench/box, transplant some of the raspberry bushes to the back of the plot (it borders a ditch), trim the cherry tree with hopes of fruit next year, and do serious amounts of weeding beds.

the first bed and lots of red beets

2006-08-09T18:32:00.000+02:00

yesterday i planted 49 red beet plants given to us by a kind allotment neighbor!

the bed had a bag each of peat and cow fertilizr dug into it. krister planted some radishes sent to us by a german friend. i added a few plants of dill i grew from saved seed (a first!) and planted a tiny bit of spinach. it's a nice beginning!

plot #59

2006-08-04T09:55:00.000+02:00

we've had our allotment about a week! we've dug one bed and planted a little spinach, dill and some radishes yesterday. the dill seeds came from my own plants grown from seed. we're in the process of making a two-compartment compost bin from wooden pallet. we've also laid down some wooden planks for a small chill out space.

we have inherited very sweet and tasty raspberry bushes with fruit for this year and a few bushes without fruit for next year, rhubarb, what we think is a cherry tree but has no fruit, and what may be a plum tree without plums. needless to say it's dig, weed, raspberry. dig, weed, eat a raspberry while we're out working and there's a lot to be done!

one of our allotment friends has given us a garden fork and we've bought a little set of four hand tools. we've been borrowing the wheelbarrow and hose and things from krister's parents. we dug up one bed and it is now relatively weed free. then our friend went over it with a machine that turns up the ground, mixing in 50 liters of peat and 50 liters of bagged cow manure. this is the bed we planted.

he also went over two more large areas with the machine, about 1/3 of the plot. this is and isn't so good. it means there's much less digging. only the deepest of the weeds must still be dug out. the bad side is we have to pick out small pieces of the weeds. have only identified one weed (in english) as dock.

we'll probably spend all winter making drawing up plans and redoing them. i think it has a lot of potential and will come to be one of my favourite places. will post pictures soon!

blossom end rot...

2006-08-01T14:35:00.000+02:00

thats the culprit. and i've lost two small tomatoes to it.
comes from irregular watering and in this heat, its understandable. apparently even the seasoned gardeners are finding it. i have read that the tomatoes can still be eaten, well the good half anyway.

that aside we've eaten two of our tomatoes so far. both from the plant in the biggest pot. very tasty. nothing like what you buy in a store.

also a couple of the peppers have taken off. here's a photo from a few days ago. they've tripled in size.

tomato trials

2006-07-23T15:16:00.000+02:00

growing: six tomato plants in containers on my 9th floor balcony
type of tomato: moneymaker
planted: 3 and 16 march
methods: mini greenhouse, upside down and in the frame of a shelf
nourishment: Bio Bact organic fertilizer weekly and fishtank water

in the mini-greenhouse
# of fruit: 8 and 0
worth noting: the plant with 0 is also much taller

upside down
# of fruit: 6 and 7
worth noting: i found this method online where some people swear by it. in the beginning the plant will try to grow upwards but once it grows a bit the branches and fruit weigh it down. slightly more difficult to prune. planted with parsley on top. the plant on the right gets less sunlight.

in the shelf frame
# of fruit: 7 and 13
worth noting: i have used cling film as a wind break. two tomatoes are even red, but not yet fully ripe. the plant with 13 tomatoes is slightly bigger than the other 5 pots.

thoughts so far: container size definately matters. will be interesting to see which methods grow the most/best tomatoes in the end of the season.

experimenting

2006-07-23T14:54:00.000+02:00

when you don't know exactly what you're doing, why not play a little?
i tried my hand at harvesting some of my dill seeds. i saved the best for a go next year and planted a lot of the ones that look iffy. even the best of my seeds didn't quite look like the ones in the packet, so i'm not that hopeful. i also planted two snow pea seeds. and both sprouted! even if its really too late to plant them i'll learn something for next year when i hope to really go for it in terms of growing my own veg.

travel takes its toll

2006-05-25T22:24:00.000+02:00

well, back from about two weeks travel and some of the plants are looking rough. the swedes are sad and as they would have been hard to do anyways in containers, i'm not very hopeful, but its worth a try! a couple of the small spinach plants are sad looking too. two of the tomatoes have started flowering though and i'm feeding all the toms with some biobact (organic plant food) as they're a bit root bound waiting for the warmer weather. they've been getting the old aquarium water as well, so they should be okay until i can plant them out.

am hoping to try the tomatoes in three ways... two hanging upside down (with parsley on top), two in the mini greenhouse and two growing up some shelves i found and altered a bit. i have ten plants and can keep max six, so i am experimenting. three are out in the greenhouse now at about four degrees.

have tried to begin hardening off the plants, but we had the windiest day ever yesterday and they were all very unhappy and so came right back in. wind can also be a problem on a 9th story balcony. urban gardening in sweden is no easy task!

2006-05-02T11:37:00.000+02:00

100% germination with the swede and spinach! i think the spinach will turn out to be a favourite. if i was doing less travelling i'd sow more for a continuous crop. am learning so much but struggling to keep it all organized. taking and retaking container measurements and trying to plan where each veg will go when the weather decides to warm up a bit. i'd really like an allotment or place with a garden next year.

travel, swede and newspaper pots

2006-04-17T09:15:00.000+02:00

i had wondered what effect travel would have on my gardening habit. turns out, it wasn't too bad. We were gone for six days and had family come in three times. i think all i lost was a tiny parsley seedling. two dill seedlings look a bit droopy but we'll see how they do.

i did a seed swap with someone on a web forum called allotsments for all. i got some bordeaux spinach from suttons and some joan organic swede (rutabaga)! i've planted a few pits of each to see how it goes. the packet says you're supposed to direct sow the swede but i'm starting it in newspaper pots so it shouldn't disturb the root too much. worst case i have enough seed to sow again. it was 10°C today in the sun, so i'll have to wait a bit longer. i've noted how many seeds i planted in each pot and will be able to note how well they germinate.

i wish i had more space! this balcony gardening business can be fairly frustrating when you have only two wondow shelves to work with.

quite a find...

2006-04-05T22:18:00.000+02:00

someone in our apartment building was mooving so i ended up with lots of nice gardening things. several large glazed pots, a tall shelf for the balcony, a grow box (two layers with pvc pipe down to water chamber), a smaller shelf, two balcony flower boxes, a large bag of potting soil, and bag of kulor... not sure what they're called in english but they're the little balls you put at the bottom or top of your containers to help the plant retain moisture. nice!

transplanting and snow

2006-03-23T00:55:00.000+01:00

just finished my first round of transplanting. i ended up with 6 tomato plants, 4 dill and 10 leek, with another 2 tomato seedlings and 2 dill seedlings that aren't quite ready to leave the first pot yet. they say dill doesn't transplant well, but i didn't know that when i planted it, so we'll see. just as i finished, i set the pots on the window shelf and looked outside. it was snowing! doesn't the weather know it is supposed to be getting warmer? good thing the leeks are still too small to go out!

i didn't really have enough pots and there definately isn't extra money for gardening supplies right now, so i had to be pretty creative. i found a lot of the containers i'm using in the recycling room at my apartment building. nice big ones the leeks and tomatoes will need later on. i finished off my first 9 liter bag of soil and have almost finished the second bag of soil, this time organic.

the little greenhouse is still packed, with more tiny seedlings popping up every day. a tip i picked up on the web is to use toilet paper rolls as seedling pots, then when you replant, you bury the whole thing as the 'pot' will decompose. nice for sensitive plants as well.

seeding: round three

2006-03-18T23:08:00.000+01:00

planted another round of seeds today. the brilliant part is i now have twelve packets of seeds that i spent a total of $5 on. i have now run out of space in my little greenhouse. i've also run out of the little pots i bought at ikea, so i had to be a bit creative... so, a fish food conatiner, syrup container, peanut butter jar and toilet paper rolls were all used. makes it more interesting to try growing things with spending as little money as possible. if we had a yard we'd do our own compost as well. am also soaking some parsley seeds i hope to plant soon. wonder how many little plants i can fit on our window sills...

seeds, round two!

2006-03-17T00:18:00.000+01:00

needed a break today so spent an hour planting a few more seeds, this time in organic soil. i may end up with more tomato plants than i know what to do with, but i'm sure my friends won't mind the gifts...

2006-03-10T21:06:00.000+01:00

every pot has at least one sprout!

dill
pot one: two
pot two: four!
leek
pot one: two
pot two: one
tomato
pot one: one
pot two: one

2006-03-09T09:37:00.001+01:00

four little dills sprouts (three in one pot two in another) and one tomato!

2006-03-06T17:15:00.000+01:00

watching, watering, waiting

the beginning...

2006-03-04T00:31:00.000+01:00

today was the start of my growing things from seeds.
i planted six tiny pots.
two dill
two leek
two tomato
i labeled and watered them and placed them in their new little greenhouse.

i think there's something profound about growing things.