10/18/10 Harvest Still Trickling In

We're only a couple of days away from the average first frost date in Indianapolis, but it looks like we may be lucky enough get through the rest of October without seeing any frost.  This would make for a very warm October for our area.  The weather was really beautiful this weekend with the daytime highs in the 70s.  Keith and I took advantage of this by taking a Saturday evening walk to the neighborhood liquor store (0.6 miles from the house) to buy some beer (the cashier looked at us a little funny when Keith put the beers in his backpack) and then enjoying a Sunday morning stroll before breakfast to admire various elaborate Halloween decorations around the neighborhood.

In the garden, the warm weather has allowed another handful of Jelly Bean tomatoes to ripen on the vine.  The plants themselves are looking pretty sorry and bare, but as long as the tomatoes stay edible, I won't complain.

In addition to the Jelly Bean tomatoes, this week's harvest included several more ripe cayenne peppers, a few sugar snap peas, one small radish and some green beans (both green and golden).  The green beans were our first harvest from the bush beans currently growing in the indoor grow box, so we were pretty excited to add green beans to the list of our grow box vegetables.

I also harvested two salads' worth of baby lettuce.  I don't know why they look so pale in this picture, but they looked normal in person.

Oh, I also harvested another serving's worth of asian greens.  I might have had two servings' worth, but the cabbage worms took their share before I got there.  I know, because I picked 15 fat and happy cabbage worms off of my greens.  Well, they were probably happy before I picked them off and drowned them in a container of water.

Bok Choy: If this is not rude, I don't know what is.

I also tackled the mass of basil growing in the garden.  Basil is probably the number one thing that grew like weed in the garden this year.  Next year, I will grow fewer plants.

Here's about one pound of basil.  I made a triple batch of pesto, and am currently in the process of air-drying the rest of the basil leaves for future consumption.

Currently Growing in the Indoor Grow Box

After a few cold nights last week, I thought, this is it, the first frost must be just around the corner!  Then it started warming up again, and the weather people are forecasting daytime highs of 70s and low 80s for the next six days.  I'm hoping this will be good for the remaining green Jelly Bean tomatoes to plump up and get ripe enough for me to pick before the first frost, whenever it arrives.  On the other hand, I wonder if this kind of warmth is not so good for my fall crops, or at least whatever's left of my fall crops after the ongoing cabbage worm and aphid attacks.  One thing for sure, this up and down fall weather is definitely keeping me on my toes.

In the meantime, we still have a few things growing in the indoor grow box, where they are happily oblivious to the changing weather outside.  In addition to indoor Jelly Bean tomatoes and planted basil cuttings, we have:

Long Thin Cayenne Pepper, with some peppers finally starting to ripen red

bush green beans that are just starting to set flowers

cut-and-come-again lettuce mix

catnip that I planted just to see if some freebie old seeds were still viable (they were)

By the way, I have no idea what to do with catnip, since we don't have a cat and don't know any neighbors who have cats.  I have read that they can serve as a deterrent to a variety of garden pests, but I haven't tried it yet.

cilantro that I've already taken some cuttings from for making salsa

flat-leaf parsley from self-collected seeds

and finally rosemary that I grew from seed.

More Jelly Bean Tomatoes in the Indoor Grow Box

Keith told me this week that some Jelly Bean tomatoes in the indoor grow box are finally starting to ripen.  Before I get home this weekend to see them for myself, I wanted to share a couple of pictures from last weekend.

Compared to three weeks ago when this tomato plant first started showing evidence of lateral growth, the plant has put on a lot of growth in terms of stem, foliage and fruit.  The stems and branches are now growing every which way that they can within the confines of the indoor grow box.  I'm guessing that the plant is stressed to no end, but it's certainly serving a good experimental purpose and proving that this grow box can grow indoor tomatoes.

Here's a close-up of some green tomatoes.  I'm looking forward to seeing them all ripe and red.  The best part about these indoor tomatoes is that I don't have to worry about the impending frost in the upcoming weeks or having another encounter with a tomato (or tobacco) hornworm.  I guess that's two best parts.  Granted, I probably won't be harvesting that many tomatoes from this plant, but the amusement value of growing a tomato plant in the indoor grow box has been totally worth it.

Happy gardening weekend, everyone!

Growing Rosemary from Seed

When we were at Menards this spring to purchase seeds for our first vegetable garden, we used both logic (let's get bush varieties of some vegetables because we don't have any trellises yet) and whim (oh, look at the pretty picture on this seed envelope!) to select our seeds.  When it came to rosemary, I think it was Keith who said something to the effect of "rosemary would be good to have around, for cooking chicken and stuff."  So we bought a packet of rosemary seeds.

The seed packet instruction said to sow the seeds indoors 10-12 weeks before the average last frost date.  Well, it was already May, well past the last frost, but that shouldn't make a difference if I'm sowing seeds indoors, right?  So I sowed my seeds in little cups, and waited for them to germinate.  I waited, waited and then waited some more.

I don't actually remember how long it took before the first sign of life popped up from those seeds, but it took a really long time, at least 3-4 weeks.  And germination was sporadic.  As in, although some seeds started germinating at 3-4 weeks, the other seeds didn't germinate for at least 2 months.  The rest of them just didn't make it.  Later, I learned that even good rosemary seed stocks only have about 30 percent germination rates at best.  My seeds were probably very average, then, instead of very subpar that I accused them of being at the time.

June 25, 2010 (at 6 weeks)

After the seedlings got their second set of leaves, I transplanted them to bigger containers, anticipating that they would need the extra space.  Ha, if only I knew then what I know now.  At the rate that these seedlings have been growing, they probably could have stayed in their baby containers for the first year.

I scoured the internet to see what we were doing wrong with them and why they weren't growing faster.  Then I learned that rosemary is notoriously difficult to germinate and to grow from seed, and most websites talking about growing rosemary recommended growing them from cuttings or nursery plants.  All this just made me and Keith even more determined (read: stubborn) to keep growing our rosemary seedlings. 

August 8, 2010 (at 12 weeks)

As small as these seedlings were, they just gave off the most incredibly strong (and pleasant) rosemary aroma every time I touched their teeny leaves.  It's just pure torture waiting for them to grow big enough to harvest!

August 21, 2010 (at 14 weeks)

It's been almost four months now, and some of the seedlings have finally started putting on some noticeable growth.  I think the largest seedlings have almost doubled their height in the last month.  I say doubled, but it's still not that much when you're talking about seedlings that are only one to two inches tall.  We did learn one thing: water them very little.  When we kept the soil looking visibly moist, the seedlings seemed to be at a standstill.  When we cut back and only watered a little bit once a week or less, to a point where the soil looked very dry on top, the seedlings finally started to grow.

September 5, 2010 (at 16 weeks)

The rosemary seedlings were moved into our indoor grow box after we built it in July, and that's where they have been this whole time.  I meant to take them outside when they grew to a "decent size" but I don't think they are there yet.  At this rate, they will probably spend all winter in the grow box.  Even when these seedlings reach a decent size, I won't plant them in the ground because I don't think they can survive the winters in Indiana.  But hopefully we can transplant them into a good sized container someday, so we can have rosemary year-round.  

You know, for chicken and stuff.

*** Rosemary Update on April 13, 2011***

Jelly Bean Tomatoes Growing Indoors

The one Jelly Bean tomato plant left in our indoor grow box is now growing laterally, as it has already reached the maximum height from the top shelf of the grow box.  It is also flowering and starting to set tomatoes.  Would these tomatoes be considered hot house tomatoes, even though they've never seen the light of day aside from the artificial lights inside the grow box?

Jelly Bean tomato plant in the grow box, with some basil in the background and cilantro in the foreground.

First Grow Box Tomato

More Tomato Flowers

8/30/10 Harvest - Salad Fixings

We had a very small harvest this week - just some baby lettuce mix and arugula grown in our indoor grow box, and probably the last few cucumbers from our slowly-but-surely dying cucumber vines.  This lull between summer and fall is turning out to be kind of depressing!  Now I have to wait patiently for my fall crops to start growing.

I harvested the baby greens (and reds) from these two containers.  I thought I took a picture of the harvested lettuce, but apparently I forgot to do it.  It wasn't a lot of lettuce, just enough to make two appetizer-sized salads.

I spaced out and did not remember to take a picture of my harvested cucumbers until after I sliced them all up.  My loud "oh no!" probably made Keith think that I cut my finger with the kitchen knife or something.  With the way that our brown and brittle cucumber vines look right now, these may very well be the last cucumbers of the season.  We'll see if we get any more next week.  Otherwise, adiós, garden cucumbers.  See you next year.

I made some tzatziki with these cucumbers, garlic, lemon juice, salt and plain yogurt.  Various recipes said that greek yogurt works the best, but all I had in the fridge was plain yogurt, so that's what I used.  It still turned out pretty yummy, if a bit too garlicky.  That's what happens when you just wing it without following a recipe!

Oh, I almost forgot.  I also harvested about 16 oz of basil.  1 lb of basil doesn't sound like a lot, but it's really a lot of basil.  They filled up a huge serving bowl.  I took all the leaves off the stems (so tedious) and laid them down to dry, as we have enough frozen pesto cubes for now.  They filled up three large pizza pans and four cookie sheets.

Visit Daphne's Harvest Monday for harvests from other gardeners.

Indoor Grow Box Limitations - Tomatoes

Our Indoor Grow Box is awesome in many ways, but it does have its limitations.  Our tomato plants are growing so well in there to a point where they are growing too tall, too fast for the grow box.  I thought it looked like a jungle in there two weeks ago, but now it's a bit junglier in there. 

The two remaining Jelly Bean tomato plants grew and reached the top of the grow box, and are now starting to grow sideways at a 90 degree angle to its main stem.  They are also looking stressed, having long outgrown the grow box shelter.  I felt so bad for them!  Since a few weeks ago, their siblings were transplanted into individual five-gallon buckets and have been thriving outside, and even starting to set little jelly bean shaped tomatoes.  We left these two plants in the grow box to see what would happen if they grew too big, and now we know.  So we freed one of them and transplanted it into a large planter previously occupied by a now-dead zucchini plant.  Hopefully it will do better outside in its new home. The other plant is still in the grow box, only because we didn't have any more large containers.  If it's still alive, I'll have to figure out something for it next weekend.

I can almost hear this plant saying "ouch, ouch, the ceiling is hurting my head!"

Well, at least now we know how fast they grow.  It's been seven weeks since we started these tomato seeds to test drive our new Indoor Grow Box.  So when we use the grow box "for real" next spring,  I'll know that they will reach their maximum grow box size sometime around 5-6 weeks.  Does that mean I have to start my tomato seeds about 3-4 week before the last frost date, to be transplanted out 2 weeks after the last frost date?  Hmm, I thought most people started them 6-8 weeks before the last frost date in our USDA zone 5b.

If you (that's you, the blog reader!) start your tomato plants from seeds, how early do you start your seeds, and about how big are your plants when you transplant them outside?

8/9/10 Harvest and Grow Box Jungle

The harvest this week was rather small, in quantity as well as in vegetable sizes.  Our Early Girl tomato plants are still producing tomatoes, but individual tomatoes seem to be getting smaller every week.  My spreadsheet tells me that I'm not just imagining this problem.  Hmm, would some fertilizer help with this problem, or is this normal for growing tomatoes?

The bush beans squeezed out a few more green beans, because I just couldn't bring myself to pull the three remaining ratty plants that still had some blossoms left last week.  Maybe next week.

The cucumber plants gave us only one cucumber this week, but I spotted several baby cucumbers on the plants, so hopefully we can get more cukes in a week or two.

Although our harvest was pretty dismal this week, our plants are growing really well in the indoor grow box.

 Indoor Grow Box Overview 8/8/10

On the top shelf, we have basil, cayenne peppers, jelly bean tomatoes, and some cilantro (started just last week).  When I started the pepper and tomato seeds in the grow box about a month ago, it was just an experiment to see how well the grow box would work to germinate seeds.  But they have been growing so well that I'm starting to wonder if we might get lucky and actually get some peppers and tomatoes out of them this year.  We transplanted a few of the seedlings outdoors, just to give them the best chance to grow during the rest of this season.  The remaining plants, we'll keep inside the grow box for as long as we can and see what happens.  I just spotted what look like tiny pepper blossoms starting to appear, so yeah, I'm totally getting my hopes up!

Are these really the beginnings of pepper blossoms?

In the middle, we have nasturtium and several different kinds of cut-and-come-again lettuce, including arugula.  Would you like to see the difference between indoor and outdoor nasturtium?

Nasturtium in the back; the rest are lettuce and arugula

More Lettuce

On the bottom shelf, we have some more experimental seeds, a new flat of spinach seeds (not yet germinated), and a few rosemary seedlings with a serious growth problem.  Okay, I know it's not fair to compare rosemary with fast growing annuals like cucumbers or green beans.  I did read that rosemary is hard to germinate from seed, and very slow to grow; but I had no idea that it would be this slow!  These seeds were sown in May, so they've been growing for almost three months now, and their heights range from 1/4 inch to barely an inch.  They are really testing my patience, but hopefully I'm more stubborn than they are.  Eventually, I really would like to have a rosemary bush (or even several) that I could point to and say, "I grew that from seed!"

Three Month Old Rosemary Seedlings

Happy Harvest Monday celebration continues over at Daphne's Harvest Monday.

Indoor Grow Box Update - Nasturtium

Here's a quick peek at one of my garden experiments.  My garden experiments may be rather unscientific, usually with a sample size of just one, but I'm still having a lot of fun playing garden scientist in my own backyard.

Nasturtium growing in our indoor grow box

Nasturtium growing outside

What a difference a grow box makes, eh?  I think it's just been too hot outside for the nasturtium plants, even though I put them in a place with some shade in the afternoon.  I've never grown this flower before, so I don't know if they are supposed to be grown in full sunlight.

Speaking of sunlight...

With daytime temperature hovering over 105 degrees F every day in Texas this week, I just melted every time I went outside. It was just so HOT.  I was so happy to return to Indiana last night, and I'm looking forward to some sub-90 degrees "cool" weather here this weekend.  I might even do some work in the garden!

7/26/10 Harvest and Indoor Grow Box Update

Presenting, our very first tomato!  The variety is Early Girl, and the tomato plants were grown from seedlings bought from a garden store before we figured out how to start our own seeds.  As far as the taste is concerned, I would say that this one tasted slightly sweeter than an average store-bought tomato, with that good wholesome home-grown flavor.  I'm sure there are many other tomato varieties with better flavors, and I hope to grow more varieties from seed next year.

We also harvested a few more green beans, but I think we're done with these bean plants for the season.  They have been under some sort of a beetle attack - I think cucumber beetles, but there may be other bugs involved as well - and the leaves are getting rather lacy and ratty-looking.

Cucumbers are continuing to produce.  We harvested four more this week for more cucumber salad, and the vines promise many more in the upcoming weeks.


Indoor Grow Box Update

Our homemade indoor grow box has been performing beautifully, and we harvested some baby lettuce from our first trial run.  Three weeks ago, we planted a variety of lettuce seeds in a Jiffy mini greenhouse and a re-purposed container (one of those clear plastic containers that hold supermarket strawberries).  They started germinating after 2-3 days, and three weeks later, we already have some edible baby greens.

Encouraged by our success, we constructed a few more lettuce "beds" from doubled-up aluminum lasagna pans.  The bottom pan was filled with a layer of pea gravel to hold up the top pan.  We poked some drainage holes in the top pan and filled it with Mel's mix (equal parts peat moss, vermiculite and compost).  Now we'll be able to grow cut-and-come-again lettuce all year long indoors without worrying about them bolting in the heat or freezing in the cold outside.

The few seedlings in the pictures below were transplanted from the Jiffy mini greenhouse into one of the new lettuce beds after some of the bigger leaves were cut for our first lettuce harvest.

At the same time that we started our lettuce seeds (three weeks ago), we also started some jelly bean tomato and cayenne pepper seeds in the Jiffy mini greenhouse.  I know that's too late to start tomato and pepper seeds, but we wanted to experiment and see how seeds would germinate and seedlings would grow in our indoor grow box.  There's also a transplanted basil growing in there, too. So far, everything seems to be growing pretty well.  The tomato and pepper seedlings were transplanted into separate containers last week.

Inside of the grow box before the first lettuce harvest

If you haven't yet, do you want to see how we built this indoor grow box ourselves three weeks ago?

Check out Daphne's Harvest Monday for everyone else's harvests!

They Picked Us!

Something exciting happened around here yesterday.

No, no, my tomato plants didn't spontaneously bear hundreds of perfectly-shaped and fully-ripened fruits overnight. Oh, I wish.

A representative from CSN Stores offered us an opportunity to review one of their products with a $40 store credit. CSN Stores sells all sorts of things on their many websites, including lights, greenhouse products, cookware, and lots more. Many of their products also come with free shipping, which is like the holy grail of online shopping for me.

Now, I like freebies just as much as the next person, but I was actually more excited that someone from this company found AND selected our blog for this offer. Then again, I still get super excited and do a (silent) happy dance every time I get a new comment or a follower.

As a building engineer with a specialty in lights, Keith considered selecting and reviewing one of their lights. I admit, they do have some cool lighting products. Still, with this being a vegetable gardening blog, I wanted to pick something more gardening-related. So, we're going with a gardening product, because sometimes Keith just lets me have my way without any fussing. You might think that this is because he's a nice person (which he is), but I have a secret suspicion that it's because he thinks I'm really, really cute.

Anyway, I'm considering one of these products from their greenhouses site.

2-Tier Growing Rack

or

4-Tier Growing Rack

Next spring, we could use our homemade indoor grow box to start our seeds, and then use one of these covered growing racks to harden off the seedlings before they go into our garden beds. I can't wait to try this out with tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, melons and anything else with seeds needing an early indoor start.

What do you think?  Do you have any suggestions on another product we should try out instead?

The generous CSN Stores representative also mentioned that they may let us host a giveaway for a gift certificate to one of you in a few months. Then we get to pick a lucky winner among you readers. Ohh, I can't wait to host my first giveaway on this blog!

The Stylish Indoor Grow Box

Update:
If you would like to see how our plants are growing in our grow box, here they are: Grow Box Updates

* * * * *
Hey everyone, this is Keith.  Usually I'm the "behind the scenes" helper when it comes to this blog but I was asked to do a short write-up on the newest addition to our gardening arsenal, our indoor grow box.

Temperatures here in Indiana (or anywhere else that gets snow) make it a bit difficult to get our gardening “fix” during the winter months. The obvious solution to this is to have some sort of setup indoors that will allow us to grow some plants, and start some seeds during the times when mother nature isn't being cooperative!

However, from looking at pictures around the internet of people's indoor gardening setups, I find most of them to be a little..... ummm...... “rough” looking (no offense to anyone!).   As Minji will no doubt confirm, I tend to be a little (very) picky when it comes to how the inside of the house looks, and a table with a light hanging above it doesn't fit very well into my interior decorating plan. :)


So I set out to build something that would allow us to garden in the winter months, while still making it easy on the eyes. Here's what I came up with...

My perfectly logical drawing of a grow box.

Makes perfect sense, right?  Minji was skeptical though.  I can't imagine why!  Basically, I explained, my goal was to build a grow box inside of an old armoire!  Still skeptical.  "Trust me", I said.  :)

Warning! Long Post!  If you just want pictures of the finished product, skip to the end!

Step One - Get an Armoire!

I searched around on craigslist.com for this until I found one that I thought would fit our requirements.  I was was looking for something that looked fairly nice, and that had multiple shelves (no drawers). I found this one for $50.

Step Two - Prepare for Lighting

My idea was to run lights directly down the center of the armoire so I didn't have to mount a bunch of light socketts on each level.  This involved drilling some holes in the shelves.

The lights I used are 4' fluorescent bulbs (four 6500k "daylight" and two 3000k "warm white" fluorescents), and seeing as how the armoire was taller than 4' inside, I had to build up the top and bottom a bit to fit them correctly.  Luckily, I saved all the circle pieces that I drilled out for just that purpose.  They weren't quite tall enough though, so I cut a few more pieces from some scrap wood I had left over from another project.

I then measured how many I needed and glued them to the top and bottom inside the armoire.  To those, I glued the lamp holders in a hexagon...... ending up with this....

Step Three - Wiring

I used two, three lamp ballasts (for six lights total).  Wiring these to the lamp holders was the most time consuming part of this whole process.  After I wired it, I used electrical tape to neaten it all up and run everything as cleanly as possible.

Next, I mounted the timer I bought to a piece of laminated shelving and used some small "L" brackets to secure it to the bottom of the armoire, in front of the ballasts.

At this point the whole unit looked like this.....

Step Four - Finishing!

Now it was time for the finishing touches!  After putting the light bulbs in we measured the inside temperature while the lights were on.  It was getting up towards 90 degrees so we decided to install an exhaust fan to let some of the heat out.  I drilled out a hole on the back of the unit and installed a simple 120v computer fan.  It now stays between 76-81 degrees in the box at all times.

We then added some aluminum foil to help reflect the light for the plants and put a few test subjects (basil, lettuce seeds, rosemary) in to test it out!

So right now it looks like this.....

And here it is in full operation.....

As the picture above shows, I found it was difficult to take good pictures looking directly at the box because it is so bright and my camera tries to compensate.  Here is one from the side....

Our plants are so bright, you gotta wear shades!

As for materials and cost.....

Item	Cost	Where to buy / Details
Armoire	$50	Craigslist.com
Two GE332-N ballasts	$56	Lowes
Four F32T8 6500k fluorescent bulbs (daylight)	$14	Lowes
Two F32T8 3000k fluorescent bulbs (warm)	$7	Lowes
Two outlet digital timer clock	$17	Lowes
Twelve medium bi-pin lamp holders	$30	Lowes
120v Fan	$25	Radio Shack
Small “L” bracket	$1.75	Lowes
8' Three prong extension cord	$6	Lowes
10' Two Prong extension cord	$6	Lowes
Small white laminate shelf (or scrap wood)	$3	Menards (just for looks)
Two boxes of aluminum foil	$5	Kroger (grocery)
Double sided scotch tape	$3	K-mart
Total	$223.75

So that's it!  We set the timer to come on in the morning at 6am and go off in the evening at 8pm.  And from the outside, you can't tell it's anything but a normal armoire!

Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the outcome but being new to gardening I'm sure there are ways to make this thing better.  Anyone have any suggestions?  Do I have to worry about humidity too, or just make sure it doesn't get too high?  I heard humidity is a killer for tomato plants.

Thoughts and suggestions are always appreciated!  Any ideas?

Update:
If you would like to see how our plants are growing in our grow box, here they are: Grow Box Updates