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Dwarf banana

16 Apr 2010 by viggie

I mentioned last week that I potted up some dwarf bananas I’d ordered.  They are another addition to my growing indoor gardening efforts.  I thought it would be worth sharing a status update, as they’ve already made great progress.  These were mail ordered and came with the stalk cut off at about 10 inches tall, leaving nothing but a leafless stub.  They’ve already shot out a couple leaves and seem to be making themselves right at home.  I’ll have to wait two or three years to see fruit, but they’ll quickly turn into lovely houseplants in the mean time.

dwarf banana

Category: Banana, Container Gardening  Tags: , ,  4 Comments

Mini White Cucumber Harvest

06 Mar 2010 by viggie

Veeeeery mini.

These are the Miniature White Cucumbers I grew indoors this winter. I’ve had very mixed results with my indoor growing.  Some things seem to thrive and some just peter out like these poor cucumbers did, even after such lush vine growth at the beginning.  I left them on the vine for a very long time, checking them hopefully each week. But this week I finally gave up and harvested them. It was clear they weren’t planning on growing any bigger than this. I took the picture with a banana for scale. Sad little things were just 1 3/8 ounce, about the average of my herb harvests..lol.  There are still a few left growing on there, but I’m not expecting any better results with them at this point.

I’m not overly disappointed with this.  It was just an experiment and I learned some things in the process.  Next winter I’m going to try my regular cucumber seeds indoors.  It’s quite possible this particular variety is what I’m having problems with.  I’ll have more space and more lights, which will help.  I’ll also start the seeds much earlier than I did this time.

mini cuke harvest

Category: Container Gardening, Cucumber  3 Comments

Wordless Wednesday – Cascading Tomatoes

24 Feb 2010 by viggie

displaced plants

Category: Container Gardening, Tomatoes  Tags: , ,  2 Comments

Around the Urban Homestead

07 Feb 2010 by viggie

I thought I’d do an update in the indoor gardening experiment.  Things are going well and I’m excited about plans to expand the growing area for next year.  My brother even volunteered to help me put shelves in the closet and hang the shop lights in there.  Hopefully we can find a weekend to get together to work on that this month.  It’ll come in handy for seed starting too.

The tomatoes are starting to get pretty big and need to be watered every couple days now.  They are a cascading variety so they are growing out in every which direction too.  Last night when I went to check on them I found the first flowers open :)

first flowers on the indoor cascading tomatoes

And in other indoor gardening news, the white cukes are starting to fill in.  I haven’t been great about pollinating, so you can see some sad shriveled ones that didn’t get enough attention.  RIP lil guys.

indoor mini white cuke progress

And finally I did my 3rd Aerogarden pruning.  With the elliptical inside for the winter this corner is a bit over used, but certainly productive.  My herb harvest more than doubled to 1.75 ounces.  That brings my yearly harvest total to .19 pounds.  I’ve added a harvest challenge section to my sidebar and will be keeping the total up to date. The numbers will move a lot faster as the year progresses and I have more than lightweight herbs to gather!

aerogarden corner

Category: Around the Urban Homestead, Container Gardening, Cucumber, Tomatoes  Tags: , , , ,  2 Comments

Indoor Gardening Update

02 Jan 2010 by viggie

Carnival-2010-January_Icon

Life on the Balcony is starting a Container Gardening Blog Carnival so I thought I’d give it a try :) I’m about due for a gardening update anyway. My containers are an indoor winter garden. I’m growing a few plants from grocery items like ginger root and green onions. I also bought some seeds specifically for this project. These miniature white cucumber have shorter vines and smaller fruit so they seemed perfect for indoor container gardening. And as you can see right now they are flowering like crazy.

indoor cucumber

I have 2 aerogardens set up with a variety of herbs. In pots I’m also growing cantaloupe (pictured below), carrots, cascading tomatoes, fresca strawberries, dwarf lemon, and dwarf orange. I have seeds for dwarf zucchini but sadly I ran out of room to plant them. I have a new kitten who loves to nibble and dig, so right now the plants have limited space under grow lights in a spare closet where she can’t hurt them. For next winter I plan to add shelves and shop lights to the closet to give myself about 6 times as much growing space.

I’m excited about adding things like kale, lettuce, radishes, and bush beans to my winter garden that’ll be more productive.

indoor canteloupe

It’s really quite amazing the variety of things you can grow indoors in the winter, even in less than ideal conditions like mine.

Category: Container Gardening  Tags: ,  4 Comments

Starting Ginger

19 Dec 2009 by viggie

I got a big hand of ginger last week to use in juices. This is what I had left when I read an article about starting ginger by keeping it damp in a pot. Not sure if there’s any good growing tips left since it doesn’t tell me what to look for, but it’s worth a shot :) So I plopped it in a pot this week and if it doesn’t grow I’ll just throw another hunk in next time I pick some up.

starting ginger

Category: Container Gardening  Tags: ,  5 Comments

Container Cucumber

21 Nov 2009 by viggie

These are the miniature white cucumbers I decided to grow for my indoor gardening project.  They seemed particularly well suited because they have shorter vines and smaller fruit.  I’m loving watching these guys come along, they look so happy and healthy.  The first buds are forming now so it shouldn’t be long until I see some flowers.

indoor gardening -cucumbers

Category: Container Gardening, Cucumber  Tags: , ,  One Comment

Indoor Carrots

14 Nov 2009 by viggie

I grew half of  my outdoor carrots this year in a half barrel planter.  In fall I planted a second crop and brought them indoors when things cooled off.  I used a nice light potting soil in them which the carrots love. When I first brought it indoors I thought I’d be clever and just put a bowl below the drainage hole.  I found out quickly that it leaks from all around the edges of the container and next to nothing comes out the drainage hole..lol.  Luckily I had an old plastic serving platter that’s the right size to catch all of the water.

I pulled up the first few this week to see how they were doing, and they look very happy.  These have already been put to use in a wonderful root veggie mash.

2039

Category: Carrots, Container Gardening  Tags: , ,  5 Comments

Container Tomatoes

01 Nov 2009 by viggie

These are the cascading tomatoes I decided to go with for my indoor gardening project. I started them right in the hanging basket that will be their home and they are growing real well considering they are living in a closet to be safe from kitties.

cascading tomatoes

Category: Container Gardening, Tomatoes  Tags: , ,  Leave a Comment

Growing indoors with cats

15 Oct 2009 by viggie

One thing I had not expected when I started this project, was that indoor pests can cause a LOT more damage than outdoor ones.  This, for example, is the FOURTH round of decimation the innocent looking kitten in the picture reeked on my bush beans.  It’s kinda hard to be mad at her for eating her vegetables though! :)   She also did a fabulous job of dumping over the lettuce pot and smearing mud all over the room.  I still have to go over it a second time with the rug doctor.

Because of these things and countless other incidents, I’ve moved my plant stand into the spare clothes closet.  Only half of my pots fit on it though, so my next project will be building a nice growing setup in there which will fit all of my indoor veggies.

IMG_3541

Category: Container Gardening, Failures  Tags: , , ,  2 Comments
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