Garden Science

Experiment 4 I sometimes forget to post progress updates on...

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:01:01 -0700

Experiment 4

I sometimes forget to post progress updates on things that fail to grow the first time around. The Eggling, for instance, didn’t grow at all after its initial run and I totally neglected to tell anyone about it. For the record, I think the lack of growth may have been my own fault. Small items like this tend to require a level of watering diligence that I find it difficult to keep up with, and I’m pretty sure I let it get bone dry no fewer than 20 times.

Luckily this Eggling came with a packet of back-up seeds. I planted a few and cranked up my level of attentiveness, and sure enough I have a tiny basil plant growing out of the egg now. This is a really fun little kit and it looks adorable on the windowsill.

I definitely recommend the Eggling. Just be sure to water it regularly!

Garden Science gets an apartment

Mon, 20 May 2013 19:19:00 -0700

That’s right, it’s new fancy independent living for Garden Science. I probably brainstormed 50 or so “I’m moving” title ideas before I settled on this one because I thought too many people might just read the headline and think that I’d moved the blog itself to a different location or something. Nope! Garden Science the blog isn’t going anywhere, but Garden Science the narrator has moved.

This place is sweet.

This is the “game room” (games not pictured) featuring a plant shelf and some bottle cap folk art. All of my strictly-indoor plants are here with a couple of new friends, too. I’ll do a special plant shelf feature eventually.

One of my favorite parts of the new place is the balcony/patio area where my outdoor and seasonal plants are hanging out. I’ll do an individual feature on this, too. Things are still kind of in flux as far as what plant is going to go where.

Spoiler alert: Some very observant folks might notice that I have a “Dino Dome” on the shelf, and sheepishly I must admit that I have not done a single post on it yet despite how awesome it is. I’ve talked a bit about having a big important post coming up, and… well, that’s it. It’s still a work in progress.

Another one of my favorite things is this awesome railing-box I received as a gift. It has a lone impatien in it (a leftover from back at the house) but it won’t be the lone plant occupant for long. There is one other current occupant, and that’s Quigley the garden gnome. He decided to move his operation over to the apartment. Editor’s note: the railing planter can be found at Home Depot.

A while ago on Garden Science I announced the return of the instant garden. This announcement was made before the moving plan was fully realized, and it is possible that the move may impact coverage of the instant garden somewhat. Don’t worry though - I still plan on spending a lot of time at the house this summer and should be able to cover any cool developments there. If the instant garden posts are few and far between, take solace in knowing I should be able to more than make up for it in cool “urban gardening” patio posts.

More soon!

I answered a question to Garden Science back in the day about...

Sun, 19 May 2013 08:27:35 -0700

I answered a question to Garden Science back in the day about the green fence-type stuff that you can see in the instant garden (and the rest of the family garden, for that matter). My mom and fellow gardening enthusiast tango-mango just did a great post of her own on the stuff that I thought I’d share.

tango-mango:

Garden fencing

Our sugar snap peas are already over my head and they’ll grow another 3 feet or so before their season’s over. Year after year people who walk by our house are fascinated by their height and how well they climb the wire. Because so many people have asked about the wire I thought it might be interesting to some of you out there as well.

Not only is this green PVC covered wire a great medium for our peas and beans to climb it’s also great fencing for unruly plants like potatoes. Before we plant our seeds we lay it down on the soil as a digging deterrent for squirrels and cats. Occasionally we’ll get a creative critter who can work around it but not usually. We surround our sunflower plants with the fencing when they’re young mostly for protection from wayward children and their toys. After the last of the garden has been picked it gets taken down, rolled up and saved for the following year.

As I was out taking a few pictures an Oregon Junko very conveniently decided to land on the fencing surrounding the sunflowers. It’s not the world’s greatest picture but I felt it necessary to add because of the coincidental nature of the situation.

In another week we’ll be eating the first of the peas and then for weeks we’ll have more of them than I know what to do with. Like last year, I will spam you with a multitude of photos and recipes that include them. Stay tuned.

Experiment 11 - The return of magic beans!

Sun, 05 May 2013 21:19:00 -0700

Once upon a time, Garden Science visited San Francisco’s Chinatown and found some message-inscribed magic beans. Readers were successful in translating the secret of the beans, but their fairy tale took a sad turn when they ultimately failed to grow. This was a pretty substantial disappointment.

Fortunately, there’s a magical place called THE INTERNET where time machines, unicorns, and other objects of myth are only a couple of clicks away. Searches on this “internet” thing helped me find some beans that were supposedly giant and drew comparisons to those from Jack in the Beanstalk. They sounded so remarkable that I just had to order them. After all, there’s nothing but truth on the internet. Right? I hope so, because I traded my only cow to get these.

Joking aside, both the vendor and the product got great reviews and the beans arrived speedily and just as described. By happy coincidence, they appear to be of the exact same variety as the original Chinatown beans.

Long time readers may know that I am a pretty big fan of Dollar Tree. My nearest one currently has respectably sized plastic pots (see the large capacity measuring cup for size comparison), and I thought I’d try planting a magic bean in there to see what happened. I’m optimistic that I’ll get a good germination rate out of these, so for now I’m only planting one. The rest may get planted in time.

Sweet dreams, bean.

Bonus:

Dollar Tree also has hanging pots right now. They aren’t super deluxe or anything, but a buck still seems like a pretty good bargain for this. It’s only a matter of time before something gets planted here…

Experiment 3 I took some macro shots of my tiny Christmas trees...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 18:17:53 -0700

Experiment 3

I took some macro shots of my tiny Christmas trees yesterday that seemed neat enough to warrant their own post. The top one depicts the taller of the two. You can really see the trees’ difference in coloration!

To put things in scale, the needle-span of the top sapling is close to the diameter of a dime. The bottom one is about quarter-sized.

Experiment 3 - A good day to be a Christmas tree in a can

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 22:41:27 -0700

I just realized something! Even though I intended to and even thought I did, I have not given a single Experiment 3 update since December 30th. Yikes, definitely time to change that.

The last time I reported on the Christmas tree in a can situation there was a second one that had only just begun to emerge. Much like its partner, it jumped to a stable height right away and then promptly stopped growing. While the first tree is tall, thin, and bright green, the second tree is shorter and stockier with a darker green coloration.

Despite their lack of growth, the condition of the trees remained pretty stable since planting… up until today. Upon looking at them this evening I realized their situation had deteriorated.

The granular pellets the trees are growing out of have seemingly no friction. As soon as they dry out between waterings, the grains shift with the slightest bump and the trees go with them. The poor smaller tree was at almost a 90 degree angle when I discovered it today. This was unacceptable.

The trees are still finger-crushingly small but I figured they weren’t going to get any bigger while they remained in a substance with the physical and nutritive properties of fish gravel. I was expecting a difficult extraction, but the grains were so loose I was able to gently pull each of the trees from the pellets with minimal resistance.

It’ll take time to be sure, but the trees seem happy to have left the can. Merry late Christmas, trees!

Experiment 8 - Return of the instant garden

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:13:00 -0700

I am pleased to announce that Garden Science’s biggest and best experiment to date - the instant garden - will return this spring for its second season.

Wait… it gets better.

Garden Science gets THE WHOLE BOX this time! There is no lack of ideas (or seeds) to fill it with, either.

What’s in store this time around? There’s going to be a couple of second generation instant garden classics coming back for sure. I’ll also be planting the really old gourd seeds and crossing my fingers. Additionally, I’m looking into trading my cow in exchange for some more magic beans so that I can try a reboot of Experiment 11. That last part may or may not happen, but I’m hopeful.

Rotten to the core

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 10:08:41 -0700

A while back I wrote that the artichoke looked like it was going to overwinter. Things continued looking good over the next few weeks, and it even had a bunch of budding flowers on it.

I was fairly confident that the hardest part was over. It had made it to through the winter and survived several freezes/thaws… what could spring possibly throw at it that was worse than that?

Here’s some foreshadowing. As you can see in this photo that was intended to be solely of Quigley the garden gnome, the base of this plant looks bad. Really bad, actually. I noticed this, but since the artichoke seemed to be doing so well I barely thought anything of it.

…Fast forward a couple of weeks…

It didn’t happen on purpose and I wasn’t there to witness it, but recently the plant was hit lightly by a rogue gardening tool and the whole thing toppled over. The main stalk was completely rotted out. I have no idea how the thing was able to stand for so long, let alone how it was able to continue living and growing.

But all is not lost! New growth continues to spring up around the area where the main stalk fell and this indicates that the root system is alive and well. If we don’t have any more freezes this year, then we’re already off to a pretty good start for the season. This is about as big as the plant was when I bought it from the store last June.

Will the plant yield flowers this year?

Quigley is admirably optimistic.

I love hearing about your lemon experiment!! I just planted some seeds of my own yesterday, about how big will they be within 2 months?

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:25:42 -0700

I am glad! In a way, I think I can credit the lemon trees with being the whole reason for starting Garden Science in the first place.

As to your question - that’s a tough call. I live in a less-than-favorable climate for growing citrus trees, and it took mine about a month just to sprout. Check out this post to see what the lemon trees looked like about 2 and a half months after planting the seeds (approximate).

Best of luck with your own experiment!

Hi, I was wondering what is the update with your forget-me-not.

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:14:14 -0700

Alas, it did not end well. The slugs got to them first, and I think there was a mini-incident last year while the patio room was being cleaned. Some pots fell off of the window sill and broke, and I think the forget-me-not pot was among those lost. They may have been toast before that, though.

I thought I had saved some seeds from their original planting, but I just checked the Garden Science file folder (because there actually is one of those) and did not see any. I will keep an eye out for more grow kits though, and I will try again if I can find any.

Ack! I just spent waaay too much time reading most of your posts. I just wanted to say I'm in love. Also, have you ever tried growing a pomegranate plant? My mom ordered one from Burpee's last year and I've ended up with it here. She also has a pair of kiwi plants at her house. Glad to see there are other plant adventurers!

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 08:37:26 -0700

Thank you, I’m glad you like the blog and I’m happy to hear you’re having your own plant adventures!

No, I have never tried to grow a pomegranate plant but this sounds like a pretty fun idea. Next time I buy a pomegranate I will plant some of the seeds and see what happens. This climate has proven challenging for cultivating some types of fruit trees (i.e. lemons) but that won’t stop me from trying.

How big is the plant you have? Does it actually produce fruit?

Im growing a pineapple,,but doing it differently than you. I pealed of leaves from bottom up until to the soft centre, then just planted it in a pot. Be interested how your system and mine work out.

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 08:32:58 -0700

I hope your system is working out better than mine, because mine is dead:

I left it in its pot hoping it would miraculously spring back to life, but it’s been a while now and it’s looking like I’m out of luck.

Any update on yours? I’m definitely going to try this again and I’d be interested in a new technique.

What if that Christmas tree in a can is just a fake tree that is spring loaded to pop out when opened?

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 08:19:13 -0700

I am not quite sure when this question was asked, but I think it was right after I introduced the Christmas Tree in a Can experiment.

Answer: That would have been hilarious and I would not have been disappointed at all. I might have wished I payed a little less on shipping, though.

Ask Garden Science!

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 08:09:23 -0700

I am finally going to look back into my bank of questions/comments and I will try to respond to as many as I can this morning. Some of these questions have been sitting idle for months, so if that applies to you then you might just see it answered today.

Off-topic questions, ads, or anything that looks like it might be better served by a private response may continue to gather dust for a while. Anything deemed “inappropriate” may not be answered at all. If you’d like to ask a totally Garden/Science-related question though, feel free to do it here:

Ask Garden Science!

Or, you can ask your questions as direct responses to this post. What would you like to know?

Springing back to life

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 08:14:03 -0700

Winter is the most difficult time of year for Garden Science. There are fewer daylight hours, the schedule is generally crammed with lots of other things, and there aren’t very many plants to write about. The number of posts inevitably drops quite a bit as a result.

In addition, there have been a multitude of other things going on that have limited my time here. Most of them are great and/or awesome things, but it’s still unfortunate that the posts are so few and far between.

It’s all okay though, because spring is here! Much like this bleeding heart plant, I am hoping I’ll have the opportunity to spring back to life now that the weather has taken a turn for the better.

In the short term I plan to go through and answer my long-neglected bank of user comments and questions. I thank you for them and I read them all, and I will try to post answers to as many of them as I can in the next few days.

After that, I’ve got a marathon post I’m working on that I was hoping to finish in one day but kind of got away from me. Hopefully I can steadily make smaller posts until I get that one finished.

In the not-too-distant future it will be planting time of year again. At that point there should be a wealth of things to write about, and I can’t wait!

Really old gourd seeds

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 22:17:37 -0700

I’m pretty thrilled. I’ve been saving this particular oddity for a while and for some reason today just seemed like the right time to unveil it. Are you ready? Prepare to be amazed.

Presenting: A packet of really old dipper gourd seeds. No seriously, like… really old.

How old? Well, for some reason it was nearly impossible to photograph the seed packet because it exists in some kind of time-warped state where everything looks like it swam through a sepia filter on its way to the disco.

As you can see, the packet photo does a great job of visually explaining what a dipper gourd is. If you thought it was a squash, you were wrong - it is actually a device for transporting small numbers of apples.

On the back are some handy instructions for growing and drying dipper gourds. After drying, the gourds “… are ready to wax, stain, paint, shellac, wood-burn or carve.” All right, homegrown crafts!

By the way, Applewood Seed Co. appears to still be around and has a website you can visit if you’re interested.

Let’s talk some more about this packet. The copyright is 1977 which would explain the retro packaging. It says “Packed for ‘90” on it, too. Since seeds are usually packaged the year before the “packed for” date, that means these seeds have probably been around since 1989. That’s 24 years ago… almost a quarter of a century! Four or five different US presidents have held office since these seeds came into being.

Of course, the greatest thing about finding this packet was the discovery that there were actual seeds still inside. I’m far from an expert on how gourd seeds are supposed to look, but it seems to me like these have aged pretty gracefully. I don’t see any signs of rot, at least.

The thing that’s funny about all this is that I don’t remember ever growing gourds way back in the day. I have no clue where these came from or why they are still around. Whatever the reason, I’m glad they’ve survived so long. I’m definitely going to plant these once the weather gets a little warmer and I’m seriously considering making them into Garden Science’s newest official experiment.

Like lots of things that happen around here, I really have no idea if this has any chance of success and I want to warn everyone now that the experiment might not work. Even if it doesn’t, this was still a fun find. Is it planting time yet?

Still alive!

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 21:16:54 -0800

Back in December I posted that the artichoke was not only still alive, but that it was actually growing a bud. Several months and many more hard freezes later, it is somehow still kicking.

That’s right, it actually looks like the artichoke is going to overwinter.

I used “science” to enhance the previous photo. In this closeup, it becomes evident that not only did it manage to survive the harshest of the winter months, but the artichoke actually has 3+ new flower buds forming. Hooray!

We’re not out of the woods yet in terms of weather, but I am hopeful that the artichoke will really take off as soon as spring arrives. If this was part of an experiment I’d already be calling it a great success.

Fellow blogger (and my mom) tango-mango put the sprouts from the...

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:30:00 -0800

Fellow blogger (and my mom) tango-mango put the sprouts from the sprouter kit into this delicious sandwich!

tango-mango:

Sandwich under construction

This has been my favorite sandwich since college years. Start with 2 slices of really good, multigrain bread. Spread on a little mayonnaise and top with avocado slices. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and add a nice squeeze of fresh lemon. Pile on grated mozzarella cheese and some alfalfa sprouts. Yum.

Holiday Goodies - Sprouter Kit (Part 2)

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 12:30:32 -0800

I’ll admit it… Part 1 of this series was a little dry. The sprouter kit is an excellent thing, but that post basically amounted to a bunch of pictures of water and plastic and there’s nothing all too interesting about that. Don’t worry though - this post will have actual sprouts in it.

It’s actually been a while since I took these pictures, but according to the dates on the photos it only took about 5 days to go from dry seeds to delicious sprouts.

For the sake of comparison, the above photo shows what the seeds looked like dry. After the events of post 1 took place, here’s what happened next:

Ta-da!

While they were still growing we kept the tower stacked up and when they were done we harvested them and put them in the fridge… but not before making an awesome sandwich first. To those following along at home, I again recommend making sure you read the instructions in-depth and I advise being diligent about watering and emptying the water-catching tray.

Want your own sprouter kit? You can get one from Williams-Sonoma! I can confirm that it’s not only a fun thing to own, but it makes a great gift, too!

Holiday Goodies - Sprouter Kit (Part 1)

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 11:56:00 -0800

Next up: the Sprouter Kit from Williams Sonoma! If you want to buy your own after reading this (and I wouldn’t blame you), you can order them here on the company’s website. I am splitting this feature into two posts because it looks like it will be most logical to have one for the actual planting and another for the yields.

Above you can see the multi-tiered wonder of the sprouter kit with the first batch of sprouts already brewing (more on that later). I did not take any separate pictures of it still in the packaging, but you can see it that way in an earlier post. Each tower comes with instructions. If anybody wants to follow along with their own sprouter kit at home, definitely read the instructions first as they do a better job explaining the finer points of how to actually use the kit than I do.

The kit comes with a packet of alfalfa seeds to get you started. There aren’t enough seeds to last forever, but there are certainly enough to get a few batches made before venturing forth to find some more. I plan to track down a few miscellaneous other types of sprouting seeds so that I can use one of the instructions’ recommendations and plant a different type on each tier.

Each batch demands 1/2 tablespoon of seeds. Not every set of measuring spoons has a 1/2 tablespoon measurement on it but luckily tango-mango has got the whole kitchen gadget thing covered. I compared them this morning, and there is not a huge difference between a half tablespoon and a teaspoon. My guess is that you could get away with using either a teaspoon or a teaspoon + a quarter and be fine.

To start my first batch I attempted to evenly distribute my half tablespoon of seeds throughout the bottom of the first growing tier. The very bottom layer of the kit (opaque white) is just for catching excess water, and I placed the kit’s lid under that. The lid is not relevant to the growing process, so sitting underneath the kit seemed like a good place for it to live so that I didn’t lose it. Since I am not known to eat sprouts by the handful (yet) I only seeded one tier to start with and left the top ones empty.

The tiers do not snap into place and are held down by gravity. I did not know if I liked this feature at first, but it makes accessing the sprouts easy and I am now thankful that they do not interlock entirely.

After placing the seeds where I wanted them to go I re-stacked the rest of the tower (see photo 1) and added 2 cups of water to the top tier. It gradually trickled down one layer at a time until it found the seeds.

This isn’t a great photo, but above you can see water as it entered the chamber with the seeds in it in the left part of the picture. The water completely rearranged the seeds which made spreading them evenly a little pointless. Although they eventually settle back out when all the water drains, they tend to form little clumps and my own personal recommendation is to gently redistribute the wet seeds so that they cover more evenly again. When all the water has drained, the bottom white layer can be emptied. The instructions recommend watering “twice a day (or more if necessary)” and advise not to put the tower in direct sunlight. Again, if you want to buy this product I definitely recommend reading the full instructions. They are very helpful!

That’s it for part 1! Part 2 is coming up soon.

Before I completely sign off, I want to acknowledge that I know there are unanswered questions/comments in my inbox. I have not forgotten! I will try to start responding sometime in the near future.