14 weeks / 8 weeks – The Sun King

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to me that plants need sunlight. It shouldn’t.

 

This radish plant is now 14 weeks, and has been mostly indoors although I’ve put it outside during sunny days.

THIS radish plant is 8 weeks, it was planted in that large pot outdoors, together with 8 carrots, 7 other radishes, some basil, and a tomato plant.

Someone told me that the radish won’t taste good once the plant has flowers, so I guess it’s about time to pick them? I don’t know.

 

I was away for a week and during that week my tomato plant grew twice its size. It’s huge! Now I’m just waiting for the tomatoes. It’s so much easier to see when fruits are ready, compared to roots. Maybe I’ll just do tomatoes next year.

 

Excuse the mess. There are some carrot plants down there in the pot as well but they’re kind of hard to see.

 

Some other plants. I think the sunflowers will be in bloom soon!

6 weeks – New beginnings

I think I started too early with re-potting and taking the pots outside. Even now it’s going to be as low as 3 C some of the following nights. Norwegian weather is harsh. Some of my radishes and one of my sunflowers have almost broken, they’re so thin. 😦

Lavender, rosemary, flowers, tomato, chocolate mint, oregano.

My pot

Yesterday my house mate and I went to a garden center, it was a warm and sunny day and neither of us had checked the forecast. She bought flowers and herbs, I bought a cherry tomato plant, carrot seeds, and strawberry seeds. We were going to plant it all out in large pots today, but because of this weather at least I need to wait with the tomatoes. I filled a large pot with little rocks and three different types of soil, then watered it. I’m planning to have the tomatoes in the middle and then the seeds around it, and I’ll also re-plant some of the too-slow-growing radishes from earlier into this. I already planted seeds of carrots, radishes, and basil.

Seeds

I came across a website that says which plants that grow well together, and I was lucky to see that tomatoes grow very well together with basil, carrots, and radishes, so I’m sticking to that plan. Only adding the tomato later, as I’ll keep it indoors for a while yet. For example, the site mentioned above says; ” BASIL: Plant with tomatoes to improve growth and flavor. Basil also does well with peppers, oregano, asparagus and petunias. Basil can be helpful in repelling thrips. It is said to repel flies and mosquitoes. Do not plant near rue or sage.” See, it’s very helpful. My pack of basil seeds though, says that it can only be planted outside when it doesn’t get below 15 C at night. I choose to ignore that. I’m sure I’ll regret it later. I planted some seeds of it outside today, so we’ll see what happens, maybe nothing comes of it but I’ll see that in only a week or so and if there’s nothing I can use the space for something else.

For the record, my old plants are still mostly alive.

I’m not jealous at all.

My house mate always does things better than me, so to brighten this post up a bit I’ll show her new pot as well. She bought lavender, rosmary, oregano, and some pink flowers, and she arranged them all in her pot very nicely. She also has a plan that includes potatoes, more on that later.

5 weeks – I wasn’t born for this

Three pots of radishes and one pot with too many flowers.

My radishes aren’t happy. They seem to have grown disproportionately. I read one article that said that with radishes you can’t really go wrong. Then I read another that said they absolutely can’t have too little water as that would make them taste bad, or too much water as that will make te leaves grow too much. Maybe that’s what happened? The last article also said that it only takes 25 days for a seed to grow into a fully grown radish. Mine have been growing for 35! =/

The basil is growing verrrry slowly! I don’t know what I’ve done. I’m not supposed to do anything with it until it’s 10 cm but I think they’re barely 1 😦 They seem fine otherwise, though.

Tiny basil and thin radishes still in their little box.

The weather hasn’t been great lately, maybe that’s why everything is going slowly. The sunflowers are slowly growing too, but they look very nice.

I was recently in the tiny country of Liechentstein, and bought a little pot of edelweiss. I feel that these ready-to-grow pots often don’t work but I’m giving it a try again 🙂

Sunflowers

Edelweiss, edelweiss, will you ever greet me?

 

While I’m waiting for everything to grow, it’s nice to have some plants who are already there. The newest addition to this home is a little olive tree! I’m convinced they’re hard to keep though, at least with the climate up here but it lives indoors, on a chair, looking out at the sun, so I’m hoping it’ll stay for a while.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Early spring

The birds around me hopp’d and play’d,
Their thoughts I cannot measure –
But the least motion which they made
It seem’d a thrill of pleasure.

– William Wordsworth

A bird couple decided to build their nest above my veranda. Maybe my veranda gardening will be accompagnied by baby bird song eventually?

I get the morning sun on my veranda on the back of the house, and the afternoon sun at the front of the house. I planted two sunflowers two weeks ago and last week I put one of them on either side of the house. However, the one in the afternoon sun grew weaker than the other, so I had to move it.

Left: happy sunflower
Right: soon-as-happy sunflower

I planted some new seeds among the (one week) older seeds last week and now I don’t remember what sort of seeds I planted! Ooops.

Oops.

I gave up on the thyme. The other plants though are growing well. I still take them in at night as the Norwegian weather is not yet warm enough for them.

Radish – 2 weeks + flowers from the stores 🙂

Flowers 2 weeks + flowers 1 week

 

Here comes the sun

“Growth of the soil was something different, a thing to be procured at any cost; the only source, the origin of all. A dull and desolate existence? Nay, least of all. A man had everything; his powers above, his dreams, his loves, his wealth of superstition.”

From Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun

Every winter I dream about the great vegetable and herb garden I’m going to make in the spring, and usually every spring I fail. By documenting my little garden work on here I’m hoping this will encourage me not to give up this year!

The soil in my so-called garden is mostly just clay. The only plants that will grow there are dandelions, and this huge ugly plant that I can’t seem to get rid of no matter what I do to it. So I decided I need to lower my expectations. In stead of choosing plants that need a proper garden to grow in, this year I chose plants that I can keep in pots. Mostly, anyway.

I had some seeds from last year, for various flowers and for thyme. Then I got seeds for radishes, sunflowers, and basil from the store. A week ago today, I planted some of each kind. The thyme seeds don’t seem to live anymore, probably because I kept the pack of seeds in the window in direct sunlight for a year or more… And the flowers I planted I forgot outdoors when it still was too cold at night, so most of them haven’t showed either.

Looks like it was only warm/sunny enough in one tiny corner of the pot of flowers I forgot outside.

Sprouts

Sunflower – 1 week

Basil – a little slower. 1 week.

Radish – 1 week