Citrus in the house

My daughter liked my post last night, I'm thinking maybe because it was instructional and based on my experience.  So I decided that I would post again about my lessons learned in growing stuff in the house in winter.  This time: citrus.  I love citrus trees - especially the smell of the blossoms.  It reminds me of Florida when the orange trees are blooming.  You can smell the scent as you zoom by in your car, and it makes you want to slow down.  Seriously, it's better than smelling the roses.

So a couple of years ago I bought a Rangpur lime.  I read about this variety in some magazine I picked up at the Los Angeles airport, and I thought it sounded lovely.  A lime with a citrus note - and it turns orange when it ripens!  How cool is that?  I love limes in seltzer water, and just squeezed over a salad as dressing so I ordered it.  I got it in spring and kept it outside through early fall.  Sure enough, it's a gem:

But the first winter I had it something strange happened.  It started to get a shiny, sticky mess on its leaves, and this sticky substance was on everything around the plant, not just the plant itself.  And it got spider mites too.  I sprayed with soapy water, and took a soapy sponge to the leaves which seemed to get rid of the spider mites but not the sticky shiny stuff.  It came back worse than ever.  The tree was obviously in distress, with yellow leaves and a sickly look.  I took it outside as early in the spring as possible - actually too soon, I had to carry it into the garage a few nights when frost was in the forecast.  But it made it, and the season outdoors seemed to help.  Last winter I sprayed it with with water twice a week and it really helped.  The spider mites and sticky stuff came back,  but just a little, at the end of the winter, and I put it out early again figuring I just needed to spray it more.

Here's a picture of the lime cut open (isn't it pretty?):

This spring my mom bought us a Meyer lemon.  It came to us looking absolutely beautiful!  It was tall and full, and during the summer it developed a large number of baby lemons.  When we brought it in, in the fall, I was expecting a bounty of lemons (15 to be exact).  I thought I had learned my lesson so I sprayed it with water and even got a humidifier.  The tree got a few spider mites but the stickiness developed all over the plant - pretty much every leaf!  I was losing lemons like crazy - they just fell off the plant.  I really didn't know what to do.  One night our neighbor (who also has a Meyer lemon) was over and said we had scale.  I had thought the stickiness was something to do with the spider mites, but it they're separate problems.  Her remedy is wiping off the scale using a cloth soaked in alcohol.  This works!

I sat for over an hour rubbing each branch and leaf with alcohol soaked cloths - it was time consuming but it really helped.  I will probably have to do this again before spring, but the tree is so much healthier and happier and there is almost no scale left!  And the lemons that were left on the tree are not dropping off now.  I expect to have at least a few of the lemons mature and ripen.  Here is a picture of the tree:

An aside: I have to warn you - be careful of what alcohol you use.  Not because it matters to the tree, instead it might matter to your significant other.  The day I decided to do this it was snowing outside, and I was NOT going out in the snow.  I couldn't find our rubbing alcohol but I found a bottle of Absolute vodka in the pantry.  I used that.  Seriously, it was almost empty.  And it's really more for guests, we usually don't drink hard alcohol.  The bottle was at least a year old!  OK, you get the picture...just be mindful about your choice of citrus cures and choose your "rubbing" alcohol wisely.  :-) 

More on Growing Food in the Basement in Winter

A friend and colleague of mine asked today about how he could start growing spinach in his basement in winter.  I've never grown spinach in the winter, as mentioned earlier only lettuce and arugula, but this is for you Scott...a primer on growing winter greens in the basement.

First, my basement is not heated.  This is important because if it's heated like the rest of the house I think it would be more difficult to grow those cool weather crops like spinach, lettuce and arugula.  Second, I have a separate room that is dedicated as my grow room - it has a table for potting and repotting, a re-purposed night stand for seed catalogs, gardening journals, etc., a rod on which to hang herbs and garlic, and most importantly my grow light stands.  I have two of them - one is a two tiered stand and one is a three tiered stand.  In the winter it is usually only two of the shelves that are being used, but all 5 will be in use by the time we're ready for spring planting.  As I mentioned before, you can start your winter basement garden far more cheaply by simply buying a shop light and replacing standard fluorescent bulbs with grow bulbs.  Start small and cheap unless you know you are committed to serious growing.

Here is a photo of my grow room, the three shelf grow light is on the wall to the left of the photo and thus not shown.  Notice it has decorations and a place to sit - if you have a room to dedicate to growing, planting and food storage you should make it comfortable, so you want to spend time there!

Once you have your planting space, get your seeds and a good organic seed starting mix.  I use the seed starting mix from Gardener's Supply but that's just my personal choice.  You should start seeds in little bitty pots - I used to use recycled yogurt containers with holes punched in the bottom, but broke down and got seed starter flats (it saves space).  I cut them into sections to make them easier to work with and I wash and re-use these every year.  Here's a picture to give you an idea.  Plant according to the instructions - usually the seeds are covered with 1/8 - 1/4 inch of soil, and I usually put in 2-5 seeds per pot/cell depending on viability of the seed.

After you have the seeds in the soil, just put them in the tray (the shelves are actually trays in my set-up but if you make your own shelf, the seed starting flats come with trays) and spritz them with water to moisten the top of the soil.  Then put water in the tray.  I water from the bottom rather than the top because I found it didn't make any difference in the growth of the plants (I experimented) and it's WAY easier!  All you have to do is water the tray and all the plants in the tray get watered, far faster than watering each plant.  The plants need about 14 - 16 hours of light a day, so make it a routine to turn them on when you get up in the morning and turn them off when you go to bed at night.

Once you have sprouts thin them so you have one plant per cell/tiny pot.  Sometimes I miss one and end up with 2 in a cell...it's not the end of the world, but if you don't thin you won't have nice size plants later.  After the plants have grown just a bit more (give them a chance to get over the loss of their siblings and get their "true" leaves) transplant them to larger pots.  I recycle pots that I get from friends.  Again, one or two plants per pot, unless it's a really large pot.  Here is an example: this is baby arugula in different size pots.  You can see that some are single plants, but in the larger pot I put 3...there seemed to be enough room.

That's all there is to it!  It's extremely easy.

One last thing - when I cut the leaves I always thank the plants that are giving me the food.  (I also wish them good morning and good night - but that's just because I'm weird.)  :-)  Happy gardening and good luck!

My (Soon to be) Famous Daughter

I am so proud of my daughter - she took after her momma and started growing her own food, attempting self sufficient living.  And she started a well-followed blog quite a while ago.  And NOW she will be on TV!  How wonderful is that?  The local channel in Tampa (NBC Channel 8) will have a feature on her and her gardening/chicken raising.  It should air on March 1st.  She's a smart, outgoing, wonderful young woman and I can't wait to see the feature.

You can go to her blog to hear what she had to say about the whole adventure: http://organic-gardening-adventures.blogspot.com/

Garden Planning

So this weekend was so busy that I just didn't get a chance to blog.  Saturday was a mild 45F and so we took the opportunity to turn the compost and cut down the plants that still needed to be cleaned up for spring.  It was so nice to be outside.  But the most garden work actually came on Sunday - inside the house.  It was garden planning day.

When planning the garden I need to visualize the garden beds, and for some unknown reason I need that visual to be to scale.  Why?  I don't know.  But those tiny little books, the apps, the websites...don't work.  I need to spread it out in front of me, large enough to make sense, and for me to write in the names of the veggies I will plant and how many.  So I have created two drawings of our two main vegetable gardens, with each one square inch representing 1 square foot. 

Here are my drawings:

I used these last year and wanted to re-use them this year, so we sat and went over the grid lines in permanent fine tip marker.  The paths are clearly laid out as you can see. 

Here are the garden beds - the main garden in the front, the garage garden behind, what else, the garage:

We have about 185 square feet of planting space in these two gardens and a major part of this whole process is figuring out what veggies can be planted near the others and which cannot.  For example, onions don't like legumes, so I have to make sure that I don't plant them where I had beans or peas last year, and that I don't plant beans or peas near them this year.  For this process I use The Vegetable Gardner's Bible - Smith is very clear about what veggies are good companions for each other and which are not. 

I was up until midnight last night doing this planning - spreading out my seed packets, looking up companions, and filling in the garden squares.  The crazy thing is that I'll probably revisit the plan a number of times this week, "just making sure". 

Seeds Delivered

So I got the seeds I ordered already this week - now it's just a waiting game for the first planting session.  That will come later this month.

The seeds I needed to order this year were:
From Territorial:

• Nasturtiums (Jewel mix & Tip Top Alaska) - nasturtium flowers are beautiful in salads and on cheese trays - with a spicy/sweet flavor, and we love the leaves for everything from salads to soups (we freeze them for winter - no blanching!) to turkey burger toppings.
• Parsley (Italian flat leaf) - great for fines herbes pesto and pesto provencal.
• Peas (Serge & Dakota) - both new types, I have some of last year's types still so I will interplant.
• Bush beans (Maxibel & Soleil) - these are both french filet beans or haricots verts, and they are so productive in my garden it's not even funny!  Last year I planted 28 square feet of filet beans and got over 19 pounds of beans.  Perfect for both fresh eating and blanching and freezing for the winter.  I planted green, yellow and purple but the green and yellow were most productive, so this year only green and yellow will be planted.  The purple ones turn green when cooked anyway, so they're only really interesting when served raw.

From Baker Creek:

• Cauliflower (Purple of Sicily) - I've never grown cauliflower before, so we'll see how this goes.  I didn't want to bother with pulling the leaves over the head to blanch it, so a purple type seemed like a logical solution - plus it looked pretty.  Really.  It's like when I first started buying wine...that label looks nice...ha!  We'll see how it goes.
• Eggplant (Diamond & Japanese pickling) - another crop I haven't tried to grow yet, but my mom was up last summer and bought an eggplant from the farmer's market (much to my chagrin since I pride myself in not purchasing veggies), and she cooked it for us, and I liked it.  So, in case mom comes up again this summer, we'll have it in the garden and not have to buy it.
• Arugula (Domestic & Wild Rocket) - what can I say, I absolutely love arugula.  Give me wine, cheese, and arugula and I could probably survive on a desert island.
• Summer squash (Cocozella zucchini & Golden Crookneck) - I probably didn't need these seeds, I have other varieties of summer squash seeds, but last year was a horrible squash year for me, so I guess I'm compensating.  This year I won't plant the squash in containers, it was a total disaster.
• Tomato (Amana Orange) - I've been planting this tomato since our very first garden in this house and it does great.  I was out of seeds. 
• Basil (Emily) - I have Thai purple and Lettuce Leaf, thought this would be a nice addition.
• Dill (Bouquet & Elephant) - I use so much dill (I love cucumber pickles, pickled beans, pickled carrots, pickled squash, pickled green tomatoes...) that I needed to replenish.

So that's it with the seed purchases this year.  If all goes well, it will mean that I will have spent around $80 (this includes the $30 for onion sets + shipping on all this stuff) total for all of my produce in 2012.  All of it.  And it will be grown organically - no pesticides, herbicides, fungicides...no purchased fertilizers.  The only additional expense is the seed starting mix and the organic potting soil I need to use to start the seeds and transplant them into larger (recycled) pots before they go into the garden.

Stopping and listening

Today as I was leaving work I was struck by what I consider one of the most beautiful sights and sounds of winter.  I was a bit rushed, and on my way to my car, when, overhead, I heard the geese.  There were at least a hundred, flying and calling to each other.  The voices of the geese as they call back and forth to one another is haunting, and when you look up and see the ribbons of graceful birds against the clouds it is breathtaking.  It touches some primordial place in my brain every time I hear and see them in such majestic numbers - and no matter how much of a rush I'm in...I stop.  And listen.  And smile.

Winter salad

Because I grew up in Southern California and the West Coast of Florida, to me "a vegetable side dish" means salad.  This is very different, I have learned, from what many mid-westerner's think of as a veggie side.  It's not that I don't eat cooked veggies - in winter we have to.  All of our garden veggies are frozen and waiting to be cooked into some sort of wonderful dish with herbs and garlic.  But I still crave the salads.  That's why I grow the lettuce and arugula in the basement and the sprouts in the window in our kitchen.  As I was making my salad for dinner tonight it struck me how different my salads are in winter versus the rest of the year...they just lack the color!

Here's a spring salad:

And here's a winter salad (ignore, if you can, the size difference - in summer a salad is really not a side dish but a meal):

I have frozen peas from the spring garden sprinkled over, but there's no color.  So now I'm wondering if I can grow violas under the lights in the winter.  That would make such a cheery change to the winter salads!

I think I'm going to try it.  I've already tried to grow just about every other possible thing in the basement in the winter (think sub-arctic plenty tomatoes, radishes, peas, nasturtiums...all failures), so why not violas?  Time to get the seeds out...