Sara's Garden MarketSustainable Living, Gardening, Flowers, and Food

So, the only mature cilantro plant I have seen has been staked and had a huge stem and was almost 24″ tall. I had started some seeds a few weeks back thinking that I would have to stake them at some point. I did try to stake them. They unstaked themselves within about 48 hours.

So, here is my note: Cilantro is crazy, it wants to be crazy, it is happy to be crazy. 🙂 I have let mine grow into a huge mess and it is just as happy as can be. I could be controlling and really stake them well and make them grow taller etc… but I like the tender leaves and stems better anyway!!

Here is a picture of my crazy cilantro. This is after the harvest I took to put on the tomato platter I made! You can hardly tell I took anything at all.

I’m not normally a huge Martha Stewart fan, but today I happened to have a free moment and looked at her show which was about greenhouses and begonias! Her greenhouses are just gorgeous of course. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to propagate begonias! Made me want to get some and try it myself for sure!

Here is her greenhouse link: http://www.marthastewart.com/article/marthas-greenhouse

Here is her begonia link: http://www.marthastewart.com/article/begonia

(There are not videos up yet because this just aired today, but there is other reading material there today. Check back tomorrow for a recap video from the show, which I highly recommend!)

Take a look up in the left hand corner of the screen and you will see a tab called “Scheduler.” This is where I am posting my seed starting, emerging and harvesting times so you can see how long everything took/takes. Enjoy!

(the calendar that you see on the left side of the screen is just a calendar of posts.)

So, when I first started some seeds indoors I did not realize that I would need artificial light in order for the plants to thrive. I put them by a sunny window in March and some plants did not do so well. Mostly the issue was that they were very tall. Some to the point of falling over and dying no matter what I did.

For my next attempt (just a few weeks ago) I got myself one of those fancy grow lights. Thinking I had my lighting/tall plant issue solved I started my seeds. Once they were up they were still getting a bit too tall and alos pulling todard the window. If the grow light was enough they shouldn’t be pulling toward an alternate source of light! RIGHT. I needed a full spectrum light source. A grow light doesn’t have that. Strange right? It only has the spectrum for maximum growth.

So, another trip to the store for some shop lights and 100 watt daylight full spectrum bulbs (which are good for humans too) and my seedlings stopped stretching for the window and have stayed happily the right size.

The grow light it on the left, the “daylight” light is on the right.

Here is the package that the daylight light came in.

The day light is much cooler to use that the grow light, I actually have to be careful with the grow light because it gets so hot, but it’s great for getting seeds to germinate!

My success is due to a helpful person on Patti Moreno’s site – in the forums. The forums are great there. The only thing that would make them better is if they had more visitors!! So, go sign up and see what’s going on over there!

http://www.gardengirltv.com

I was just reading my Farmer’s Almanac for this year and found out the meaning behind the term “Victory Garden.”

In 1588 Queen Elizabeth sent riders out into the country side to tell the folks out there to prepare for war. One of the main things that was told to everyone through out the land was to plant extra food in their home gardens because without it they would be going hungry. This is was part of the reason the English were victorious over the Spanish invasion!

Likewise during WW2 the department of agriculture told people to start home gardens (which at that time were few and far between here in the U.S.) to relieve the demand for food in the grocery stores. Many families took this advice and ate better (and a lot healthier) for it!

So, the Victory Garden is just that – a sustainable way for families to maintain themselves during times of war. Thinking about all of the ways this effects the whole country is amazing to me. A war can be won due to sustainable living, in particular – gardening for our selves and not relying on the grocery stores to be there for us.

This is just as true now as it was back then. Gardening this way can conserve energy and also keep us healthier!

Last night with dinner I made a plate of tomatoes with lime juice, salt, pepper and fresh cilantro on top from my indoor garden! Here is a picture:

I see earlier posts for when these seeds were started.

Well, the tomatoes are about 6-8 inches tall now, and they are getting a little wobbly. I will be staking them with chopsticks to start off with. It won’t be too much longer before I will need real garden stakes, and I might need to separate them. We’ll see how unruly they get as they get larger. 🙂

A few more days until I will be eating fresh salsa from my cilantro! It is ready to harvest now, although I could easily let them grow for a few more weeks probably. That’s about one month seed to table for an early tender harvest. If you really want mature plants the thing to do is to stake each one as soon as it has mature leaves out. Mine have all fallen over, but are not dying at all. They are happy falling over and the next leaves that came are pointing up. I prefer the taste of very young leaves as opposed to the greener broader leaves that are on a more mature plant.

I will post pictures later!

Thanks for stopping by.

-Sara

Here is a short tour of my current indoor garden setup.

[flashvideo file=”https://sarasgardenmarket.com/videos/indoorg_tour_large.flv” /]

My seedlings for the Cilantro, Basil and Tomatoes have been up for a few weeks now and doing great! The Cilantro is a bit unruly, so I have it staked with the first thing I grabbed which was a pencil and a paint brush! The tomatoes will need to be separated at some point but they are happy together right now. 🙂

These plants I will be saving indoors for the exclusively indoor garden. Seed to table, to see if I can do it all indoors. This will involve my pollinating the flowers myself, which I’m not sure how to do yet. I’m sure Patti Moreno can show me how!

Thanks for stopping by!

I started some annual flower seeds indoors this week. My daughter, Maddie, helped me plant them. The seeds were so darn small I wasn’t even convinced that we had planted anything at all! But the baby Alyssum is up!

These seedlings are so small and delicate that I am not at all convinced they will live, but if they do we will have some nice ground cover and some for our containers too.

The other half of the flat that you see here has “Sunshine” Petunias in it…maybe… The seeds were so small they just looked like a bunch of sawdust really. I’ll give them another week and if no one comes up I have some regular Petunias I will be starting in there.

Thanks for stopping by!

Sara M