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

The indoor garden is very happy, although not producing much of a harvest.

Here is a pic of the Onions, Brocolli, Basil and Cilantro. The Onions and Brocolli were started on September 1st, and have had 14-16 hours of daylight bulbs every single day inches from foliage, plenty of water and no issues or problems. (aside from never producing a flower or bulb….)

The Basil and Cilantro were planted almost a month ago and are doing very well. I even harvested some basil to put in my curry last week and it was delightful! I need to get some tomatoes from the store because I have plenty of Cilantro for a nice batch or two of home made salsa/pico.

Based on this years more expert care, and still it’s inability to produce anything worth while before Spring I am going to limit my indoor garden next year to just herbs and seed starting. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by!

Sara Murray

I have to make room to start my seeds indoors, so I have decided to harvest my carrots. These carrots were started on September 1st 2010! I can’t believe it’s been that long. That’s about 200 days. That is a very long time to not have full grown carrots at harvest time.

These carrots got 14-16 hours of daylight bulbs within inches of green foliage every single day, plenty of water, and had no issues or pests. They were developed under the best circumstances and still the largest ones are only about two inches long, and most never made it beyond the starter stage although the foliage was abundant and tall.

Needless to say, there will be no carrots in my indoor garden next winter!

Here’s a pic:

Thanks for stopping by!

-Sara Murray

Hello fellow gardeners!

I haven’t been around in a bit, but I am ready to dig back in and get started!

For this first (gardening) post back I will show you my indoor garden that is thriving this year!

Here’s a picture:

In the top left you can see the carrots. Some of them are just about ready. They are the long thin Danvers variety. I tried a few types in the garden last season and these are the best growers so I decided to see if I could get them to grow over the winter. They’d better hurry up though because I need the space and the light for some seeds starting in February!

On the bottom left you can see my herb garden. I recently restarted it. It was getting over grown and got destroyed by some spider mites before I realized what was going on. I have new Sweet Basil and Cilantro seeds/seedlings in there.

On the top right I am wintering over my red Geraniums. Two of which fell victim to the spider mites before I had a chance to stop it. They are doing great though. I don’t water them very often and they seem to like that for wintering over.

On the bottom right (in back) I have some thriving Broccoli, which also had better hurry up and get some heads going! The plants them selves are doing great, so any time now!

On the bottom in front I have yellow onions. These guys need a lot of sunlight so I will probably not do them again over the winter. They are doing just great, just going very slowly and I have a feeling the layers are going to be quite thin because they need the sunlight to get them pumped up.

The dead thing in the front was a really nice Petunia which was on it’s second life with seeds from the original plant! It got taken over by the Spider Mites like crazy. I have a feeling that either the Basil or the Petunia was the origin of the infestation.

Notes: There are several safe controls for spider mites and other bugs for indoor gardens out there in the garden centers. Look for ones especially for vegetables and edible plants. They are the safest.

Look at the calendar for the seed planting and starting and other important dates!

Thanks for stopping by,

Sara Murray

My indoor tomatoes have fruit on them!

I had to pollinate them myself when they had blossoms. I have never done this before but I must have done it right because the tomatoes came. 🙂 I did it with a spoon so I could catch the pollen and redistribute it to the other blossoms without dropping it.

I have three tomatoes and as soon as these babies can be eaten I am going to take pictures, eat them, and then get rid of these HUGE monster tomato plants.I think they would be up to about 5 feet tall if they weren’t falling all over themselves.

(I learned the hard way that the smaller the tomato the taller/larger the plant, most of the time.)

I will keep you posted!

Thanks for stopping by ~ Sara

I finally got my tomatoes to blossom indoors!

Now for some pollination. I may have missed the boat on a few flowers which have already closed, but I have hopefully pollinated the rest. My pollinator of choice: a spoon. Lots of people use a tooth pick or similar point structure. I prefer a spoon so I can see and catch the pollen and make sure it sticks to the stamens to transfer it! 🙂

Happy pollinating!

Maybe next year I will just put my seed starting shelf right in my green house. Never mind that I will have to shovel feet of snow to get to it!!!

Thanks for stopping by!

~Sara

Hi everyone!

I have an updated picture of the indoor garden for you! It is growing like mad, and it’s so neat to have a bit of summer right in my dining room.

The giant monster tomato plants (started Feb 1st) that are actually pretty normal size are on the far left. On the very top of the shelf is the potter that has the cilantro and basil (started Feb 1st) which are still going strong and I have had several small harvests out of!

The next shelf down from L-R are seedlings (started March 27th) of jalapenos, alyssum, petunias (regular ones that are still hard to germinate and extremely small and slow growing so far), bell peppers, broccoli, and large yellow onions.

Next shelf down are seedlings of alyssum, carrots, and 3 different varieties of tomato plants.

(The alyssum was started some time at the end of March.)

Everything that you see besides the large tomato plants and the cilantro and basil at the top will be transplanted some time around May 20, which is our frost-safe date according to the farmer’s almanac!

In a few weeks I will do another short video before I do the transplant so you can see how big they get before I transplant them.

Thanks for stopping by!

~Sara

Hi everyone!

I have an updated picture of the Alyssum that I planted <>. These are some slow growing plants!!! I think I need to do some research to make sure they are getting everything they need to grow.

I will keep you updated, thanks for stopping by!

Sara

Well, in my effort to take tomatoes from seed to table 100% indoors I have created some monster tomato plants! Very tall, about 90% healthy, but no flowers to speak of…yet. Check it out:

These babies (there are 4 large  and one small one that took longer to germinate than the rest) are over 2.5 feet tall. I am not sure if they just seem larger because they are inside rather than out, but they sure are HUGE in my little dining room!

I have been gradually increasing the amount (time) of light they get in a day in an effort to get them to flower, and tonight I will be employing the use of my timer to get them on a consistent schedule. I checked the seed packet and it was not very helpful at all in telling me how tall these plants would be or if they were indeterminate (keep growing taller and have flowers throughout the plant) or determinate (form flowers at the top and stop growing). They seem to have a more condensed cluster at the top of the plant and have slowed down in growth a lot the last few days, so I am going to go with they are determinate plants.

Some valuable information that I got here (University of Ill. Extension) about the salad varieties does point to them having a longer time to flower/harvest than larger more typical types of tomatoes:

Super Sweet 100 (70 days to harvest; 1 inch; red, cherry-sized fruit in large clusters; indeterminate; resistant to VF)

Sweet Million (65 days; 1 inch; red, sweet, crack resistant; large clusters; indeterminate; resistant to FNT)

Yellow Pear (OP) (70 days; 1 inch; clusters of yellow, pear-shaped fruit; indeterminate)

Large Red Cherry (OP) (70 days; 1-1/2 inch; solid, deep red, tasty fruit; indeterminate)

Mountain Belle (65 days; 1 1/4 inch; red, crack resistant, ripens uniformly and holds on the vine; determinate; resistant to VF)

I don’t know what variety(s) I have. The packet just says “Salad Mix.” It looks like I could even have a mix of determinate and indeterminate tomatoes! I chose the salad variety to try out first because with the fruit being smaller I thought maybe the overall plant would be smaller as well. But it turns out that the plants are taller and take longer to fruit than other varieties! Go figure!

So, I am now going to increase their light to 18 hours+ and see if they flower! (Cross your fingers). For my next indoor tomato experiment I will be hunting for a small condensed determinate plant of some sort!!!!

Thanks for stopping by!

~Sara Murray

So, I have discovered that tomatoes need a lot of light. Mature plants need more light especially if they are going to flower/fruit soon. So I am increasing the light on my mature plants to 18-20 hours per day. That should get them to flower/fruit. 🙂

The seeds and seedlings that I have started for outdoor transplanting will still have 12-16 hours of light until they are larger.

I am also going to fertilize the mature tomatoes for 2 weeks when I water them. That should give them enough nutrients to flower.

I will keep you up dated on their progress!.

So, the indoor garden plants are getting very big now!

The tomato plants now have a regular support cage around them and are about 2+ feet tall. I am wondering when they will flower!

The Cilantro continues to be prolific and I use it often in salads, breads and salsa.

The Basil is also getting rather tall. One plant in particular is about a foot tall and towers above the rest of the Basil forest. I am wondering if my pruning is causing this growth? It sure is delicious though! I love to just run my hand over it and smell the sweet Basil smell. MMMmmmm…

Here is a picture of the new set-up now that I have my seed flats started for spring planting.

Thanks for stopping by!