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

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.

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So, the tomato plants have some yellow leaves on the bottom! That are falling off!!!

The health of the over all plant is good though, so not a huge concern. Here is a picture:

If a plant gets sunburned (which it can from indoor lighting as well as very hot direct sunlight) sometimes the first leaves will yellow and fall off. Other leaves with sunburn may show white-ish gray spots. Normally someone living in MN wouldn’t have to worry about sunburned tomatoes at all! Desert climates and summer heat down south can burn plants though.

Here is a picture for you:

It’s just the bottom leaves (the first leaves) that have an issue. The rest are green and healthy. 🙂

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My tomatoes are outgrowing their spot on the shelf:

So I had to move them to a new place! I am scared to put them on the ground because I have 3 cats who would probably love to dig in the dirt they are planted in and see how they taste just for the fun of it!

So now, they are living on a little plant stand next to the shelf and have plenty of room to grow upward, for now. 🙂

Here they will stay until they are too tall to get good light on them from above. Then I will have to figure something else out!

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So, as most of you know, I started some Alyssum seeds a few weeks ago. I have a picture in that post of when the seeds emerged. Here is the latest pic. About a week after they emerged. They don’t have 2nd leaves yet, but in a few days I bet they will.

here is a picture of the 2 Sunshine Petunias that I got to germinate. I honestly don’t think there were any other seeds in the packet, but oh well! If these live I will be shocked!

I promised you all a picture of my tomatoes after I staked them, so here it is:

As you can see, you don’t need anything fancy when the tomatoes are this small! I have used 3 chopsticks, and 2 cooking skewers and some (not so sticky) tape. You don’t have to invest in stakes and green tape. At least not at this stage. You can use things that you have around the house.

Make sure that you tape them loosely, they need to continue to grow. Make sure that the stakes are taller than the plant when they are firmly placed into the soil next to them. Be very gentle when you place the stakes into the soil, and don’t place them right next to the base of the plant. This can destroy a tender root system. You can see from the picture that I have placed my stakes about 1 inch from the base of each plant.

Happy gardening!!!

Well, the tangerine tree is totally against all this care and change that has come to its home recently! It was thriving just sitting by the window, I would forget to water it, I certainly was not fertilizing it, and all it had for light was indirect, winter light deflecting from the yard which is over 20 feet away. The leaves were green, the stem was hard and it was very happy!

Since I changed the indoor setup to be that of the indoor garden (for veggies) it has dropped 2 leaved which yellowed, weakened and fell off! So, no more water, no more extra light, no more liquid fertilizer for that one!

I have moved it to a place (on the top shelf for now) where it only gets natural light and I will not be watering it as often, and I will just be using plain water, and fertilizing only about 1 time per month.

Hopefully this will stop the leaf shedding!!

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!)

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

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.