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

Hi everyone,
It has been hard to keep the posts coming when there is so much to do in the summer! I found it much easier to post when I was trapped indoors just wishing it was summer. 🙂

That being said, I have started my indoor garden 2.0!

This garden contains things that I know will grow well indoors. These plants will be ready to harvest right around Christmas time or a little after. Once these plants are harvested I will plant starter seeds for the outdoor garden. (I am just starting to get a good harvest from the outdoor garden.)

I have planted Basil, Cilantro, Short Carrots, Yellow Globe Onions, Broccoli, and I will plant tomatoes as soon as I find a suitable variety. I am looking for a short bushy determinate plant!

I used old cardboard boxes, taped all over, and lined with garbage bags because I could not find a good size any where to buy. My original idea being to use window boxes. I am hoping to get one season out of them and also hoping that they don’t rot or melt before I harvest!!

Here are the harvest times for all of the above:
Basil (it’s still going from last winter so that’s up)
Cilantro 30 days
Carrots 68 days
Onions – says transplant at 8-10 weeks, so maybe 90+ days to full globe
Broccoli 48-85 days

I have found that it takes longer with artificial light to harvest. So we’ll see!

Hi everyone!

Today I planted the seeds in the outdoor garden. I put in broccoli, carrots, zucchini, cilantro and basil. I bordered the sides with cosmos, and made areas for the small plants of broccoli, onions, bell and jalapeno peppers, and tomatoes to go once they are properly hardened.

I have the baby plants up to 8-10 hours of outside time per day. So I am just bringing them in at night now. When I know that I have a good few days of mild weather I will transplant them. Right now we are expecting a storm tomorrow and one next week. So maybe after the storm next week. I just want them to have a few days of over night weather to get settled. If a storm did come I could just cover them with laundry baskets and boxes.

I will be putting the planting date and the harvest date on the Scheduler-Calendar page as well. All my planting and harvesting dates are listed there. According to the packets I should be able to start harvesting most of the garden in mid-July.

Thanks for stopping by!!

~Sara

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.

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.

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!