Garden update, May 17th.

Well, it's official, all my plants from this year's garden are out of their seedling stage and into their permanent pots, so I thought I'd snap a few photos this weekend to show everyone how they're coming along. I don't actually have a lot to say, other than I'm pleased with how nice my trailing plants already look when hanging off the tops of my bookshelves; plus you'll undoubtedly notice some mildew on the dirt of some of these pots, which apparently came from adding too much water to the soil before transferring my seedlings, although the internet tells me this will eventually go away and that the mildew isn't actually hurting any of the plants. Other than that it's business as usual around here, so stay tuned in a few more weeks for yet another update!

Garden update, April 21st.

Thought I'd post a small update today about this year's indoor garden, so I could mention that all my trailing plants for my bookshelves are now big enough to transfer to their permanent pots. We'll call these images "before," so make sure to check back in August for the "after" images.

And there's not much else to report as of today, actually, besides that I recently put together my second round of seedings; on the right there are the basil, opal basil, dill and oregano that I planed on April 4th, while on the left are my brand-new plantings of thyme, rosemary, lavender and chamomile. As always, more updates as this spring and summer continue!

Garden 2016 update, April 9th: Ivy by mail, and my first sprouts.

(For all the updates from this year's indoor garden, click the "garden2016" label at the bottom of this post, or just "garden" for everything I've ever written on the subject.)

So, an interesting experience this weekend, as I start up the first early actions of this year's indoor garden; namely, I tried ordering live plants through the mail for the very first time. This is something I've been thinking about doing for years, since of course otherwise you're beholden to whatever plants your local brick-and-mortar store might just happen to choose or not choose to stock; and I have to admit, I'm less than thrilled with the choices I have in brick-and-mortar garden stores here within the large urban confines of Chicago. (My main choices from where I live in Uptown are either Home Depot, which is really hit-and-miss when it comes to the quality and selection of plants they have at any given time; or the usually much-loved Gethsemane in Andersonville, which I myself find so snooty and pretentious that I can barely stand even walking in the front door.) And now that I have an Amazon Prime account which gives me free shipping on all orders, there's really no excuse anymore for me to not try ordering some plants online, other than the worry that such a thing is simply not feasible and that all my plants will arrive dead.

For my first experiment I tried ordering some English ivy, to complement the morning glories and moonflowers that I'll be growing in order to let hang off the tops of my bookshelves and trail down the fronts, something I've tried in previous years which produces a messy, overgrown look I really love. (See the above photo for more, taken during last year's garden.) I ordered from a place called Hirt's Gardens in Ohio, and you can see here at the top of this entry how they arrived three days later -- basically a mixed bag, with some leaves that were browning but also with brand-new healthy growth among other leaves, the planters all taped up to keep the soil in and the whole thing packed tightly with styrofoam peanuts so that there was no shifting or settling during delivery. I repotted them into three medium-sized containers like you're also seeing above, which essentially cost me about four bucks a pot, which is even cheaper than buying them in-person here in Chicago, even if you could find a place that happens to be selling this particular type of plant. It remains to be seen what the long-term health of the plants will be; but for now, I have to say that I'm quite pleased with this first experiment in mail-order plants, and I think I'll be doing a lot more of this as the months and years continue.

And speaking of trailing plants, I'm pleased to say that, a mere five days after planting the seeds, I'm already seeing tremendous sprout growth among my moonflowers and morning glories, as expected since this is what happened last year as well. That's one of the wonderful things about these particular plants, is that they're hearty and grow extremely fast; and since the bigger goal with my decorative plants is the square footage of greenery I get out of them, as opposed to growing something particularly fancy or showy, that makes these particularly great things to grow for the confines of my particular apartment. More updates soon!

Garden 2016 has officially begun!

It's the beginning of April, so you know what that means -- time to start my third year of experimental indoor gardening! This is something I tried literally on just a random whim for the first time in 2014, because I had this new apartment and suddenly had the resources to do so, a new hobby that I quickly discovered was something I really enjoyed; then last year I simultaneously upped my game a bit (by buying grow lights for the first time, and trying out hydroponic salad greens) and had a setback (namely, the overwhelming amount of time that DevBootcamp took up last spring brought a sad early end to last year's garden). So this year I'm looking forward to a really great and productive growing season, hopefully uninterrupted by other concerns in my life, and especially enjoyable this year because I'm now throwing dinner parties on a regular basis, which means there will be other people besides myself to actually appreciate it all.

Like last year, I've made some adjustments to my 2016 plan based on what worked and didn't work in previous iterations of my garden; for this year's plan, that mostly consists of dropping all the stuff that's cheap and easy to buy at the grocery store (like salad greens, onions, peas, etc), and instead devote the preciously small amount of window-sill space I have to the herbs that are ridiculously expensive to buy at the grocery store (like basil, sage and lemongrass, all of which I grew last year as well, plus this year adding oregano, rosemary, thyme, dill, the spicier opal blend of basil, and mint). I'm also mixing up my plans a bit for the decorative plants I'll be growing this year; coleus is out for 2016, cape primrose is in, and I'll be adding the trailing plant oxalis (aka purple shamrock) to the usual moonflowers and morning glories I've grown in previous years, all of which hang off the tops of my bookshelves when mature and give my apartment this great "post-apocalyptic Victorian greenhouse" look by the middle of the summer.

I'm also hoping to pick up some more store-bought shade-friendly plants this year; I still have my snake plant from last year, which is still doing really well, and the succulent jade plant I've been growing for two full seasons, but all my other plants from last year have died by now, so I hope to add some ferns, perhaps a spider plant, and maybe a dracaena or two. And finally, I'm trying something really intriguing this year for the first time, which will either be a huge success or a dismal failure -- I've decided to try growing three palm trees all the way from seeds to their full seven-foot height! The subject is of course more complicated than this, but basically all those palm trees you see being sold for twenty bucks or whatever at Home Depot every spring (usually of the Majestic variety) are bad for indoor growing, which is why they sell for so cheap (I bought two of them two years ago, but then both died ignoble deaths over the winter); so this year I thought I'd buy Kentia palms, which are the ones most recommended for indoor growing and year-around health. The problem, though, is that you can't find any local Kentia palms for sale in the city, and to buy a full-sized one and have it shipped is nearly a thousand dollars; but Kentia seeds are only three bucks apiece, so I thought it would be interesting to make a long-term plan out of it, and see if I can't cultivate several thousand dollars' worth of palm trees using just some time and patience. If it goes well, I should be really rewarded in another three years or so; and in the meanwhile, I thought it'd be a really fun project to track online for all of you who follow along with this blog.

Anyway, as always, more details and updates as this spring continues. Looking forward to another busy and productive growing season!