more of a dreamer

Ever since I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I’ve been more interested in this idea of being self sufficient. It’s a bit of a hard thing to do living in a flat but I can dream.

My mom always grew tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and squash in our backyard.

Dreaming of my own small vegetable garden and a small brood of hens is not that unrealistic. It will be a lot of work. But considering the kind of chemicals they spray on the fruits and veggies, not to mention prices and places they’re shipping my vegetables from, I think it would be worth it. Fredrik says that it sounds like a great idea.

I got myself a copy of The NEW Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency that will hopefully be able to guide me towards my dreams of being more self sufficient.

A vine ripen tomato is WAY more tasty than any tomato that has to make a truck journey from the vine to my kitchen.

mmm… flowers…

After our wedding lunch/dinner, Fredrik and I hung out at his aunt’s place with the family. That’s were I tried viola ice cream.

I’ve always known that pansies were edible but I’ve never tried eating it.

Here in Sweden, they make it into ice cream. I’m assuming they use the purple ones ’cause the ice cream is a nice lavender colour.

It’s quite good. Kind of reminds me of taro ice cream only not as… fragrant. (Don’t really know how to explain it in English but the term is fragrant in Chinese.)

BONSAI!

Here’s my lovely little olive tree “bonsai”.

Here’s hoping that it’ll be ok while I’m off in Canada.

they weren’t kidding

I’ve noticed lately that I’m becoming more and more like my mom.

Today I was at the grocery store getting soil to repot my jade plants when I started looking at the other plants and I started to feel a need to get more plants around the flat. So I headed to the plant store and I realized that I was squealing in delight on the inside seeing all the flowers and plants.

My mom is an avid gardener. One of our favourite things to do together in spring is go shopping for flowers. Despite having already a rather impressive garden and a wide assortment of indoor plants, she still needs more.

I came home with a wee olive tree that I plan on keeping like a bonsai. I’d love to have a little garden but that’ll have to wait.

new plant

It’s not exactly THAT new. I got it last week when I went to the IKEA at Kungens Kurva. I think it’s a jade plant but as you can see the leaves are not entirely green. I think it might be a different variety of the jade plants I have already at home. I know that it is a succulent. 1 pot yielded 6 plants which I planted in a row in the garden box.

smart little cat

I got this nifty little sprout growing device from Bauhaus today.

Yes, there is a store called Bauhaus. In fact, it is a hardware store, a hardware store that is more like Home Depot. Pretty cool name.

Anyways.

So I got this nifty sprout growing device. You spread the seeds out on to this meshy tray and put water in the tray underneath. Ull watched me do all this. I went to put the tray away and I heard him playing with the additional seed packages. I thought he was just pushing it around and what not but when I went to check what he was up to, I found 1 package missing. I turn around to find him sitting by his water bowl pushing something around. Apparently he decided that he was going to replicate what I was doing. Pretty smart kitty.

Unfortunately he punctured the package and the seeds got wet so I had to add them to the seeds I already had in the tray. But still, it was pretty cool. I wonder what he was thinking. Maybe he thought he can grow some meat.

Update: Fungus Gnats

When Fredrik was home, we went to a gardening centre/store to get something to deal with the fungus gnats that was causing havoc in our flat. We got some yellow sticky traps. The flies are apparently drawn to yellow. We also got some biologically friendly spray that is supposed to kill the adults and the larvae. After a couple of thorough sprays into the soil of the jade plants and having a sticky trap set up in the pot of the largest jade plant; I am happy to announce that the menace is no longer. It was a bit of a surprise the other day when one landed on my arm.

Now my biggest concern is our largest jade plant. I hope that the larvae that once thrived in the soil did not cause too much damage to its roots. It was kind of tipsy inside the pot and I don’t want it to die. I wish summer would come soon so I can put it outside to get some proper sunlight. Jade plants love the sun. They grow so quickly in the summer when I put them outside. It doesn’t help much that winters in Sweden get so very dark and has so little amount of light.

Plantagen (a chain of garden centres here in Sweden) has a sale on indoor plants. I would like to get some more plants. The problem we have is the lack of space to put them. There was a jade plant at IKEA that I nearly bought. I think it’s a specie of jade plant. It had purple-y leaves and looked rather nice. But I decided against buying it at the time because we still had the gnat problem. Now that the gnats are gone, I think I will get myself a pot the next time I go to IKEA.

stupid flies

My largest jade plant is infested with fungus gnats. They’re these little black flies that are not too bright. For those of you who grow plants indoors will know about these stupid little black flies.

Anyways. So my largest jade plant is infested with these stupid bugs and they’re driving me quite mad. I’ve sprayed the soil 3 time with a diluted dish soap solution. From what I can see, it’s not in total vain. There are wee white “slivers” in the soil and I’m pretty sure that it’s the gnat larvae. But it doesn’t really solve the problem of the ones that have grown up to become the gnats.

The other day I told my mom about this issue and she gave me a great solution. She told me to get some bug spray. I should put the plant in a big plastic bag and then spray the plant in the plastic bag. Then I tie up the bag for a wee bit to get the last of the annoying buggers. That way the bugs die and I don’t have insecticide all over the place. Mothers are so full of knowledge. She also reassured me that the gnats are rather common in indoor plants.

I think I will do this when Fredrik comes home because our largest jade plant is pretty heavy and it would be easier to do all this with someone to distract Ull. For now, I will just kill as much gnats as I can and just deal with them when they fly into my eyes or up my nose.

Japanese tofu in a tetra pak

I ate the tofu that I bought from the Japanese shop. It tasted… different from what I’m normally used to. Mind you, I also made it different from how my mom made it.

1 carton of tofu, cut up bits of beef, spinach, soy & chicken bouillon

The tofu was really… soy bean tasting. I suppose it takes a little getting used to and I’m sure I could’ve used more seasoning. I suppose the blandness is also due to the fact that I’ve been having curry for the past couple of days.

I planted the chili pepper seeds that have sprouted into my window box. I hope they will grow. I also took out the head of lettuce. It was looking rather spent. I will wait till the pepper plants grow beyond a couple of tiny leaves before I transfer them into real pots.

Tomorrow will be the beginning of a new week. Think I’ll go swimming in the morning. We will see how that goes. I am the DEFINITION of the saying “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

Things around the house.

Today’s plans include the following:

• laundry (doing that already)
• tidying the flat (kind of started)
• picking up some groceries (although that might be held off till tomorrow because no deliveries on Sunday. I need some bread and that comes Monday.)
• knitting (did some already)

I’ve germinated some pepper seeds on Wednesday. Small roots have already sprouted and I’ve planted 4 seeds into a drinking glass. I have no spare pots, so drinking glasses will have to do for now until I go and pick up some pots or another window box.

I was also thinking about taking a trim to my herb garden. I haven’t used much of what I’ve been growing. I think part of me just wanted an herb garden because it’s something to have. But I do appreciate having these plants on hand when I need them.

I intend to grow some more varieties of peppers. I’ve got a couple of chilli peppers in my fridge. Fredrik likes chilli peppers. I don’t use them so much but it’d be nice to have some available straight from the plant.

I’m growing all edible items as organically as I can. I’m not too worried about pests because everything is grown indoors. The only annoying thing about growing stuff indoors are the wee flies that tend hang out by the plants and eventually hang out with you while you’re watching TV.

I’m gonna look into what I can use as a fertilizer. I’m thinking about giving vermicompost a try. I saw Martha do it on TV with David Hyde Pierce. I like the fact that it uses earthworms and I can deal with earthworms. They’re not gross like mealworms.