Yes, it's been a bit quiet in my garden blog for the past year. I wish I could blame it on laziness and injuries, but this time a large contributor was the fact that I moved into the city last winter and therefore can't use my parents garden as frequently as I was used to, anymore. I still managed to drop by about once a week and planted some crops, hoping for at least some yield, but visits are short and my time in the garden not as relaxed as it used to be. Obviously all my windowsills are populated with plants, but the sunny side of the appartment is towards a busy street, which turned out to be a bit of a problem... Anyways, there's something growing in my indoor garden now, that I couldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams would be growing there. Let's have a look, shall we?
My new 'garden'.
Earlier this year...
Before getting to the latest stuff, let's see what happened before my move.
In all these years of gardening I've been heavily focused on summer crops. Occasionally I tried some winter lettuce with very little success, so I mostly neglected this time of the year.
Two years ago, while buying seeds of the Shishito pepper, I stumbled across a broccoli variety that caught my interest. Contrary to the regular broccoli it does not produce a single, massive flower that is very subsceptible to mould, but many small flowers over a longer period. But most importantly, it does not produce flowers before a period of cold temperatures.
According to the instructions, it's supposed to be sown in June to July, but he who did not pay much attention to instructions decided to sow them in early spring, together with peppers and tomatoes. That was in 2023.
The plants quickly grew tall enough to bend over under their own weight, so I decided to sow another two batches according to the suggested months, before it was time to
relax and wait for the next year.
Every visit at my parents house I went outside to check the plants and in February it was finally time for some winter harvesting:
Sown during summertime, this plant produced only a small number of flowers and only a single harvest.
Sown in early spring, this plant produced a lot of sideshoots and kept pumping out flowers all spring long.
Yummy greens from my own garden in April.
Parallel to the broccoli harvests my green asparagus started sprouting, which brought a nice mix to the table. Beeing a bit surprised about what the garden can offer in the cold time of the year, I decided to step up my winter game and bought seeds for leek and cabbage, hoping for some good old German Sauerkraut.
I also left some of the broccoli plants to flower, so that I can harvest some seeds for the next season, which took until late July to fully ripen and therefore way too long for this years' planting. One thing I also noticed with raddish already is the fact that these types of plants seem to have a really hard time producing proper seeds. Most of the pods are empty or infested with bugs.
They legalized it!
Speaking about broccoli:
You might have heard it in the news - on April Fools' day the German government legalized the possesion and cultivation of cannabis.
Granted it's only a partial legalization and most states and even the highest courts implemented ridiculous and highly questionable punishments for the slightest misshaps, but we probably still ended up with a fairly liberal cannabis law compared to the rest of the world.
Personally I had very little contact with cannabis before, but it always intrigued me and beeing a passionate gardener, it was kinda obvious for me to give this mysterious plant a try.
As I'm not a fan of substances that make one lazy and sluggish, my first intention was to look for the most sativa heavy strains possible, which are supposedly more uplifting and motivating in nature. The moment the law was passed I ordered 'Haze Berry Auto', 'Royal THCV' and 'Durban Poison Auto' seeds for my first grow. Sadly I had to learn that the latter was discontinued and I had to go for the 'Desfrán Auto' instead.
I did not feel the need to hurry for all the hardware you need to grow indoor cannabis and by the time it was time for proper lights and growboxes and stuff, most of it was out of stock in literally every growshop throughout Europe.
Anyways, the first plants grew quickly and while the Haze Berry is jared and the Desfrán hung to dry, you can check how my first cannabis plants performed:
The Royal THCV plant was growing at a sunny window at first, but quickly showed signs of discontent. At first it did a weird loop before struggeling for light, so I had to move it to a different spot. During transportation I managed to toss the whole plant over, nearly decapitating it in the process. Beeing such an expensive plant, I was quite frustated at first, but little did I know how sturdy cannabis plants are - and after a few weeks the roots almost exploded the pot!
Looping cannabis plant.
A little accident almost killed the plant...
...but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger!
Closup of the finished 'Haze Berry' plant
Doing some bonsai moves on the 'Desfrán' to keep the plant compact. None of my autoflowers exceeded 30cm of plant hight, so this is mainly to get more light to the lower parts of the plant.
The first 'Haze Berry' harvest yielded around 16gr. of flowers, which is way less than expected. With autoflowers you really have to watch out for perfect conditions, as the short lifecycle will not forgive any circumstance that holds the plant back. I've seen youtube videos of people harvesting 100-150gr. from a single autoflower, which seems almost fishy to me, but as soon as I have some room for another autoflower, I will do a test in hopefully perfect conditions to see what is possible.
But as we are only allowed to have 3 plants and 50gr. of harvest, there's not much reason for me to go for insane yields, anyways. Next step is to send the photoperiodic THCV into flowering, after successfully taking cuttings from it. Stay tuned for that one!
Closer look into the box
How that I have an indoor growbox with high power LED lights, I might as well use the free space between my broccoli plants to grow some remedy for the munchies. As my lettuce seems to fail outdoors every time we get a tiny bit of summer-worthy weather, my next plants will be sitting in between a flowering Royal THCV and a C99 in steady indoor conditions. Right now it seems to be doing fine and if all goes well, you will definitely see it in my next post. At over 26°C, the box might be a bit hot for lettuce, but if it fails again, at least the living pest control seems to like this environment and is exploding with vigor.
Last year I harvested some seeds from my drosera rotundifolia, which requires a period of frost in the winter for the seeds to germinate. I first tried to achieve this in the fridge, but apparently the temperatures are not sufficient. After a month in the freezer, though, a sea of tiny, sticky tentacles appeared in the pot. So far I transplanted six plants in different pots but there's too many to take care of all of em...Unfortunately it seems like I lost most of my 'drosera aliciae' during our move and the seeds I can find do not germinate anymore. To me those would be way more usefull in fighting the fungus gnats, as they do not require a hibernation period.
Drosera rotundifolia growing in my cannabis growbox.
Here's how the mother plants look in our outdoor bog bucket.
While moving into the new appartment I bought another gnat killer, a butterwort. During winter it was stagnating and losing a lot of leaves, but once in the box...
Unknown butterwort variety, clearly beeing an effective predator after enjoying the artificial lighting inside the growbox.
Raised Bed
After getting an idea of my indoor growing activities, it's time to take another glimpse at my old garden.
Last year I had the opportunity to get 2 IBC containers for free, which are now in use to collect rainwater from our roofs. And they had plenty opportunity to do so this spring. With those containers came some bricks that were used to elevate the tanks. I decided to repurpose those as a small raised bed, to get some use out of our huge lawn area. It's not big, but enough for a tomato and a pepper plant. Free stuff rulez!
The pepper is kinda struggeling for some reason, but the tomato is going absolutely mental. It's located under a lilac bush, not sure if that is protecting it from rain, or preventing the rain from drying off, but time will tell. The lower leaves had some brown parts, so I decided to remove them, revealing a whole lot of healthy fruits.
Raised bed made from leftover hollow bricks.
San Marzano tomato in a raised bed.
This 'San Marzano' Tomato was a lucky find on ebay, after looking for the cheapest offer possible. This variety is considered not to be the most tastefull, but I had some really nice individuals in the past years. Last year was a pretty lousy year for tomatoes, but the plant I took the seeds from was the last one standing before the first frost killed it in November. It has already proven to be a very strong genetic in terms of growth and production, so beeing resistant to brown rot would make this strain a definitive keeper.
Fails
As you can see, there's a lot going on in my gardening departement, even with the unfortunate circumstance of not having easy access to a garden anymore. I'd have tons more to tell you about, but for now I'll leave you with some gardening fails, as not everything is rainbows and glitter, and hopefully you're going to return for my next garden update in which I'll be reviewing a professional aquaponic system by Terra Aquatica, tell you about plant thieves in our neighbourhood and most likely more about my experience with growing cannabis.
First pepper of the year ended up dead by fungus.
Tomatoes 'Tschernij Prince' getting eaten by slugs.
Bag of seeds getting spilled and lost in the lawn.
Don't let the slugs and mosquitos drive you mad and hopefully see you next time!