Indoor Gardening: Part 2

A while ago I wrote about planting a window box of vegetables in my post Indoor Gardening: Part 1.  At the same time I re-potted my Jade plant and potted a new little succulent.  It took me a while to get some good photos of my newly potted plants, due to lack of sunshine and lack of time at home.

This is Jimmy, the gangster plant.  I got him as a gift in the summer of 2010.  This is the only plant I've been able to keep alive this long, so I'm pretty attached to him.  Over the winter he started losing a lot of leaves.  It turns out Jimmy had outgrown his terracotta pot.  I bought this nice blue glazed pot at Home Depot and replanted him in a cactus potting mix.  Since then I've seen a lot of new growth, and Jimmy is doing very well.

I bought this little succulent on my trip to Home Depot.  After planting it in a small green glazed terracotta pot, I noticed some leaves shriveling up and falling off... I was worried my luck with succulents had run out!  Turns out that new clusters of leaves started growing in where the old leaves fell off, just like with my Jade plant.

I also planted Basil seeds in another pot.  The sprouts are doing very well.  I had about a dozen sprouts come up, and I thinned it down to the 4 biggest ones.  Hopefully I will have lots of fresh basil this summer!

I moved the window box to my living room window where it has lots of sunshine.  The bok-choy is doing phenomenal.  I will probably be able to cut off enough leaves to eat in another couple weeks.  The onions are growing very well, but the leaves keep falling over.  I probably need to stake them up for support.  The celery... is not growing as well.  One of the two stalks died a few weeks after planting.  I think I didn't leave it in the water long enough before planting.  I started two more celery bases (because I had them, and I might as well!)  This time I let them stay in the water long enough to grow several good roots.  Hopefully that will help.

So that is what's going on in my little indoor greenhouse.  I feel like instead of being a "cat lady" when I get old, I'm turning into a "plant lady"... And I'm okay with that.

Indoor Gardening: Part 1

A few weeks ago I found an interesting blog about craft, diy, food, and gardening called 17 Apart.  One of the articles I found especially interesting was about re-growing celery from the base.  I happened to have some celery in the fridge, so I chopped off the stalks, put the base in a dish of water, and waited.  Sure enough, little celery leaves started growing out of the center!  This got me thinking that maybe I could grow a whole little indoor garden to hold me over until my local CSA starts up again in June.  Even if I don't end up with a lot of edible produce, it will still be a fun project.

I also read a post about doing the celery thing with bok choy and gave that a shot too.  In the week and a half it took me to plant everything and finally get around to writing about it, the bok choy has grown significantly and I planted it next to my celery.  (I realized the leaves went down farther than I expected, so I later trimmed down the white parts to speed things up.)

Meanwhile, at work we have had a bag of onions in a bowl on top of the fridge for a very, very long time.  One of them had begun to sprout, so I figured: Why not grow onions?  When I pulled the bag of onions down from the fridge I noticed a second one had sprouted.  After work I took a trip to Home Depot and bought a plastic window box planter, two bags of organic potting soil, and some supplies to re-pot my houseplants (more on that later!)

Stay tuned for updates on my mini-garden, and re-potting my beloved jade plant in Indoor Gardening: Part 2.