Recent Articles
Growing basil indoors with a desk lamp
14.6 years ago basil, indoor growbox 5 Comments
I recently moved to a new office building and unfortunately I had a lacked a few years at the company to get a window office. With a desire to have some plant life in my office, I grabbed a couple of the basil plants I cloned, dropped them in some potting soil, and positioned a desk lamp with a CFL bulb. I can’t seem to find my lamp timer so the light has been staying on for 24 hours a day.
The results have been great, the plants are thriving with great green foliage (much greener than its cloned parent was outside this summer) Shortly after taking the picture above a harvested some of the leaves and used the top portion to clone into a new basil plant.
Just shows you don’t need a fancy grow box or AeroGarden
Summer harvest
14.6 years ago peppers, tomato 5 Comments
Well it hasn’t been a great year here in the Northwest for summer vegetables but got enough tomatoes and peppers to make some salsa and get stocked up with enough jalapeno pepper powder (been great on omelets) until next year.
With a larger abundance of ripe jalapeno peppers this batch of peppers have a more festive look to them.
Here are the peppers ground up, as you can see above this time I kept the seeds in for a little extra bite.
While picking my tomatoes I also picked some less ripe tomatoes which were not quite ripe but vines no longer were green. I will let these tomatoes ripen indoors, though the flavors will not be as good as garden fresh tomatoes still better than what I can get in my local grocery store.
How to peel a tomato
14.6 years ago salsa, tomato 6 Comments
I always settled on making salsa leaving the skins on, knowing there had to be a better way I did a little research and learned a simple way to get those pesky skins off with minimal effort.
The process is very simple, get a pot of boiling water, drop in your tomato for 10-15 seconds ad immediately remove and drop in a bowl of ice water.
This submersion not only stops the tomato from cooking but this blanching process reduces the bond of the tomato skin. It was so easy to remove the skins my 6 year old also helped me and removed the skins without any issues.
The great part of this method it is very easy and given you only lose the thin skin with almost no waste to the tomato.
I used these tomatoes to make a modified version of my garden salsa which was my best batch yet.
Ladybug in the grow box
14.7 years ago indoor growbox, jalapeno, ladybugs 5 Comments
One problem with growing plants indoors is you don’t always get the benefits of beneficial insects, but as you can see above it doesn’t always have to be that way. At least one little lady bug snuck into the grow box and seems to have found some snacks on a basil plant.
If anyone is curious I also have one of my jalapeno pepper plants in the grow box with hopes of getting a few more ripe red jalapeno peppers before things get too cold.
The winner of the Annabees giveaway is
14.7 years ago bees, contest, giveaway 1 Comment
The winner of the bottle of Annabees bee attractant is Mary C. That is the last of our current wave of contests but I am always out looking for new ones.
The winner of the Gar’n Grow Filter is
14.7 years ago Uncategorized 3 Comments
Congratulations to the winner of the Gard’n Gro filter…meemsnyc.
