I’m not one to harvest lettuce seed for reuse, as I like to try out new varieties but I have been curious about how the flowers look, and how the seeds develop so I let some go to seed. It took weeks before I caught some flowers actually open. Most of the day the flowers…
Also known as an Ofuro tub (if you want to be super polite when discussing it), it’s a Japanese tub where you can easily soak up to your neck in hot water, but it uses less water than traditional American tubs because it is much shorter in length. Instead of laying down flat in the…
In a departure from my normal posts I’ve got to share this, cause it is awesome. I avoid cleaning the shower at all costs because it is such a workout, takes forever, and it’s the last thing I want to do on a weekend. I won’t go into details of how gross it used to…
Back in February I started two types of onions, Ruby Red & Cortland. I started them in small 4″ containers in a flat to see how well they would grow given the limited root space. Along the way I harvested a few here and there, but left them alone to grow for the most part….
After losing several lettuce plants to cutworms severing the stem completely in my garden, I wanted to find a good & inexpensive collar. These Lil Red shot cups are the perfect size for plant starts that are started in the smaller version ofย seed starter cells. It works out to less than a quarter each, and…
This is a gorgeous pepper plant with spicy little peppers, and beautiful purple flowers. It clocks in at 50,000 Scoville, the same as Cayenne Peppers. The colorful flowers are a nice change from the standard white pepper flowers, and when the sun shines through the leaves you can clearly make out the drops of nectar…
I have grown hydroponic lettuce successfully and really enjoyed it, but that was all indoors, and while I found the lettuce acceptable, it was a not as crisp as I would like from not having the normal stresses of outdoor life to toughen the leaves up. I had a fan blowing over them once an…
In my latest new venture of San Francisco urban gardening I’ve decided to try growing onions; specifically Cortland and Ruby Ring. I’m intentionally growing them in very small containers as a trial run to see what’s possible. Onions are shallow rooted vegetables, so as long as they get adequate water & nutrients I expect them…
Previous attempts to make leavened lentil bread were kind of failures. It’s hard to get any kind of a rise without anything to capture the gas bubbles without gluten or gums. I decided to try letting the dough ferment a bit first to break it down and make it more elastic. The end result was…
This is one of the first tomatoes that I grew in San Francisco, but I grew it indoors, and it did great, but given that you have to hand pollinate tomatoes indoors, and the tomato size is small and plentiful, it was a lot of work. I was skeptical about how well it would do…