Lavender is a go

My lavender seeds are finally starting to sprout. I have three of them starting to come through. They are too small to look exciting in a photograph, so no picture. But I'm feeling pretty cocky about my seed sprouting skills now.

Eating my arugula already

My arugula continues to do well, but my lavender plants have not sprouted yet. I'm hoping that they will soon. One of the seed sprouting pods has a little sprout in it, but it looks like the arugula did, so I'm not sure if it's just a stray arugula seed.
Yesterday I made bento lunches for Mike and myself. The sides were apples, chocolate, pita and hummus. The main course was coconut curry tempeh and on the top I sprinkled some of my micro greens. It's so exciting to want something green in your food and just walk over to the balcony and pick some.

Delicious

Just one day's growth

Look at how quickly the arugula grew just overnight. This really is easy!

So close to being yummy.

I only hope my lavender seeds sprout soon so I know if I'm doing something right with them. Yesterday my dog sort of trampled them because they were right where he stands to bark at other dogs walking by. I set them right again, but I'm not sure if they are going to sprout.

I sprouted something!

So after the great cauliflower disaster of '13, I looked to the future and decided to learn how to sprout seeds. But first some other good news! Yesterday I harvested some of my kale and my friend and I made delicious kale chips. They were perfectly normal kale leaves. It was pretty exciting eating something I grew for the first time.
Hopefully I will get to repeat that coup soon with arugula. I put some arugula seeds in a clay pot on my sunny balcony a few days ago. I kept it moist and today as i was watering it I noticed that some of them had sprouted! In a little while longer I'll be able to harvest them as microgreens.

They are hard to see, but they exist!

When I was at the store buying arugula seeds I noticed some lavender. I made some little origami pots and planted the seeds in them. Now I'm keeping them watered in a sunny window and hoping for the best. I love lavender so having some of my own plants would be amazing.

Back to blogging: Killing plants and starting seeds

I haven't had much to say about gardening in a while, so I've been maintaining radio silence. I've been keeping up with watering and basic tasks like that, but nothing really new or exciting was going on. But now I'm back on a domesticity kick and part of that is preparing for my next round of planting.
First the sad news: I killed a cauliflower plant. Unfortunately it was the only one producing a vegetable, so I'm disappointed about that. I'm being pretty philosophical about it, though. I am pretty sure that I didn't clear out the tray under the pot quickly enough after rain and it succumbed to root rot, so at least I can learn from it and move on. I figure this was my practice garden anyway! Still, I'll be sad to not have home-grown cauliflower to eat.

Bear witness to the shame of my empty pot!

The good news is that my kale is getting huge! I don't actually know when I can eat it, but I guess now? Anyway, it's very pretty and I'm quite proud of it.

I guess this is edible now?

Now that it's almost spring (at least in Florida), I'm starting to plan my spring garden. I want to grow tomatoes, some sort of fruit and some herbs. I poked around the plant section of my hardware store today to get a feel for what they have, and I am getting excited about planting. One thing I found were lavender seeds. Lavender is my favorite herb, and I got an herb-drying rack for the holidays, so I bought it and am going to try to start them from seed. We'll see how that goes.
To practice seed starting (and also experience near-instant gratification) I am sprouting some arugula in soil. I read about microgreens and was rather taken with the idea of not having to wait long for them, so I grabbed some arugula seeds and a cheap little clay pot and threw it all together. Then I moved it to my south-facing balcony because the package said it needs full sun. Now I just have to wait and see. In the meantime I'll be figuring out how to sprout my lavender.

Doesn't look like much now, but hopefully soon
this will be filled with green.

Cauliflower success!

So I haven't posted in forever because of health problems, but today I noticed something so exciting I couldn't stay away.
When I first decided to grow a few plants this winter, I was just going to try a few pots of kale. But then I saw cauliflower at the store and bought some on a whim. I wasn't sure what to do with it beyond keeping it watered, so I just decided to treat it like an experiment.
Apparently all that watering has payed off!

I have a vegetable. A tiny, adorable vegetable.

When dumping out excess water from the trays under the pots today, I noticed that one of my cauliflower pots has produced a little cauliflower. I'm so excited! I resisted eating it, so now I guess I'll just keep doing what I've been doing and wait for it to grow bigger.