Ann's Air Gardens

Window Sill Soup

 

The best possible Christmas Eve treat this year was learning how to ake this soup.

 

I love egg drop soup, but even at nice Chinese restaurants I have found it iffy, whether or not the soup is up to my standards, and even if it is excellent there is usually not enough of it.  The few times I have tried to make it at home in the past, although it has been edible, were fails.

When I took a deep breath and try it again today, I scored a big win.  it was so good in fact that I ate the whole pot.

What was different?  For one thing my main ingredient was pea shoots from my indoor microgarden.   So easy!  I just threw a handful of sprouting peas in the E-Z Sprouter and rinsed them for a few days until they outgrew the Sprouter, then pushed the roots into a mound of potting soil in a cut open milk jug.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are cut and come again, so here you see them after their "haircut."

As you can see there are plenty left and will be more tomorrow.

My nice sister-in-law told me about an Android app called RecetteTek, so I put my recipe for this stellar soup on there, but not sure yet how to share it.

I want to spread the word about pea shoots because they are one of the most prolific microgreens as well as being delicious, nutritious, and versatile.  I also love that they are portable! 

Fall Garden, Small Garden

 

 

The lucky bamboo top left has been greatly neglected, but is still alive in an egg shell filled with sawdust.

 

 

The rest of the plants shown here are edible and prolific enough that I have been able to pick and eat a salad every day for the past 2 months, which is remarkable to me, given that except for the roses they are all experimental microgreens growing in tin cans, milk cartins, and other repurposed food containers. 

I have learned a lot from them and plan to "plant earlier" and do better next fall. We will see whether anything is alive when I come home from my winter trip.

Bee on a Choke

When I first saw this flower at a distance in Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge California, I thought it was a sunflower, but it turned out to be a Jerusalem artichoke.

The tubers of this plant were prized by Edgar Casey for their health benefits. Something they have in common with leeks is that they are rich in the Prebiotic Inulin, which is vital for good digestion.  

Another name for this beautiful and nutritious plant is sunchoke, and yes they are related to sunflowers.  

 

Visit to the Ruth Bancroft Gardens

These bees might have been the most interesting attraction at the Bancroft Gardens on Tuesday.

Here is what we saw from the entrance to the gardens:

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Quality Time in the Garden

Fast Rooting Cosmos

This is a stem cutting of Cosmos Sulfaris which was taking root in my AeroGarden 3 until I pulled it out for this photo:

I Can't Look

OK, I went away for a whole week (gosh!) and my friend called to say we had a nasty frost and all the plants are dead and brown.   Poor waist_high fig cutting now 3 years old may be a goner, as it almost died of thirst when the automatic watering system went off last summer. Then it started leafing out and was hurt by a December frost. Then it started leafing out again and now this. I haven't even gone over to look.

 

Here, 6 miles away, the Camelias are opening up and looking gorgeous again and we have hundreds if ripe lemons.

A "Green" Basket Made from Recycled Yard Waste

This hanging planter is made from morning glory vines.  It hasn't shrunk yet, nor do I have any idea what it will look like after it dries out.  The back yard yielded about 40 lbs of vine stems which we rolled up like a carpet and lifted out on a bedsheet.  Before going to the trouble of cleaning and harvesting the stems I wanted to see if I could make a basket at all and if it would be an enjoyable activity.  It was fun and presumably my next basket will be better.

So tomorrow I will start stripping the leaves off my big pile of stems and coiling them to dry for later use.  

Here is what the bottom of the basket looked like at the beginning.

Here are the live vines taking over my yard before we pulled them out.

Toonies

My favorite plant experiment this summer involves a $1.49 batch of purple petunas I bought in distressed condition from the Grocery Outlet Store.  I put half of them in a 3-hole Aerogarden planter with a years old lamp that is not optimal, but still puts out some light:

The other half I put in dirt in the inner chamber of one of my hydroponic planters indoors.  This was to ensure drainage. The widow sill is rather dark, so I did not expect much from that half of my experiment.

Surprisingly, the plant in dirt flowered first, within just a few days, 

 

 

It took the Aerogarden plants several weeks to flower, as I had to pinch them back  because after the transfer to water all the bus withered and turned brown.  But once they started, they just kept going whereas the dirt plant slowed down, although they do still have a few blossoms.

As you may know, petunia flowers are edible, so part of my experiment involved a taste test.  There was no difference in flavor between the water grown petunias and those grown indoors in dirt.  Petunia blossoms are not particularly tasty when eaten alone, but I think they are a good complement to egg dishes.  After trying them with different kinds of foods, I decided that they go best with chocolate.  Peanut butter works, too, especially chocolate peanut butter. By the way, here is a photo of my French Toast with Strawberries and Petunias. 

 

Rosemary

It takes an awfully good friend and neighbor to cheerfully and graciously water my "dirt-garden" while I'm away four months, but that is what my neighbor is doing.  The only two kinds of plants I have growing in the ground are plumbago and rosemary, which give my front yard two shades of green and two shades of blue.  All the rest of the plants are in clay pots or raised planters.  These include the fig trees I started from leaf cuttings, a grape vine started from a small root cutting about 3 years ago, which bore fruit again this year, anemones, glads, lemon grass, strawberries, and a variety of herbs and volunteers.  No tomatoes this year.

Up here I am on the second story without much of a balcony except for the enclosed solarium which is too hot for plants this time of year.  But I have petunias blooming on the kitchen window sill and a small Aerogarden with nasturtiums and some kitchen herbs rooting in little glasses all around it.  The rosemary surprised me, for in a little over a month's time 3 out of 3 leaf cuttings that I cut back from the sidewalk took vigorous root.

I have rooted rosemary in water before, but my efforts usually resulted in timid plants that took a long time to flourish.  These cuttings are robust and I have already pinched off new growth for a twofold purpose:  1) to season food, and 2) to make the new plants branch out. 

Hollyhocks are Back in Bloom

I went back to see if the yellow cactus was in bloom yet and surprise, it was, but so were the hollyhocks.  This is what happens when we go away for a few days. 

 

 

As Tall as the Roof on our House, these Offer Filtered Shade