Urban Gardening Update

So my second attempt at growing vegetables indoors is not going so well.  One of my cucumber plants died, the second one is sick, my squash plant is near dead--also sick.  Both the cucumber and squash are being killed by mildew.  I've been having an infestation of soil knats (they sure do love the organic soil I'm using) and I've been spraying often with a neem oil/dish soap/water mixture to keep them under control. In the meantime, unbeknownst to me, mildew is forming on the leaves of the squash plants from being sprayed with the mixture.  I can't help it.  I see one or a few of those buggers on the stem, and I spray to kill it.

Even though the cucumbers and squash have all but died, the cherry tomatoes are doing decent.  I have a few bunches between the two plants although one of the plants' health is questionable.  It seems wilt every other day and I can't tell if it's from a lack of watering (seems like I'm watering every other day) or something else that is causing it wilt.  When I do water, it perks back up within a few hours. 

Surprisingly (or maybe not), the sunflowers and the cosmos are doing awesome!  Can't say the daisies are doing too well but that is from a lack of watering.  I tucked the container of daisies into a corner and forget they are there most of the time since the vegetables plants tend to obscure that corner. 

Minature sunflower.

 Orange cosmo.  This is my new favorite flower. 

Urban Gardening

I've lived in the same apartment in L.A for nearly 4 years. Every year after the summer is over, I always say that I need to start growing my own vegetables in the uber sunny corner of my kitchen. Well, this is the year that I finally did.

I'm starting small first to get a feel of things and will expand as I gain more experience (and reconfigure the kitchen to utilize as much space as possible).

First up, strawberry and tomato seedlings. All the plastic lids and containers I didn't throw into the recycling bin have finally come in handy!


I'm also very cost conscious and recycle/reuse as much as I can. Instead of running out and buying purty containers, I cut the top of a two liter bottle and used it to house one of my tomato plants. I used a rectangular food container I already had to house my two strawberry seedlings. Since I also had an abundance of non-recyclable plastic bottle caps, I hot-glued four of them to the bottom of the strawberries' new home to help with draining (after I drilled holes into the bottom of the container). The bottlecaps act as "risers" so that the bottom of the container is not sitting in the drain tray (which is the lid of the rectangular container).

Strawberries to the right and lettuce to the left.


I also got super inspired to grow lettuce, cucumbers and daisies from seeds. I decided to try out the lettuce first as it wasn't warm enough yet to start the cucumbers. Again, I used a food container I had laying around and drilled drain holes on the bottom and glued four bottlecaps to the underside. Various blogs on growing container vegetables suggested putting the container into a plastic bag after seeding to create a makeshift greenhouse so the condensation from within will keep it moist and help with germination. Holes were cut on top of the plastic bag to help with ventilation.

In the next few days to a week, I will be seeding the cucumbers and daisies. Will also start seeding another variety of lettuce. If all goes well, I will cut down on the amount of produce I will have to purchase.

As long as I can stay motivated, I will try to update at least weekly the progress of my urban garden.