Winter Gardening indoors with Hydropics

Hello! it’s been awhile since I’ve posted. Ive been very busy with many projects and as always, it was extremely hard for me to part with the garden in the fall. I miss being outside in the sunshine and being with the plants. In order to keep my mind and body healthy I stay busy as much as I can in the winter, even if it’s raining I try and get out and do a little something for myself. Lately it’s been Luna that has been keeping me busy. I try and get her out and exercise everyday. 

Aside from that I need to keep my mind busy with gardening. Whether it is planning next spring’s garden or just purchasing new seeds and getting prepared, I need to be busy in all of it. While reading up on certain gardening tips I discovered some videos and articles on hydroponic gardens and I started looking at pricing. Initially I thought there is no way I can afford one, they were going for around $1000 and way out of my price range. So I did find a very inexpensive tower online around $200 and decide to try it. 

I’m very surprised by it so far. I really had no idea that it would give me this much joy. One of the main things that attracted me to this type of garden is the self sufficiency that it could possibly bring. The way the food is currently priced and the amount of toxic chemicals on our produce, this was a no brainer when trying to decide if I was going through with it or not. I went all in! I set it up around December 30 and found that I had a broken part which took another few weeks to get a replacement, but it’s wonderful now. I’ve been harvesting greens to make salads off the tower for my lunches and dinners. 

When there is a shortage of greens on the tower I’ve been substituting my greens with sprouts and microgreens which I’m also loving. This is very easy to do once you get the hang of it. I think the hardest part is staying on top of seed starts and doing it regularly as things do die off and need to be replaced often. 

My unit is very tiny and I haven’t been able to grow anything really big yet, but I am so grateful for what I have been able to grow for myself within the last 2 months. I recommend this for anyone who wants to grow their own food indoors and has extreme winters where they cannot grow all year round. Also it’s just very cool to be able to just stand in the kitchen and cook and teach over and grab from the tower when you need something. 

 I am so glad that I gave this a try, it has really changed my life and added so much joy to my days when it’s snowing outside or cloudy and windy and just cold! There is not nearly enough sunlight, so anything to add some sunshine to my life is very important. 

Luna also adds brightness to my days! Here we are yesterday on the lake shore walking in the snow. We have been practicing on a long line! It was very cold and rained but we got a peak of the sun for a brief moment. 

Overwintering Roses

Reflecting today on the rose garden that I installed last spring. I’ve never been great with roses in the past so I was slightly intimidated from trying them, especially when I thought about adding an entire garden. Regardless of my past experiences I decided to go for it and put one in. This space was so ugly and weeded and I wanted something to hide the wheelchair ramp and this seems like the perfect option. The decision to put in roses seemed better then any other flowers because there were already several other types of perennials and roses seemed like the best option. Here is a little progression of what I had to work with. Currently I am working on winterizing the rose garden. Since I’m new to caring for them I’m still learning. I’m working on removing the leaves right now and this is to prevent disease overwintering. The next step will be to prune them. 

Growing Sweet Potato’s

Every year I try and grow new things that I’ve never grown before. As my confidence grows, I try and explore the possibilities of different planting techniques and also learn which vegetables are the most successful. Each year I learn which crops that I harvested and used most and the ones that aren’t as desired I learn really quick not to plant them again. I want to make room for produce that will feed us and won’t go to waste. I’m also learning some new ways to preserve some of the veggies that I wasn’t able to eat when they were fresh. When having an over abundance leads to not having time to utilize the food, I feel it’s wasteful and I am grateful for everything that grows. I bought a food dehydrator recently and used it to make dried tomatoes. This made me so happy to be able to put the last tomatoes to use. I’m excited to try making some spices and it will also help with drying some of my other herbs that I love to make teas with. Overall I feel like it’s a smart investment.

Since last summer I was so successful with growing potatoes, I decided to try growing some sweet potatoes this next summer. I think that they will store better and I will definitely eat more of them due to the lower carbohydrate content. Overall I feel that they are much healthier and I can use them in soups and try some dehydrating as well.  I am starting all of the potato slips right now inside in a shallow tray with dirt and I’m now cutting them off and rooting more in water until I have time to plant them in dirt. I bought some cheap dollar store tote bags and I will fill them with dirt and they will grow inside until I am able to plant them out in spring. I have no idea if this is going to work out but it’s fun to try. 

I bought some baby Bonita’s and some baby garnet potatoes because I thought that some mini sized ones would be less wasteful and easier to cook. Here is a picture from the first day that I put them in soil. And about 2 weeks later you can see the leaves starting to poke out. I’ve been cutting these off and rooting in water. 

One of the negatives to starting plants inside is that sometimes you have to deal with gnats which are very annoying. I’ve got several traps set up in the corners of my grow area to catch them. So far they work extremely well. I will keep updating on the progress on these as things change 😊

Harvesting Valarian Root

I recently created my first video on how I harvested Valarian root this fall for medicinal purposes. I started from seed indoors and planted in the spring of 2022. I first discovered it while researching the herbs that were in the common teas that I was purchasing at the grocery store for help with insomnia. I wanted to learn more about the healing properties and benefits of the plants that were listed in the ingredients. I really liked that they were perennials and that they produced attractive flowers as well. That’s when I decided to try growing a few plants of my own and make my own teas. I thought, How hard could it be? Im so glad that I tried because they are such beautiful additions and are very little maintenance and they come with a huge benefit. I hope that this inspires you to try growing your own beneficial teas that are tailored to your needs😊

2024 Tomato Harvest

 This summer I planned on growing just a few tomato plants that I really love. But somehow a few that I love, turned into over 20+ tomato plants along the fence line mixed in with the flowers. Some new ones that I wanted to try and of course the usual favorites from last season. This has become a new process for me since I am so limited with space in the garden boxes I decided that if I plant one or two and then a flower and then a couple more and then another flower that it is technically not taking up space but sharing the space and they should both benefit from that. The flowers will attract the bees to further aid in pollination of the fruit and visa versa. I also decided that in doing this that Im not really taking up space and if they survive, it was meant to be. I also prepare for loss of new tender plants by over planting but I think this time almost everything survived.

The summer of 2023, I planted 12 San Marzano tomato plants in the large 4x6 raised bed and they were amazing but I had an over abundance of them that didn’t ripen until fall and I sort of felt overwhelmed when I wasn’t able to use them all to make sauces like I intended on early in summer. Instead I harvested them later in the season and only made a few batches and froze the rest of them whole. I skipped the San Marzano this year and stuck to my favorites which have always been the sweet cherry types and the heirloom variety that I can just eat right off the vine. My favorite out of all the heirlooms that I’ve grown so far is Paul Robeson. It has amazing flavor and so meaty and I love that in this tomato!! I love the marbling inside these tomatoes and the colors and textures are so stunning. One tomato that seems to always amaze me is the pineapple tomato. I don’t even remember planting that many this spring but I must have because I had so many of them. And they were not little, they were very large and looked like little pumpkins which were fun giving away and sharing with friends.  

For the 2025 garden I may not grow the pineapple again, but if I do I will try and only grow one or two plants. I do love having a huge variety of tomatoes. The colors are so beautiful!

The newest tomato that I tried this summer was the bumblebee. You can see them on the dish above next to all the sweet cherries. It is also a cherry type but in my opinion has sort of a heirloom taste to it. 

I am super impressed by the long life that these had and stayed fresh for so long.  I noticed that the bumblebee take longer to ripen than the other tomatoes, but it was worth the wait and they have a lovely green striped pattern on them. I bought my seeds from Baker Creek again this year, as I do with so many of my other seeds now. 

 

Of course Luna had to get involved with some of the harvesting this day. I think she might have been actually telling me that it’s time to go for a walk and trying to convince me that I needed to stop for the day. I love her! If you had to guess, who do you think actually won?

Harvesting Dahila Seeds

 This is my second year growing Dahlias and I have learned so much, especially this year. After purchasing my first Dahlia tubers in spring of 2023, I knew very little about this flower. This is now my second season growing them so after learning so much about them I decided that I would try harvesting my own seeds from the Dahlias seed pods that I collected this current season 2024. 

Over this two year period I have read so many of other people’s experiences and watched so many “how to’s” that I finally am feeling like I’m getting it, and also getting hooked too. 

When I first started growing these flowers it seemed very complicated but in just one year I feel like the knowledge I have now has made me feel so much more confident as a grower. 

I am most excited to try growing some new varieties and hopefully develop some really beautiful new flowers of my own. This summer I was really surprised by the dahlias that I grew from seed last year 2023. When I saw how beautiful they were, I suddenly had a new respect and love for this flower because of the unique opportunity to produce something new and one of a kind.

Here you can see that I have harvested some bundles of seed pods but since I am so new to this process I wasn’t sure if these were ripe or not. I did put them into a vase with water as I read that is what I should do when they are still green. 

I saw others that had harvested green pods too and the process from here was to wait and allow them to dry and then separate the seeds. It took several days of allowing the seed heads to dry before I began breaking them open to allow to air dry with fans. 

While harvesting the pods I was also picking the last of the flowers to enjoy since the days were getting shorter and the weather had begun to change making its way for winter and the first frost.

 

Because I am working really fast while it’s still light out, here I have placed some of the pods on paper plates and with a marker labeled them with the flower variety so that later I can stay more organized as they dry out. I feel like this whole process is a blur and things happen so quickly that it’s easy to lose track of what flowers the pods are collected from. 

In the years past it probably wouldn't have mattered as much to me but since I am discovering more about this flower and becoming more involved I want to make sure and keep track of the pollen parent.

After drying out the seeds I spent several days separating the seeds in the evenings after work and allowing them to dry out even more. From here I put them into their own individual bags and labeled them with the date of collection and the pollen parent. The real fun will start in the spring, when I see just how many of these will germinate. The big question that I am asking myself is where do I plan on growing all of these? And I am avoiding the answer and just going to do it and worry about that when the time comes :)

I have found that when it comes to new flowers, I will figure out a way to get them into the garden! 

Just like Luna is changing my life for the better, this garden that I’ve created is also changing my life in a way I never imagined  💕❤️🌸

It’s been a beautiful journey of discovery and learning about myself and what I am capable of creating. In the beginning I set out to make this property a brighter and more livable place for my friend and it’s now a major part of my everyday life. There is no other place that I’d rather be than in the garden among the flowers! And of course hiking and exploring with Luna. I would not have to any other way. 

Preparing for Fall and Dahlia Projects

As the end of the season comes to an end it’s time to get ready for winter preparation and digging up the dahlias very soon. This also comes with the task of making sure that everything is labeled before the freeze and also collecting seeds from the plants before that day comes.

Over the last couple weeks I have been collecting seed pods and have been able to harvest and store several already. In the process of doing this I am learning some things that I had questions about previously. 

Like where do the seeds form after they have been pollinated and my curiosity led me to do some dissecting and took some pictures to share with you. The fact that each seed inside the pod could be a different flower depending on what bee visited and which flowers are pollinated is amazing and it’s blowing my mind a little bit. 

Ive seen a ton of pictures online about tubers and also what they look like and how to recognize the eyes etc, what the seeds look like but I’ve never seen the inside of a pod. Now with my seed collecting project, the information is all coming together for me. I am able to see now what an immature seed and a mature seed looks like and to only collect the large viable ones. The seeds pods that are still slightly green, are left to dry until they turn a sort of papery brown color and I’ve been opening them and allowing them to air dry overnight and this has been sort of my nightly ritual of working on at least one or two seed heads per night until they are separated into their own bags labeled with the seed parent. Most of these first ones that I am currently working on are from dahlias that I grew last year from seeds in 2023 garden and in the fall I collected the tubers and replanted them. These will be labeled so I know who the seed parent is. 

I’m getting really excited about trying to create some new varieties of dahlias to expand on my collection. It’s still fairly small but I’m wanting to definitely create a larger one next summer. 

Now that I know that I can store the tubers with success in my climate and indoors, I am going to keep at it and grow them again next spring as well.