YJL

This afternoon, I watched a YouTube recommendation video about a produce review called Click & Grow Smart Herb Garden Starter Kit (59.95), a growing kit with builtin growing light, basically you just assemble it, plug in, and fill up the water reservoir, then that 21st gadget will take care of those plants. Its designed for people who dont have the knowledge or the time.

Frankly, this is worse than people put a plastic plant on office desk, in fact, I would prefer people have a fake plastic plants than buying a product like this. Lack of knowledge or time is simply an excuse, the time you go to the website and process your order is more than enough to read one or two article about growing any plants which you want to order with that kit. You can buy a good-looking plant from big stores or garden centers these days, if you still not to sure how to start from seeds.

Its a journey of growing a plant, people buy this kind of product, sooner or later would either sell it or just put it in storage room, because there is no true joy in growing this way. I dont even know if you can call it growing. Nothing is learned and experienced, because nothing you do is growing except filling in water. You dont prepare soil, sow seeds, care it, water it, check up on it, re-pot it, and so on.

It seems plants have taken my mind quite a lot of time, especially when I lie in bed and think back of the day. I will try to plan what I can do tomorrow or next week.

This morning, I noticed the pepper cutting seems to root in water, actually its a topping. Two weeks ago, I decided to top the pepper plants, they did produce some flower buds, but virtually all fell off, the weather wasnt on my side. Since they were not pruned, it might not be a bad idea to do so, although I prefer to let them take their course.

Three tops were cut, I pulled off the bottom leaves, then planted them into a pot with growing medium, but didnt seem to work, only one still has new growth. So, I took the other two out and plunged them into a water bottle three days ago. I saw a few translucent strings from one cutting, they might be roots, but I am not completely sure.

Today, the celery finally sprouted after ten days, brown seed with white little tail. Its fascinating that a celery could grow from that tiny seed, but these wont get the chance to be a big tall celery stalks, because I am going to eat them young and raw. (sounds creepy)

This afternoon I decided to make sponge cake for the first time, actually I did a similar one once, just not with egg. The recipe I found calls for equal parts of butter, sugar, and flour. 125g of each with 2 medium eggs. Not enough butter, just about 30g, thats with half of an egg. I didnt want to bother the rest of egg, so I experimented with extra virgin olive oil.

They turned out nice, tasted slightly like egg waffle, especially the thin crust. The olive oil one seemed softer and it looked with green hue, since I didnt actually measure anything, it might not actually softer, I just eyeballing by volume, even the recipe is by weight. Fortunately, the result was delicious, which is dangerous, because each cake was only just about palm sized, fat and sugar, need not to say more.

Next week, I will try to cut down the sugar and use or mix with other oil, one doesnt have strong flavor as olive oil. It didnt taste bad, just olive oil flavor is a bit of weird.

On to other things today, the fly trap kind of worked, I saw a few flies in it, but not many. However, there were hardly any flies around the indoor plants and compost.

I also lightly pruned that purple dick plant, three actually, which have overgrown and look very disorderly. My plan is not pruning, but allowing its seed to dry, so I pulled any branches or stems didnt have seed pods. These three will be pulled off once I get the seeds, although not sure I want to collect those seeds. There is a small seedling self seeded, of course that would be the one to continue.

Everything that took off from these plants was broken down and layered on the soil, like mulch, not sure how long until they completely break down. I will plant other seedlings in the same container, maybe peach or grape if I do get the seedlings grown.

Last week, I started to grow bean sprout and celery microgreen (not sure why only bean uses the sprout). Soy and azuki, but the soy bean was never sprouting, like forever, which I have noticed when I tried to plant it. Anyway, after nine days, the azuki sprout is ready to eat. Normally it should take about three days, but I kept it in a place not very warm around 18 degree.

The sprout tasted great, it kind of has crunchy texture and sprout didnt taste bitter. I could just nibble it as snacks, but I added it to a vegetable soup for a different texture.

This probably is the most erotic post I will ever post on my blog. A couple of months ago, I noticed this plant is blooming crazy.

I couldnt help to notice the shape of the flower buds, I wonder what they resemble of, some more closer look of them follows.

Once the flowering passes, there is a long string left, then it starts drying out.

Frankly, the flower itself is honestly boring, but its bud really is amusing. I dont know the name of this plant, so I decided to call it purple dick, although only the top part aka head, that is dick head is purple, actually its more like violet color, but purple goes better with dick if I intend to go that way.

It is going mental, so I decided to trim out all the branches without flowers, and once all seeds are collected, I will be pulling all of them off. There is already a small seedling, it will continue to erect. I meant grow.

I already saved some seeds are dry. You can see a dry pod and one is opened, how seeds sit inside. So far from I can see, there could be one, two, or three seeds in one pod. I dont know why the color of coating varies this much, almost from black to white.

You can see the pod forking out, in fact, it pops. Nature is intriguing, not only the bud gets erotic shape, the way it spreads the seeds is a burst. As I tried to open it, I found simply giving the pod a few squeezes around the head (I am not joking), I meant the top, then if you dont embrace the bottom part, the pod pops open with great force just like seen in picture above. The seeds are thrown out about a meter away.

I havent see it happening in the nature, the weather was not so great, raining on and off, but enough to allow the pods to dry. If it continued to be sunny everyday, I think I would see every seed pod popped open, and seeds every where. But its not even gonna happen in the future, its winter.

Yesterday, I noticed there were some flies around indoor plants and compost. I am not sure if its fruit fly or fungus gnat, either is annoying, anyway. However, its always like that a handful would hover above, it wasnt too bad. Unfortunately, some had hatched out from a new planter. I ignored at first, later in the evening, I knew I had to do something because there is also a few new planters near by. If that one got invested, the chance is the others probably wouldnt be safe since they all got the same growing medium and all with new seeds, some havent germinated yet.

This morning, I scrubbed all saucers, with the best effort and elbow grease I could give, the dumping every bit of gunky water, which might contribute to the invitation. I did save a bit of that smelly water, because if it attracted those pesky flies, why not use it as bait?

I got a 600ml bottle and followed the instructions online, cut the top part off and flip upside down as the funnel to the rotten yummy buffet for the fly. I placed a piece of lime, which I used for cooking, poured in some of the gunky water and wine vinegar which I already used for baiting around compost, but didnt seem to work.

Thats not it, I saw some photos which suggested using yellow Post-it notes, for what scientific reason I didnt know and honestly dont care if fly nuts about yellow as bull impulsively charging at red according to Wikipedia, they are red-green color blind.. I thought about stick one up, but I got a better one, IKEA Fantastisk paper napkin, which is yellow and big, three-ply 40 by 40cm. I split them and wrapped one around the bottle as if it needed a coat.

Not sure if this new trap would work, but this is what I got. The old trap for compost had an upgrade. I know you can use sand and gravel, or even a carnivorous plant (I want one), but I have none of them and I dont want to stack up those into small planters. Besides, there are too many pots.

As for compost, I added a layer of shredded cardboard, then a ply of that napkin on top, I tucked it around the side of container and made sure no gaps. Since that thin layer is obviously very breathable, this could be an easy way to get rid of pest, I hope. I might even use napkin on pots if the trap doesnt work well.

Only time will tell, and I shall know in a few days.