The Capsule Garden

I had previously posted about my experience of learning to grow alfalfa sprouts at home in my previous blog post:  Growing Alfalfa Sprouts at Home - So simple!  Here I talked about the relatively simple and cheap process of growing delicious, fresh sprouts very easily at home. I did notice in my first batch there appeared to be several seeds that did sprout. There must be some percentage of seeds that are expected to not sprout but there appeared to be quite a lot. I began to consider things like was there too much standing water? Were the seeds compacted too closely together? This led me to think of things to try in my second batch of alfalfa sprouts. Firstly, I recalled from various videos that I had watched on YouTube about growing alfalfa sprouts that many of the people drained the water from the jar and left it as is. During my first batch I found myself taking a spoon and pushing down the seeds that stuck to the side of the jar after draining the water so they sat in a m...

Several weeks ago I was at my local Safeway in the produce section. During the pandemic/quarantine I have been eating a lot green salad. I think this is largely in part to how simple a salad is to make as well as the benefits of eating a lot vegetables. And plus when you buy the large bags of spinach and lettuce from Costco you have to do something with it before it goes bad. Anyway, I found myself in the sprout section. I was shocked to see how expensive a small container of alfalfa sprouts was. It must have been nearly $4 for an ounce or two. Crazy! When I got home later, I recalled that I had seen videos on YouTube about growing sprouts. I did a bit of research and decided to buy a bag of alfalfa sprouting seeds (make sure they are for sprouting and not for planting as there is the possibility of chemicals in the latter) on Amazon. It was a 12 ounce bag for $9.99. There are much larger bags of seeds at a better price but I was starting out so I didn't want to go too crazy. Aside...

It's been awhile since I've posted here. I haven't had much exciting stuff to post about plants through the Fall and Winter. But with Spring approaching, many of my plants are springing (pun intended) into growth. Sunlight like usual isn't great in my home but perhaps the plants notice the weather change. I hope to have some interesting content to post up soon! I've started dabbling with growing sprouts. It seemed like a crop that I could very easily grow and successfully harvest in my humble, mostly sunless apartment. So far I've successfully grown one batch of alfalfa sprouts. It took approximately five days to harvest my first crop. It was a rather cool experience watching the small amount of seeds in the jar explode into a huge bunch of sprouts. It was even more exciting as I got to enjoy them in a sandwich and a salad. I'm currently growing batch number two. If the alfalfa sprout growing continues going well, I might expand into broccoli sprouts. I'...

Lately I've been thinking about ways to improve my plants' health. I have had some plants that seemingly are growing very well and suddenly they become weak and look sickly. Some of them also have pests. I was reading stuff online as well as watching videos which had an emphasis on the soil used to grow plants. Thinking about the growing conditions of my plants, I began to think that perhaps this is my issue. I mostly used the prepared soils from companies such as Miracle Grow. While this seems convenient, this might not be the best thing for my plants.  While going down my rabbit hole, I learned about other important components for soil such as coconut coir, peat moss, perlite, vermiculite, and pumice to name a few. Many of these are considered soil amendments. Amendments in the sense that you are amending the soil with components that it might otherwise be lacking. So while Miracle Grow soil is useful and convenient, their cactus soil is lacking grit, such as gravel or pumice...

The flowers just keep on coming for my plants. Amidst all the bad in the world it's nice to be able to just go outside and observe the flowers. In today's post, the plant in the spotlight is the foxtail fern which is also known as the asparagus fern. The plant grows in what are described as plumes. It's quite a nice looking plant. It also has quite an extensive root system. They appear to have tubers. I have had to repot the plant once and experienced the roots first hand. I'm not sure if you can propagate the plant from the tuber portions of the roots or not though.  I'll be honest that I don't really pay too close attention to my fern. I just make sure to keep it watered. The other day when watering the plant something caught my eye. I noticed some very small white flowers with yellow stamens growing on the plumes. It was quite a site to look at up close. Check it out: Foxtail (Asparagus) Fern Flowers   My plant has bloomed before but it has never produced see...

Ah Spring continues! Well, I suppose as of 6/20 it is now Summer... but my plants continue to bloom! Most recently is my peace lily. I've actually had this plant for several years. It has surprisingly grown blooms every year too. I'll be honest, I probably need to take better care of this plant. It has grown many new plants and really needs to be re-potted and possibly even divided into separate plants. That is a task that might be on my task list in the near future. I'll let the plant finish flowering before then though. The variety of of peace lily that I have is of the variegated variety as you can see from it's leaves. Interesting with this variety, the leaves are not smooth with the rubbery texture like the solid green leaf variety. A funny thing about the peace lily is that it'll really let you know when it needs to be water. The entire plant will droop very dramatically if the soil dries out. Drooping doesn't necessarily mean that the plant is in any dang...

Have you ever had celery in the refrigerator so long to the point where it becomes link and bends from it's own weight? I had one of those recently. The celery itself still looked "good" in the sense it was green. It wasn't rotting or brown or disgusting. Perhaps some might find limp celery gross. I was determined not to just have to toss out the celery and attempt to revive it in a cup of water. I grabbed a mug, filled it with a little bit of water, and plunked the flimsy celery in.  After a few days the celery had plumped up and became firm again. But of course after it had reached a point where it was edible, I wasn't in the mood for celery. I left the celery in the mug for a week or so while adding water. One day I removed the celery to rinse it off a bit under the faucet and surprisingly I observed some roots growing from the bottom of the stalks. Interested, I decided to let the plant grow as opposed to eating it. I eventually moved it to a sunny window from...

I posted earlier about my German Giant radish plant that is currently bolting. The time of season and the temperature outside has likely contributed to the plant bolting instead of developing a large root bulb. You can read more about the plant here in this post . I posted about that almost two weeks ago. So this is a look at the flower stalk two weeks later. I had considered pulling the plant out but I figured let's see if any pollination occurs and it produces some seeds. For awhile it didn't appear that any seed pods were forming. The plant just continually produces flowers which in turn when they die fall all over the place and make a mess! The flower stalk has also gotten longer and more leggy as well as heavy which has caused it to start leaning over. I really wanted to pull it out again but I noticed something quite interesting today. It appears to be a seed pod but looks kind of alien-ish. Of course it could just be my lack of knowledge about radish seed pods too but ta...

Yep, you read that correctly. Blooming Gasteria! That sounds like a phrase that would be uttered by one of the Mystery Gang in an old Scooby Doo cartoon. But it's actually a plant that I have growing out on my balcony. Gasteria is actually a type of succulent and the one that happens to be starting to bloom. I'm not certain the variety of my gasteria but I think it Gasteria pillansii or commonly known as Namaqua Gasteria. It's is quite a striking succulent that grows much like a fan with leaves only growing in two directions. Mine is starting to grow a flower stalk. I should grow much longer by the times the flowers start to bloom. Blooming Gasteria! Namaqua Gasteria growing a flower stalk. Gasteria are known to have some bright colored flowers so it should be interesting to see them once they bloom! I'd also love to see this plant produce some new plants as well. I always enjoy propagating my plants :) which is why you might notice some of the other random succulents I...