The Indoor Garden Expands to The Outdoors

The last I updated about the indoor garden everything was moving along nicely. Since then, I've moved some things outdoors. The tomato plant was outgrowing the space that I had for it in my front window, I had some pepper plants transplanted into my parent's backyard and I also planted cucumber seeds in my parent's backyard. It's been an interesting experience to see the plants begin to flower and set fruit. The carrots were recently harvested and they tasted delicious. Although, they were smaller than I had expected (more on that later).

Firstly, the tomato plant was growing and growing, but not flowering. I did some research and decided that it needed to be outside in the heat in order to transition into flowering stage. The plant itself is about 4 feet tall at this point. It did have a set of flower buds, which began to turn yellow (tomato flowers are yellow), but then withered! :( At this point I'm not holding out too much hope for a tomato crop, but we'll see what happens. The plant is growing nicely, very green and sturdy... it just needs to flower! Hopefully the heat will activate that stage. Like I said, I'll have to wait and see. Here is the tomato plant outside...

Side Note: The night that I started writing this blog entry a severe thunderstorm rolled through and by the time I got out to my tomato plant it was pretty badly damaged. :( Now I'm not expecting to get any tomatoes from it, but I can't bring myself to give up on the plant. The main stem is still in tact so I'm going to continue to tend to it and see if it will re-coop. Cross your fingers for my tomato plant!

The pepper plants in my parent's backyard are just starting to flower and they are looking good. Here is a mini bell pepper plant...

And here is a serrano chili pepper plant...

I also brought a basil plant over to their yard, because I had an extra. Excuse the poor picture quality, it was taken on my cell phone...

I planted a few cucumber seeds over there and so far one has come up. There have been rabbits in my parent's backyard so we'll see how the cucumbers do! Here is the cucumber growing station...

I harvested the carrots and they were admittedly smaller than I would have hoped. I had read that carrots should be harvested when the orange tops poke above the soil. Besides that indicator I also followed the estimated harvest time on the seed packet and when they started poking up I pulled them. They were about 4 inches long. Full grown size should have been 8 inches. All in all I wasn't too disappointed. I was growing them for my bunny and these are the perfect size for him! :) Here are the harvested carrots...

The mini bell pepper plant that I kept indoors is doing quite well. It looks like these peppers should be ready to harvest soon...

I had an interesting experience with the serrano chili pepper plant. I had learned that pepper plants grown indoors need to be pollinated somehow. Generally, tapping the top of the flower bud will pollinate the flower and then a pepper will appear. This tapping method worked fine with the mini bell pepper plant so I was confused as to why it wasn't working for the serrano chili pepper plant. The serrano chili flowers kept wilting and falling off without turning into peppers. The boyfriend suggested that I turn to a method he had used on Morning Glories that we grew indoors which was hand pollination with a q-tip. So I took a q-tip to the inside of the flowers and it worked! The pollen released and serrano chili peppers began to appear! They are too small to see in a picture, but I hope to have chili peppers soon!

While I was over by my parent's this past weekend I did some weeding in their garden. My mom was pulling out chocolate mint left and right and cursing it every time, because it has spread and taken over so much of the garden. I offered to help pull if I could take some home. I pulled some to use right away (which I used in place of regular mint in my Mojito recipe and I also pulled some to transplant into a pot. Let's all welcome chocolate mint to the family!

The spearmint that I had planted is starting to take shape. The mint seeds were slow to start, but it's coming along nicely now and starting to smell like mint!

The potatoes are doing their own thing. I have no idea how to grow potatoes and I'm just winging it here. I'm taking a trial and error approach to most of the indoor garden.

The herbs, as usual, are the best (and easiest) of the bunch. The basil, lime basil and cilantro are doing well and I've already been harvesting and using them. Here is the basil (on the left) and lime basil (on the right)...

And here is the cilantro...

The strawberry plants are still somewhat small. Here is the biggest of the bunch...

Besides all of the food plants I also have a Marigold plant growing in the front window...

So that's the report on my current progress. I'm really happy with the peppers and mints! Overall I'm really happy with all of the plants and the experience of growing some of my own food has been really rewarding. The green onions are the only thing that wasn't doing so well, so I ditched them. I'm planning on planting some new seeds and setting them outside to see if that helps. I can't wait to have more space in order to be doing this on a larger scale!