FINALLY.

a brief, unscheduled update regarding emotional container gardening

My troubled, grouchy rocoto chile pepper plant has finally decided to get up off its plant-ass and make a pepper.

 

Naturally the pepper came out while I was away on vacation. Now that I'm back in town it will probably shrivel up and fall off within a few days, or develop some sort of exotic mold or infestation. I think I've finally gotten the plant food thing down, at least, because its flowers are a deeper purple than they were before.



My other pepper plant, a serrano, seems to be making up its plant-mind as to whether it ought to make peppers this year. It appears to have recovered from the period of malnutrition I apparently subjected it to, but I can't yet tell whether it's a full recovery or merely an "I'm not dead" partial recovery: there are a ton of new flowers, but no fruit yet, and it recently dropped a bunch of leaves. Either I brought on a freak-out by giving it too much nitrogen, or it was startled by the sudden appearance of its neighbor's vivacious new pepper.

Previous posts about my container gardening are here, here, here and here.

Festive GIF from I'm Revolting.

strawberry letter 23

all the latest news about emotional container gardening 

My SPACE-GROTTO should be here any day now.

Botanical monsters via JB's Warehouse and Curio Emporium.

My Sorrento lemon seedlings are full of surprises. They keep coming, like clowns out of a clown car. It's been several weeks now since the first ones germinated, but every time I look at their little pot there's another just starting to make its presence known. At this point I have more seedlings than I had seeds! I started with twelve seeds, and as of yesterday morning I have sixteen seedlings. Look:

There's no Catholic funny business going on, I can explain, sort of: They are apomictic. One of my sources of information on how to germinate the seeds tipped me off that this might happen:

A interesting thing about citrus seeds is that you may get several seedlings from each seed. One of these will be from the embryo formed due to pollination in the orchard, but the others will be 'apomictic' seedlings which are vegetatively produced. That means that the apomictic seedlings will be exact genetic reproductions of the tree on which the fruit was formed, they are clonal seedlings. The one seedling produced by pollination will not be clonal as it will carry genetic material from the pollen parent (father) as well as the seed parent (mother). In any case, you should have a lemon tree, and it will very likely produce tasty lemons in about 15 years!

- New Mexico State University College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences q&a

Whoever the father is, he has really outdone himself. The oldest and tallest of my vigorous Mediterranean brood are very mature for their age too; they already have lemon-scented leaves (i.e., they're wearing plant-aftershave). I have no idea what I'll do if all of them survive infancy — raising just one lemon tree by myself in Harlem would be a challenge, and here I am with a whole fucking grove — but fortunately they seem to grow pretty slowly. This other blogger's two year-old lemon tree looks manageable, which means I have plenty of time to get things sorted out before harvest time. The same q&a I linked to above says that grafting a seedling on to a mature lemon tree can reduce fruiting time from fifteen years to five or so, but realistically I'll probably need more than five years to get myself settled somewhere more suitable for growing exquisite Italian lemon clones. In the meantime I'm thinking about spritzing their soil with chamomile tea, which I understand they like. After having learned a little something about their incredibly strange sex lives nothing surprises me anymore.

  

Edith Wharton's Italian Villas and Their Gardens at AbeBooks.

The lion is something I picked out at 1st Dibs. Let me know if you see a matching one 

someplace because garden lions should be in pairs. I don't need it right away.

Have you thought about giving your seedlings chamomile tea? It prevents something called
 damping off because it's got anti-fungal properties. I don't believe the tea needs to be
the same nationality as the seedlings; this is just my tea.

My window box full of berries is moderately less productive than my magical everbearing lemon plant pot, but there's nothing disappointing about it. In fact I'm going to hold back in describing the way they taste, for fear of sounding like an annoying Alpine strawberry-munching asshole. I can't really hide it though: They're sensationally, toes-curled-up good. The best among them have been as good as my finest hypothetical mental strawberries. There haven't been many of them yet, and they've been a bit mushy because of all the rain and humidity, but they've been tremendously exciting. I'm guessing that the mushiness is due to the weather because the farmers' market berries I've bought to supplement my small harvests have been mushy too. And, unlike my berries, insipid. I would go so far as to describe my strawberries as the most exciting breakfast to be had in all of Harlem but one never knows what neighbors are up to. 

I've been getting a lot of berries that ripen while still very, very small, but just now I'm starting to get larger ones. I've read about other people's home-grown strawberries magically starting to do this in June too.

My Yellow Wonder strawberries have been the slowest producers so far but
the arrival of June seems to have had an effect.


Shuggie Otis, "Strawberry Letter 23"

There's a fruit vendor on a corner of 57th St. who often tries to get me to buy some fruit on my way home by calling out, "hello lovely miss lovely fruit!" It puts a smug little spring in my step to think that if he had any idea what sort of fruit I'm getting at home he'd blush at the inadequacy and futility of these overtures. 

I've been so excited about harvesting a few berries every other morning that I haven't been observant about comparing the various varieties I'm growing. Now that they're producing more and larger berries I should be able to do a thoughtful taste test soon. 

My borage and lovage are doing well too, though not anywhere near ready to harvest yet. I planted them in the same bucket-bag a couple weeks ago and had long since lost track of which side is what, but yesterday I spotted some borage cress adorning dumplings in the Times and realized that the bigger leaves must be the borage. I'd never heard of borage cress and wondered whether it wasn't simply immature borage — the Times photo only shows its leaves, which look identical to what's on my fire escape right now — but apparently it is indeed a separate thing. A specialty grower in the Netherlands says that full-grown borage leaves are "simply too hairy to use in dishes" and the cress "only has the good parts from this beautiful herb." I've mostly only got the good, hairless parts at present  but as you can see I do have some hairy leaves. I went to the fire escape for a taste and they're very cucumber-y! And semi-surprisingly, kind of mushy. Hopefully at some point this summer it will stop raining every single day.

borage seedlings

lovage seedlings

My success with lemon seedlings inspired me to try germinating some other seeds I happened to have sitting in a little dish on my desk — a hint, they rhyme with merry sauna — using the same paper towel method I used for the lemon seeds. I started them just the other day and I already have one small seedling! I don't think these are particularly difficult seeds to germinate; my excitement stems from the fact that these are very distinguished seeds. And that I'd never before found so much as a single one in this particular merry sauna. To have found four of them during a spell of perfect germinating weather strikes me as an auspicious sign. I'm not planning to grow them myself, I'm much more likely to see them through the seedling stage and give them to a botanically-experienced friend, but who knows. Regulation of merry saunas is changing rapidly these days, and I remain hopeful that by the time my itsy-bitsy seedling(s) have gotten big enough for anyone to care about, it will become OK in NY State to have one's own merry sauna for personal medicinal use. In fact I would like to become an advocate of merry saunas on behalf of the emotional container gardening community. It's something I believe in.

Now the bad news. Naturally there is a bit of it; life in the Tiny Banquet Horticultural Subcommittee Lo-fi Gardening Research Center isn't all sunshine and peppermints.

notebook for keeping track of stuff
via AnOther mag

My chile pepper plants are acting like little assholes. And this time it maybe isn't me. There are flowers all over the place on both of them, but they don't set fruit. Instead the flowers simply drop off, over and over again, as coy as can be. Both plants are steadily getting bigger and they look perfectly happy, but it's all just a tease.

Coy bullshit flowers. They look perfectly capable of setting fruit 

and even give the impression they might be into it, but don't be fooled, this is
nothing more than posturing. You can tell that busted, crumbly-looking little flower 
on the left there is going to drop right off. Presumably out of ennui.

Sometimes one longs to say to a plant, "fine, go live on someone else's windowsill then," but where is the satisfaction in it if the plant is already, in its passive-aggressive little way, doing its best fuck-you-too? I might do it anyhow though. Get rid of them, I mean. It's an unusual step to actually get rid of a houseplant by choice rather than by accidental murder (for me, at least), particularly one started from seed, but my ex-boyfriend put the idea in my head the other day and now I keep visualizing myself putting the pepper plant pots outside on the sidewalk. And I feel free and good when I think this thought! He wasn't suggesting that I get rid of my pepper plants but my avocado plant instead, which he thinks is monstrously large. (It's five feet tall not including its pot, which I think is perfectly appropriate). This same ex once had a pencil cactus that grew bigger and bigger and bigger until it blocked an entire window, at which point he found a cactus weirdo on Craigslist to come take it away, so I understand his concern about my avocado. But the avocado — which I also started from seed, about three years ago — is doing exactly what it's supposed to whereas the pepper plants aren't doing squat. It seems altogether possible that months and months of inattention and animosity on my part have permanently withered their natural pepper-making impulses. Botanically-speaking I'm not sure exactly how that part works, but it seems intuitive to me that one can't throw shade on a plant for such a long time and expect a little friendly attention and a modestly more spacious new pot to just magically make everything alright. The other possibility is that all the humidity my lemon seedlings seem to be thriving on is making the peppers unhappy. I've read conflicting things about chile peppers and humidity and I have a feeling my particular peppers actually aren't all that fussy about it. But maybe I'm wrong; the consensus does seem to be they don't like it. (Exhibit A; exhibit B). I don't think I've been over- or under-watering them because the leaves look healthy. I'm going to try repotting them both again, more generously this time (they do seem to need it), and I've started spritzing their leaves with a bit of Epsom salt diluted in water, which lots of other growers say they like. (It's the magnesium). If they still don't have their shit together in another month or so they're probably going to get the heave-ho. I'd really like to get them to make some peppers but right now the reality is they're taking up a lot of space and requiring a lot of effort I'd rather give to plants I like more, and that like me more. I'm a highly emotional gardener but not a sentimental one.

Epsom salts have all sorts of gardening uses I didn't know about until recently.
I'm hoping they make my grouchy pepper plants ecstatic but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting on it to happen.

The Secret Life of Plants, a 1979 documentary on the sentience of plants.

It's on Netflix too. Via Dangerous Minds, which also reports that chile peppers send each other mysterious signals. More information here. I could hardly be less surprised because mine are obviously conspiring against me, in their half-assed way.

Related reading: What a Plant Knows by Daniel Chamovitz, via Brain Pickings.
I haven't read it yet so I can't tell you how it is that my pepper plants know 
that I know that they know precisely how ambivalent I feel about them.


My smallest plant is non-edible and lives between other, bigger plants.
A hopeful note to end on: I think that fluffy little ball of needles 
on the right is going to become a new appendage.

Previous posts about my container gardening are here and here.

relentlessly emotional container gardening

* I'm an idiot and accidentally deleted my May 2102 post on 'relentlessly emotional container gardening' while trying to update the link for the Jesus & Mary Chain video embedded below. The Blogger platform did save a draft of it, though, and I think it's a good read for all the weirdo gardeners out there, so I'm reposting it (more or less) as it was.

yours in springtime,
Madeleine
April 2016

*****

Again? Yes because my last post on this subject focused on the stuff I've grown to date and this one's about what I'd like to grow. It's a long list but many of these plants are for next year. I've been quite restrained about my plant ambitions lately. Yes really! My apartment faces south and I get good light, but with the recent addition of a large pot of cinnamon basil and the seed germination projects described below I've run out of window sill and fire escape space. I have hanging plants too but I can't have too many of those, and I nearly have too many of those now.

Casa Hortícola, a seed and bulb shop in Porto, Portugal,
from World of Interiors July 2011. It's been in its location 
in the Bolhão market since 1921. See more photos here.

Items on my to-grow list:

• Pineapple grown from old pineapple parts. I mentioned this a couple weeks ago. I've tried it before, a couple times actually, but things kept happening, things that distracted me during the crucial stage of planting the pineapple parts after they've dried out a bit and before they've dried out too much. This is entirely my fault and not an inherent difficulty; the instructions for growing "a healthy, attractive pineapple for your home" couldn't be simpler. I'm going to make another attempt. I only want to use organic pineapples for growing (and for recipes that use the peel, like making tepache) and they're kind of hard to come by. If you live in NYC, Fresh Direct has a reliable supply of them. Commodities on 1st Ave. next to Momofuku has them too sometimes.¹

• Oyster leaf (mertensia maritima), as shown looking totally fascinating here. This is a plant that grows wild in the Hebrides and reportedly has a briny, oyster-like flavor. It is of great interest to my semi-secret subcommittee for the development of oceanographic snacks, which has become curious about the idea of icy cold oyster-y lemonade accompanying an elaborate beach-going packed lunch.

• Radishes. I understand they grow quickly and without torment to the gardener, and I love them fresh, pickled, or in a soup. I'm starting two varieties from seed right now: Jaune D’Or Ovale Radish, a French heirloom variety, and German Giant Radish ("I think it has just the right amount of spice to it, perfect for eating with salt & a beer," says a reviewer I'd like to have a beer with). I've got another variety of seed on hand, Chinese Green Luobo, but the instructions say to start them nearer to autumn because they only grow well in cool weather. (Summer has barely arrived and already I'm thinking about how nice it will be when I need to put on a woolly sweater for my fire escape radish-harvesting . . .). Radish sprouts are delicious and beautiful but I think they need to be germinated from a different type of seed (e.g.). I'm not growing them right now because I don't want to go apeshit with the whole radish thing.

• More chili peppers. Now that I've put my foot down on the obstinate (at times, truculent) mismanagement of my pepper plants I'm kind of excited about growing more varieties. On my wish list to start very early next spring: Tunisian Baklouti (I don't think I have ever met a Tunisian foodstuff I didn't like); Shishito (a favorite for eating grilled or broiled, but sometimes expensive and less-than-perfectly-fresh when bought in Japanese groceries); Bulgarian carrot peppers (bright orange, fruity and hot); Pequin peppers (my favorite store-bought dried pepper flakes are Pequin and I'd love to try them fresh); and Black Hungarian peppers (attractive little things with reportedly very good flavor, and interestingly they sound as temperamental as actual Hungarians, which I partially am so I can say that). I've also been eyeing these lumpy, pendulous, purple Cajamarcas, "a beautiful fruit that begins a vibrant violet unique to C. chinense and then changes to a rich red. The wonderfully fragrant aroma of ‘Cajamarca’ captures your attention with an intense, spicy-citrus fragrance and the classic habanero fruity undertone. Very Hot," according to The Chile Pepper Institute, which is selling the seeds.

Cajamarcas from The Chile Pepper Institute

• Black sesame. Is it madness or genius to grow yr own sesame seeds? I can see something going terribly wrong at the harvesting stage in particular. Like, a strong gust of wind. But I love, love the flavor of black sesame in both sweet and savory dishes and I'm not likely to have a chance to taste their leaves unless I grow my own, am I? 

• Cucumbers. I'm so intrigued by these brown Russian cucumbers ("hands down the best tasting cucumber I have ever tasted" says the seed store cucumber-eater) and these bright green Parisian Pickle (Improved Bourbonne) ones, but sadly I don't think cucumbers are a good container crop. I'd only give them a try if I had more space for bigger containers. Do you have such a space and would you like to experiment with Skype gardening? I would provide advice and instruction in my uniquely dissolute lo-fi gardening technique and you would send the cucumbers. Think about it. 

• Osmanthus.  I bought a jar of sweet osmanthus sauce in Flushing on impulse a couple years ago and have been crazy about its sweet, salty, floral flavor ever since. I'd love to have a supply of fresh osmanthus flowers for experimenting with. TopTropicals.com says "it is a slow growing medium size shrub or smaller tree that can easily be kept in container as a compact plant for years. You can create your own little Fragrant Valley . . ." I'm out of window sill space but if I can get a suitably large hanging pot I'll try that. I couldn't help but notice the same seller also carries something called Popcorn Cassia, which "smells like fresh cooked, buttered popcorn when you run your fingers through the leaves" but has "the distinct scent of peanut butter" when flowering, but it's a shrub and there's no more room on the fire escape for one of those. 

sweet osmanthus sauce

osmanthus flowers

• Borage. Little blue flowers with a nice cucumber-ish flavor, and bees like them too so it's a good plant for the whole gardening area. Borage has been on my mind since I found some atop a memorably beautiful and delicious plate of sashimi I ate last summer. (I didn't feel a need to snap a photo until after I'd eaten the most beautiful parts, sorry). I'm starting some from seed now.

Innocent Beauty borage from Kensitas Flowers

(1930s cigarette cards) from the NYPL.

• Mint. A must-have for people who like the way it tastes, or who have people over for drinks. I didn't think I had any more room for plants but I brought home some Swiss mint anyhow — chosen  from the Stannard Farm stand at Tompkins Square Park greenmarket for its clean, icy smell and taste — and created a spot for it in The Hanging Mint Garden of Harlem. (A big, light-weight hanging planter with a built-in drainage system, found at Saifee Hardware).

my Swiss mint

• Lovage. I've been banging on about how much I love lovage for a while now. Sadly my efforts to grow it at home haven't worked out for me in the past. The plants I've brought home have withered in the sun before I could even manage to re-pot them. In hindsight I think it was a combination of neglect and . . . honestly it was probably all neglect. I'm trying again and this time I'm starting my lovage from seed. By the way, my borage and my lovage live in the same bag planter. (I've read that lovage improves the health of everything it grows with so I'm not worried about the borage). I thought those planters were a great find because they're only $15 and they're very light in weight. I'm using them to grow the radishes too, and some secret salad greens I'll show you another time.

The Jesus and Mary Chain, "Sowing Seeds"

• Purple tomatillos. I keep missing the window for starting these. They're meant to be started six to eight weeks before the last frost. Next year, etc.

organic purple tomatillo seeds

from Etsy seller cubits

• Sorrento lemons. I mentioned Sorrento lemons recently and I was very sad when Manhattan Fruit Exchange said they didn't have any more and weren't sure when they'd get them again. They're a special variety grown on the Amalfi coast and the ones I bought had such a beautifully bright and true lemon flavor. I've loved lemons all my life, ordinary grocery store lemons, but I don't want to go back to them after having tried these. I want to say they were perfectly tart without being acidic but that would probably sound strange. Anyhow, I saved all the seeds I could (which wasn't many because they had relatively few) and ended up with eight or nine to try to germinate. Unfortunately I'd already planted them according to these instructions when I discovered that other people recommend peeling the seeds first, but I remained hopeful, and for at least two weeks I gazed at their little pot daily with tremendous concentration and affection. I got so impatient that I considered gently exhuming and peeling them, but then I found one more Sorrento lemon in the bottom of my refrigerator, elderly and denuded of its peel, and got an additional four seeds from it. I peeled them carefully as per the new germination regime and tucked  them away under a layer of damp paper towels, and covered their plate tightly with plastic wrap. The exciting news is that after one more week of waiting, an exceptionally humid week here in NYC, both batches of seeds have sprouts! I'm going to give them a little more time, and if more of them succeed I'll seek a good home for the seedlings here on my blog and on the food bloggers' mailing list. For now I'm going to keep making encouraging eyes at what I've got. I'm not sure if anyone else would want them anyhow. Trying to grow Sorrento lemons in Harlem is right down the narrow, bat shit-splattered alley where my container gardening takes place.

my Sorrento lemon seeds sprouting

________________________

1. For the record, I take exception to that link's description of the "fairly large selection of organic, freshly-spritzed vegetables and unbruised fruit" at Commodities; it's expanded over the years and they now have a large selection, period. I've bought all kinds of great produce there, things like fresh tumeric root and little red bananas and seasonal oddities such as ramps and fiddleheads.