A few Plant-y Presents for Christmas!

Merry Christmas and a great start to the New Year, first of all!

I hope everyone had a few joyous days during the holidays and has a fun celebration planned for New Year's Eve! I will be getting together at a work friend's house and celebrating with a few people. Christmas was also spent with a good friend's family in typical German style (they celebrate on the 24th over here) - first off tortes and cookies with tea and coffee, then unwrapping gifts, then oil fondue with a few kinds of meat and a variety of vegetable salads and delicious dips. On the 2 official days of Christmas (25th and 26th) I, of course, had to work! So it is! :)

Aaannnyway, my plants here indoors have produced a few surprises in the past few days, so I hope you enjoy the following pictures as well as the remaining few days this year!

My tea plant is blooming! Was NOT expecting that! I think some extra
water and the heat turned on a bit more often did the trick.

After months of growing, a few jalapenos turned RED! Was also not expecting that. I ate one the other day which was very flavorful - it was half red, half green. I guess once again the warm climate indoors caused the change. Still yummy!

This is a new plant added to my collection, the poinsettia (or "christmas star" as they'd say here).
This was a gift this holiday season.

Amsterdam Flower Market (w/ pics)!

As promised, a report of my recent travels!

Despite having lived over here in Europe for over 9 years now and having visited many parts of the continent, there are still a few important cities/areas that I haven't been to yet and are long overdue! Amsterdam being one of them, despite its proximity to where I live! So the idea for a mini-vacation and city-tour was conceived a while ago and finally born last month!

Amsterdam is not only an obvious choice destination for especially young travelers (thanks to its vivid cityscape, red light district, and pot-smoking cafés) but also appeals to the more general traveler thanks to its rich history, famous museums (Van Gogh Museum, Rembrandt House, recently-reopened Rijksmuseum, Anne Frank House, etc.), and world-renowned culture scene (Concertgebouw).

Another highlight, famous to all but a mecca for the gardener, is the Bloemenmarkt! This "floating" flower market is named so due to its location - hover over the canals with some supports on houseboats, totally Amsterdam-style!

As you may assume based on the name, flowers and bulbs are the main focus of this market, but it is a paradise for all gardeners alike - many, many different types of seeds, including exotic seeds, full plants, and even marijuana "starter kits", can be purchased and even packaged for international travel.

Enjoy my pics of the Bloemenmarkt!

a typical flower stand - look at how deep it is, and PACKED with seeds!

seeds, bulbs, more seeds and bulbs

cut flowers for sale, great selection...

...even cabbage blooms sold as cut flowers! pretty!

flowers, palms, and cannabis starter kits

the obvious pick: Dutch tulips...what which to choose?

more bulbs: amaryllis

more bulbs: zantedeschia

and some monster-esque bulbs!

live plants (here bonsai)

the ceiling of this shop at the end of the market was to die for, like heaven - a ceiling of pink (dried) flowers!!!

Mystery Vegetable: Savoy Cabbage

First off, thanks to you all for checking back! I have been really busy starting a new phase at work and doing a little traveling (check again soon for relevant posts about that! :) but will try to post more often now if I can!

Now winter is starting to (very slowly) peek its toes out from underneath the warm covers of mid-fall, the assortment of vegetables that I am getting in my weekly CSA box is definitely adjusting to suit the season. This week I got a very typical German vegetable that I know we have in the States, but I at least never would have purchased! What would you do with a...

Savoy Cabbage

savoy cabbage

The Brassica oleracea var. sabauda L. or Savoy Cabbage Group is a fall and winter vegetable that is quite popular over here in Germany especially around the Christmas season - "wirsing" is mostly cooked with scallions and garlic and is either served with sausages or as a side to duck, deer, or any wild game for the holidays (along with potatoes, of course!). It is a variety of the same species as kale, or "grünkohl" in German, but unlike kale, does form a head. The texture is the same, and I think they also taste the same. 

These heavy heads of green are not only a nice side dish for the winter season but are also very good for you for several reasons! Leafy greens are thought to help prevent cancer, probably due to their high fiber content, which also helps you stay full for longer and aids in digestion. Savoy cabbage as well as kale are also high in Vitamin C (wow!) and Vitamin K.

Another increasingly popular way to prepare kale and thus savoy cabbage is to make chips! I have done this once, but I used too much oil so the chips gotta kinda soppy quickly. The preparation is pretty simple, though, and something different to try. Have fun with this recipe from Food Network and invent your own ways to eat savoy cabbage!

Kale Chips

Ingredients
- 1 head kale, washed and thoroughly dried (important! otherwise the chips will not be crispy!)
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- Sea salt, for sprinkling

Directions
Preheat the oven to 275°F.
Remove the ribs from the kale and cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces. Lay on a baking sheet and toss with the olive oil and salt. Bake until crisp, turning the leaves halfway through, about 20 minutes.

What to do with your leftover or unripe fall harvest...

my CSA green tomatoes

Fall is definitely in full swing, and I love it! There are so many great things about fall...enjoying the crisp air, bundling up with cozy sweaters and warm drinks, harvesting the fruits of your labor on hot summer days in your garden...and of course enjoying the fall recipes that celebrate your ripe and (hopefully) plentiful harvest!

Sometimes, however, it gets cold pretty quickly and your vegetables don't have time or the warmth to ripen before frost sets in, but don't despair! There are still some beloved recipes that safely use unripened vegetables that are delicious and one-of-a-kind, specific to the fall season, such as this one below! You don't have to let your vegetables go to waste!

Since my balcony harvest was very minimal due to the scaffolding that I've mentioned before, I had asked my CSA if they would at all be able to get me a few pounds of green tomatoes to make this recipe that I miss every fall,making sure to explain that they are just unripe red tomatoes. They asked their farmers and my wish was granted, so a recent delivery included some green tomatoes that I used for this pie (otherwise unable to find and purchase here anywhere...)! This is a simple and delicious recipe (one of my fall favs!) very similar to my mom's version...for those who are skeptical, it really doesn't taste like tomatoes, it has it's own mild flavor. If you're from the southern States, you probably have had fried green tomatoes before and this is nothing new to you!

green tomato pie

Green Tomato Pie

Pastry for 9-inch pie (top and bottom)
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar
5 tbsp. flour
1 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
4 c. thinly sliced green tomatoes
1 tbsp. white vinegar or lemon juice

(1 tsp. grated lemon peel)
1 tbsp. butter

Mix sugars, flour and spices. Arrange a layer of tomato slices on the bottom of pie shell. Sprinkle with 3 or 4 tablespoons of the sugar mixture. 

Continue alternating layers until the pie shell is full. Sprinkle any remaining sugar mixture on top and dot with butter. Sprinkle lemon rind and vinegar on top. Put top crust on, cut slits in the top crust for ventilation, and bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes or until brown (the ingredients start to bubble out of the slits). Optional: add a crust protector or put foil over the outer edge of the crust for the last 15-20 minutes of baking to prevent the crust from burning.

yum, yum, yuuuuuummmm!

Enjoy!

The Garden - a movie about an innercity garden and the fight to keep it

So...just in time for the upcoming weekend, I have a movie recommendation for all you gardeners out there...

The Garden

Get inspired and feel the strife of gardeners trying to hold onto their family traditions!


The Garden (2008) is a documentary about the demolition of the South Central urban farm and community garden in an industrial area of Los Angeles, CA, and is one of the biggest urban farms in the USA. It follows the story of what this inner-city garden means to the families that work the land and how each family's garden plot is part of their livelihood and family tradition. Due to a terribly unfortunate backdoor land ownership dispute, the state evicts the farmers from this land that they have farmed for years, after which demonstrations ensue in an attempt to save the land. A few celebrities also appear on the families' behalves.

To find out if the farm gets bulldozed or if they get to keep their land, watch the film!

Here's a trailer to see what it's about:

Jalapeno Update

After a long and drawn-out battle against the aphids, my jalapeno plants are finally starting to bloom and produce chilis!! So exciting!

I still have to spray the plants, especially the blooms (yes, even inside the flowers), with water about every other day, depending on how many aphids I see, as well as wipe off any aphids on the undersides of the leaves. Talk about tender loving care - these plants are spoiled! Almost daily care! But it does make me happy to see that my efforts are finally paying off and becoming fruitful...

Also placed one of my two habanero plants outside, too, where it's a bit cooler - this has worked in the past to force blooms. Am keeping one indoors to be safe!

one of my purple jalapeno plants

...with purple flowers!

the normal green jalapeno plants are flowering too, especially my larger one

...and the first pepper is growing! Hurray! Finally!

More updates on these later, hopefully I will then have 3 varieties of peppers to photograph for you!

Hamburg Botanical / Loki-Schmidt Garden (+ pics)

So.....I had a few visitors staying at my place this week, which explains the lack of posts! But we did do something garden-y here in Hamburg (Germany), which I would like to show you!

There are actually 2 locations of the botanical gardens in Hamburg, one in Klein Flottbek and one in Planten un Blomen, the main park downtown near the university. It's actually a pretty nice park...there are areas for kids, a concert pavilion, a few cafés, some water shows in the evenings, and of course some nice beds, like the rose garden. The park, as I just mentioned, is also home to the greenhouse part of the botanical garden.

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the greenhouses - there were multiple houses for each climate zone (tropical, desert, etc.) and all the plants looked great! There were even lots of blooming cacti, no easy task to accomplish. And the bang for your buck was astonishing (thanks to its cooperation with the university): entrance was FREE! Waaay cool!

I only had my phone with my to take pictures, but I think they turned out alright - hope you enjoy some highlights of the greenhouses!

the park grounds outside of the green house

the different houses! tropics, desert, ferns, etc.

polka dots!

a very weird tropical seed/flower stem

the famous insectivorous pitcher plant!

some art students doing drawings in the desert house

one of those gorgeous flowering cacti!

a succulent with a huge flower

love the spiky dark green with the yellow flower pop

love the red needles

cool succulents

a fern! striking black stem!

carnivorous plants display - insects stick, fall, drown, are clamped, etc.!

fuschia!

we thought this one looked like a tumor...or a monster... :)

Mystery Vegetable: Fennel

This is one that I'm just really not that familiar with, and was never very aware of. One that never really seemed all that appealing and kind of rare. One that I probably have seen at the store, but never really caught my interest. One that has a kinda furry top, reminiscent of dill. One that is...

Fennel

2 fennel bulbs

These two fennel bulbs were part of my recent CSA box delivery, so it became time to venture into fennel territory! But in which direction?

Fennel, or Foeniculum vulgare (I find it amusing that "vulgar" is in the latin name, makes you wonder...), is also commonly used in seed form in baking and cooking, more so in India and Mediterranean/middle Eastern dishes. Its pretty little yellow flowers make it a nice addition to flowering beds, and its foliage is often used here in Germany in tea form to aid in digestion. The bulb itself is also popularly eaten in salads here in Germany and has a anise or licorice flavor. It is also one of the main 3 herbs used to flavor absinthe, that green alcoholic substance popular in Europe. Didn't know that!

So how to make fennel then? I had a recipe from a friend for fennel soup, which consisted of cooking the sliced bulbs with vegetable bouillon and onion and the pureeing. This was actually really good, in a way reminiscent of potato soup (maybe I haven't had potato soup for a while...).

Besides helping with digestion (to get things flowing and prevent flatulence), fennel also has a bit of Vitamin C, Manganese and Potassium.

So if you're looking for something new to try, give fennel a shot! Love it or leave it!

Window Sill Compost: Did it work?

my window sill compost

That's the question now, did my window sill compost project even work?!

Hard to say! To be honest, this was not an actual compost pile since it was not exposed to insects, heat, and moisture as a "normal" compost pile would be (remember I live in the city), so there was no real degradation that took place, outside of the drying of the ingredients.

Nevertheless, I assume that while it may have had different effects, that it had at least some sort of effect on my plants. What you see pictured above is the end result of the ingredients dried, crushed, and mixed together. I then mixed this in with the soil in each pot. If nothing else, this should have provided my soil with a lot of nitrogen, potassium, calcium, and other trace minerals.

Due to the construction project on my building, my vegetables are less than ideal this year, so it's really hard to say if the compost helped or not, but I like to think it did!

I just stumbled upon this article on Apartment Therapy about making an odorless "true" compost bin for indoors, something to consider for next year.

How about you - have you tried adding food scraps to your planters and had either success or regrets?

Exotic Plants: Grow your own tea!

So I was sitting at work in our canteen on break one evening with some colleagues, drinking the tea I always bring (whole-leaf green tea), and a friend who knew I had a balcony garden asked if my tea came from my balcony too! I at first chuckled, but after digging around on the internet some, I came to the conclusion: WHY THE HECK NOT?!

What I hadn't realized before was that green, white, oolong, and black teas all come from the same plant, that being the Camellia Sinensis! Who would have though! Wow! There are 2 varieties, the var. sinensis and var. assamica, one being broad-leaved and one narrow-leaved. What makes the different kinds/flavors of tea is how the leaves themselves are processed, basically the conditions and amount of time under which the leaves are dried and oxidized. Of course the region on which the plants are grown affects the flavor as well!

my Camellia Sinensis var. sinensis, about 1 foot tall

So after realizing how cool that would be to grow my own tea, I did some snooping around and found a company that ships tea plants. Wasn't sure how that was going to work out, but I figured it was worth a shot - was around 7€ ($10). It came all wrapped up with foliated cardboard and in a big box. All was well!

It's been several months now since it arrived, and it is still doing well! It's gotta lots of new leaves, too. I guess at some point I'm going to have to prune it back - fully grown it can get up to 3 yards tall, too high for my apartment!

some new leaves!

For now I'm keeping it indoors on the windowsill facing my balcony (southwest), which is fairly warm and dry, which it seems to like.

Of course I'm super anxious to make some tea, but I think I'd better just be patient and wait until the plant gets bigger :-)

leaf close-up

In the meantime, The Fragrant Leaf is a nice website that I found on the history of tea, how to best brew tea, tea customs and cultures, types of tea, etc.

At the International Garden Show, which I recently attended, I also bought some tea seeds! They're pretty big, look kinda like a hazelnut. Can't wait to see if I can get them to germinate and prosper as well! 

Mystery Vegetable: The Non-Orange Carrot

So, back to some more vegetable posts!

This week's mystery vegetable is not so much a mystery as just a unique and rare one, one(s) that I've never seen in the store and have never purchased myself, a bit of a novelty if you will, it's...

The Non-Orange Carrot!
Yup! I don't know if it's true, but this site claims that ALL carrots were originally purple until the late 16th century! At this point supposedly Dutch farmers cultivated the orange carrots, mostly derived from the "mutated" golden and white carrots, partially for political reasons and partially due to the sweeter taste.

purple carrots I got in my CSA box this past week

I thought these tasted a lot like orange carrots, but are prettier and a little sweeter - they have an orange center that is very nice!

Supposedly, purple carrots are even healthier than the orange ones, thanks to their coloring. This is given by the pigment anthocyanins, which also colors blueberries and acts as an antioxidant, and can also help memory and vision, prevent heart attacks, promote weight loss, etc etc etc. Hurray for pigmentation!

some white/golden carrots I got a few weeks ago in my CSA box

I thought these carrots tasted a bit milder than a normal carrot, but also with an ever-so-slight, very faint hint of parsnip taste. Maybe it was just my imagination, though. At any rate, I enjoyed the purple ones a little more, if I had to choose.

And don't forget carrots are PACKED full of Vitamin A and beta-carotene! Enjoy raw with a little veggie dip!

Int'l Garden Show Impressions: Patterns, Colors, and More Pics

Patterns are important to any kind of good landscaping, be it how you lay the stones on your walkway, how far apart the bushes are spaced in your yard, or which patches of flowers go where in your garden. There's patterns everywhere in every day life, too - just take a look around!

I often enjoy photographing patterns...I guess it's just soothing in a way to see structure, symmetry and flow of the individual parts and how they look together. It makes whatever it is you are focusing your camera at seem perfect. It can also be quite interesting to center your picture on the one object or part that is different from the rest of the pattern, an unevenness or break in the pattern, so to say.

Patterns in nature are even more fascinating - how these came into being! You gotta love them! And the colors!!

On that note, please enjoy some patterns that caught my eye at the show, a rainbow of pattern glory:

LOVE that flaming red!

just the blooms floating on water

cacti in the continents exhibit

a sort of random pattern

love these blue hydrangeas!

these hydrangeas almost look frosted, wow!

Lots of colors to whet my palette!

Hope you've enjoyed my impressions and highlights of the IGS!