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! 

I'm so mad I could kill 1,000 aphids....

...so I did! Those little *#"§()&?!-ers!!!!!

Since I've been home from my vacation, I've been a bit worried about my chili pepper plants. Although some are getting buds and have even produced some flowers, the new leaves all do not look very healthy - kinda shriveled (not in a lack-of-water kind of way), and even have spotty discoloration:

....jalapeno that I have indoors now

At first I attributed at least the spotting to construction damage (see recent post), but upon closer inspection I discovered:

APHIDS!!!!!! Those stupid little *+"!"§$%!"§! Look at them all on there!!!

  

And of course on the backs of the leaves, too. I mean, just look at all of them on there! Greedy buggers! Groooossss! 

so many....right at the sweet center! eeww!

Of course they go for the good stuff, the nice, new, sweet, tender little buds and flowers. They would do that.

But they can kiss the good times goodbye - I just took action, a sort of balcony genocide if you will (did I really just say that?!)

How to get rid of aphids:

Step One: Power-blast them off with soapy water (I used a hand sprayer and a water/dish soap mix).

Step Two: Swab the rest off (carefully!) with a soapy paper towel. I just sprayed the mix on the towel and wiped off the tops and bottoms of the leaves, not forgetting the stems too.

Step Three: Hope that lasts a while and my plants survive all the soap exposure :) If they come back, I will probably just try spraying with water to see how long that lasts.

These aphids appear to be the monophagous kind, feeding only on one species, in this case my chili peppers. At least they aren't spreading to devour all my plants, and are fairly easy to keep under control (I hope?!) since I have a small garden. I think the plants wanted a little TLC anyway!

The powerful micro-what?: Microgreens!

 ...see? I did come back again sooner! :)

Today's post is about a sort-of new type of harvest, the microgreen! I've only recently learned what they are, and love the idea!

Microgreens...
...are basically just entire plants harvested as seedlings, mostly used to add flavor to dishes and salads, garnish plates and soups, and mix in with spreads and dips!

Microgreens are comprised of either a single variety of vegetable planted densely together, or a mixture of varieties, such as the microgreen packet I bought that consisted of red beets, radishes, cabbage, kohlrabi, pak choi, and swiss chard. Depending which greens you use, the mix can be quite spicy and full of flavor, and differentiate themselves from sprouts in that they are harvested larger and need light and soil to grow rather than just water.

Microgreens are great for indoor or balcony gardeners since they take up little space!! They are also ready to eat within 1-2 weeks, allowing for multiple harvests in your average outdoor season. They are harvested after the first leaves have developed, so at about 1-3 inch length - just cut them all off, wash, and add to your salad or sandwich!

my microgreens (before the construction dust got to them)!

Microgreens are also very nutritious! They can contain up to 40 times higher levels of important nutrients than the mature vegetables, says realfarmacy. Think stem cells - these buggers are concentrated!

NPR also agrees that microgreens are way more packed with nutrients than the full versions and are not only safer than sprouts but offer a burst of taste to top off your dishes. I have used my microgreens in place of sprouts several times and love it!


If you can't find a package of microgreens at your local garden center (mine didn't even know what microgreens were!), don't despair - you can just make it yourself! Toss equal amounts of various vegetable seeds over your pot or plot of soil and cover with a light dusting of dirt. Don't be afraid to fill the surface more than you would with normal seedlings since you won't have to thin them out - they'll be harvested small. Or just try a single variety and enjoy the flavors individually first.

Have fun experimenting and eat up those phytonutrients!

top view of a patch of my microgreens - planted too thinly though, it was my first time!

Pictures / Overview of this year's balcony vegetable garden so far!

This year's balcony vegetable garden so far!

So! I'll get right to it, the moment you've been waiting for - I present: this year's vegetable garden, balcony-style!

Here you can also see the approx. size of my balcony. I wanted to leave room for a table and 2 chairs, as well as for not only the plants to grow, but spots for more pots, such as some chili plants that are not ready to go outside yet. I got a few plants transplanted this week (zucchinis, tomatoes, chilis), and seeds out last week, and as you can see, some have already come up! Exciting! It's been pretty crappy weather lately, pretty rainy and not all that warm, but I'm hoping things will shape up soon and I will see some germination in my peas and pole beans.

Herbs (from left to right): lemon balm, cilantro, mint; chives, rosemary, parsley; oregano, sage, thyme. The far left pot are plants I bought and transplanted, as well as was the rosemary, since mine didn't survive the winter after all.

My lettuce was a paper band of seed, with 3 varieties of leaf lettuce: Batavia Lettuce "Teide", Leaf Lettuce "Grand Rapids", and Leaf Lettuce "Lollo Bionda". Three kinds in one planter, it's great! And the bands make it really easy to plant.

I also now prefer red onions (here "piroska") because of their milder flavor, which are also great picked and eaten as green onions!

I decided to try something else new this year, micro greens, here the "mild mix - Brassica and Amaranthus", from Botanical Interests! I'd seen a package at the seed store last summer, and it just seemed appetizing. It's basically a mix of various seeds (such as red beets, cabbage, kohlrabi, pak choi, and swiss chard) that are meant to be planted together and harvested once they reach about 1-3 inches. I'm hoping they all grow at the same rate! I may also let them get a little bigger. They'll be great to top salads, in sandwiches, or on crackers with cream cheese!

The only other non-standard items are my pole beans - they are purple ones, which also bear pretty purple flowers. They are pretty much the same consistency when ripe of a normal green bush bean, but are deep purple in color. Here, "blauwschediger spek".

Here's how my window sill inside (right next to my balcony) is looking so far:

Here you can see a few chili plants (jalapeno, purple jalapeno) in the front, a basil plant, an aloe vera plant (which won't go outside), and my greenhouse, which is home to an extra tomato plant and my "white lightning" habanero chilis, which seem to be growing very slowly. I suspect they need a lot of heat, so I'm keeping them in the greenhouse as long as possible. I'm also glad I decided to keep a jalapeno and purple jalapeno plant indoors - the ones outside are looking a bit beaten up, probably due to wind and cold temps. Plus, something ate off a few leaves on both plants! I don't think it was my cat, so bird? Squirrel??

Things are definitely shaping up in my edible balcony paradise, now let's all hope for some warmth!

First Planting of the Season + Lemonade on the Balcony...

check out those blue and white stripes!

I couldn't resist - I can't wait any longer ..... for SPRING! :)


Today was actually a sunny day and although it's 46°F, it's not terribly windy and actually fairly pleasant for being outside - which means I got started on preparing my balcony for the new season by giving it a spring cleaning!

1. Make lemonade (see above) for this thirsty gardener: juice lemon, add lemon & juice plus 2 Tbs sugar to a shaker. Add some ice cubes, fill to 3/4 full with cold water, and shake!
2. Cut off dead parts of any plants that survived the winter (aka some herbs)
3. Remove dead plants from pots (left them out over winter for the birds and the like to forage in)
4. Remove leaves and such from balcony, still need to wash the floor so my cat can go out there and not bring the dirt inside!
5. Removed some old soil from the pots.
6. Transferred last year's bean soil (see last post) to other pots.
7. Re-potted some flowers I bought: they are both Primula Vulgaris, a type of primrose. The blue one really caught my eye - it's called "zebra blue". Love it paired up with the orange!



my happy lemon balm :)

8. Gave my lemon balm a new home - doesn't it look happy?

More cleaning up to come, and tons of planting of course! Keep checking back! 

Deadly Alive

While I cannot do any outdoor gardening yet, I am still astonished at how well some of my indoor plants are doing! My apartment is fairly warm and dry (at least compared to other ones in the city here), with moderate natural light coming from a large living room window over my balcony, which seems to be favoring tropical and desert plants right now!

I've been wondering for while what this plant (right) is for a while now...I got it as a small (almost) seedling with about 3 leaves and only about a foot tall a year or two ago, and now it's doing very well, about 3 feet tall! As far as I can tell it is a variety of Dieffenbachia, or "dumb cane", which is a tropical plant that loves wet ground, semi-warm air, and moderate lighting (perfect for my place!), which would explain why it's flourishing. At one point it started losing its bottom leaves, but I repotted it into a container with better drainage, and off it went!

What I also discovered online was - this plant is highly poisonous! Geez! Luckily I've stopped my cat from chewing on it before he made a habit of it, but good to know! Here are a few tips if you would also like your dumb cane to do better: http://www.guide-to-houseplants.com/dumb-cane.html

And surprisingly enough, I actually have another plant that is flourishing on my living room window sill and is also poisonous:

Yep, the aloe plant! While is juice soothes burns, it is supposedly poisonous to injest. I say supposedly because although I don't want to test it out, my cat has indeed eaten this plant (when I was gone once) almost completely down to its roots - I really thought it was gone, but I continued to water it and hope for the best - look at it just today! Starting to outgrow its pot (again!) and growing lots of new sprouts!

Aloe has always seemed fairly easy to grow, and especially loves sitting here on the window sill because it gets lots of light and is directly over the heater - a built-in desert climate.

And luckily my cat is still around to tell about it, maybe he didn't eat enough to be lethal....needless-to-say, the plant is blocked off from a certain orange-furred predator....