Summer greens.

Hello everyone!  I finally have some time to write after a busy summer!  And my oh my have I got a lot of pictures to post.  I will put a caption above each photo saying when, where, and what!!

21.07.2014 - My grandmother's colourful bin.  Bits and pieces snipped off or fallen from plants on her balcony.  (Bavaria)

 23.07.2014 - My first yellow pear tomato of the season.  I don't think I will grow this sort anymore, as even last year the yield I got was very little.  They are however very pretty tomatoes when they do grow!

  27.07.2014 - New Serrano chili plants.  These were packed as if they were matches from a Mexican eatery called "Wahaca" in London.  This little packet was found and gifted to me.  How very cool to give your guests seeds instead of matches to remember your restaurant by.  I got really emotional when I was given them because I thought it was such a wonderful idea!

 27.07.2014 - After the third attempt my Jalapeno pepper plant is finally growing!

27.07.2014 - I bought a tiger stripe tomato plantling from the market, and it has grown really really tall and here are the first little tiger stripes making an appearance!

31.07.2014 - Harvested and ate my kumato tomato, that I grew from a tomato that I bought in the store.  I don't think it was ripe yet when I ate it.  The skin was still a little hard but I was just so impatient!

07.08.2014 - My other grandmother's garden (in Bavaria) in it's peak.  This is a view of her vegetable garden from her shed/summer house outside.  Although my grandmother doesn't like the second picture because it makes her garden look so empty, it shows more of the vegetable side of things that she grows.  (ginkgo, echinacea, rose, quince tree, chives, mangold/chard, plum tree, beans, zucchini, tomato, and many more that I have probably forgotten)

07.08.2014 - Look, some bees enjoying a zucchini flower!  (gran's garden)

07.08.2014 - This is the insane bursting with fruits wine/grape vine she has in the garden.  It is absolutely exploding with grapes which she will use to make jam.  Learned about Bachus the Greek wine god, that supposedly protects and encourages the grapes to grow.

12.08.2014 - Back in Berlin a sunset view over my beloved Tempelhofer Feld.

14.08.2014 - My tiger stripe tomato harvest.  Looking juicy on the vine and off.

16.08.2014 - Now comes our trip to Varazze in Liguria, Italy.  Such amazing plant life there.  So many succulents and cacti as well as citrus fruit trees.  Crazy.  It was a beautiful holiday in the warm warm sun.  There are so many rock dwelling plants it is unreal.

20.08.2014 - Gotta show you guys at least one picture of the sea!

Lemon and orange and lime trees were everywhere.  Although a lot of the lemons didn't seem to be ripe yet.  Apparently the weather hasn't been that great this summer, which could have something to do with it.

This tree is amazing, growing up the cracks of the rock, I have no idea how this happened.  It looks like a normal tree, but maybe it's actually a climber.  Who knows.  Maybe one of you knows?  If you know what kind of tree this is then let me know please!

Sighted on one of our evening strolls, the shop fronts in Liguria are just of many different types of succulents.  Beautiful.

21.08.2014 - As we were flying from our layover in Paris back to Berlin I got some great shots of the sun peaking through the clouds we were just flying through.  I love that space in between the clouds and the atmosphere.  It's magical.

So, after a really long picture post I say goodbye and goodnight.  I hope you have all had a brilliant summer wherever you were.  Thanks for reading, and I wish you all a great start into the week and into what feels like the start of late summer or the beginning of autumn.
..love..

Succulent update.

Here is a short succulent propagation update.  This weekend I decided to pot some of the succulents that have been growing from their leaves.  The leaves have been sitting on a soil bed for months.  Sometimes I mist them with water and sometimes I don't.  They don't need any particular care I find.  Not too much sun and not too little.  What they DO need however is a whole load of sweet sweet time!  :)

-  Here is the soil tray with lots of different succulent leaves on it.  I don't know what half of them are called.  I should probably look into it.

-  I know that the little succulent I planted in the right jar is called a money tree.  The one on the left is some kind of Echeveria but I'm not that sure.

 -  I love planting in jars.  Makes every plant look super cute and hip!  Like it could be some kind of cool accessory.  I mean plants are cool and hip anyway but in jars even more so.

That's all for this week.  Short and point-y!  Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a good week.

..love..

Rain and shine.

- Today is gloomy and rainy, kind of perfect for sitting indoors and writing about things that make me feel warm inside.  I spent my day yesterday reading in the Comenius Garten in Rixdorf, Neukölln.  I was reading, leaning against this statue of Comenius, who was a teacher, educator and writer.  It's really funny that the man who founded this garden and patrols every so often to make sure that nobody is leaving garbage lying around really looks like Comenius.  It's like his ghost is walking around the garden!

The flowers are really blooming in there now, there are all kinds of yellow's, red's, blue's, white's, pink's, and green's around.  Very pretty.

 - My first ripening cucumber!  The last one that I photographed and showed on here shriveled up and fell off.  Now I've got this one which looks like it will go somewhere.

- I haven't talked about my propagating succulents in a long time, so here we go.  As you know I placed the leaves onto a soil bed and little mini succulents started growing out the ends.  I then waited until there was a mini plant on the side to see if I could just rub it off the leaf.  They all just fell of the leaf after they had sucked all the moisture out of it.  And then I finally planted them into an old peanut tin and some normal soil.  Usually succulents have their own soil mix (cactus soil) but I didn't want to have to buy a whole bag of soil.  I am going to keep them on the dry side and not water them too often since there is no drainage in the tin and the soil is pretty absorbent.

- Also, my corn has grown loads already in just a week!  I just hope that they keep growing and bulk out a little bit.  I was told to be careful of them getting leggy, meaning that they don't have enough sunlight and are stretching to where the sun is.  Let's cross our fingers that the growing process will be fine.

- When I was young I got a sprouter either for Christmas or my birthday.  I don't remember which.  Anyway, I was really obsessed with sprouting alfalfa seeds.  I remember vividly taking my purple Hello Kitty lunchbox to school with my supplies for making my sandwiches which were toast, tuna, and alfalfa sprouts.  I can't remember what happened to the sprouter in the end, but I looked online for methods where you don't need a sprouter and found a way of sprouting seeds in jars.  So I tried it with success, and ate my wonderful wonderful alfalfa sprouts last week, on tuna sandwiches of course!

Thanks for reading and have a lovely evening.

..love..

Propagating succulents.

Back again!  I missed last Sunday's blog post because I was busy travelling back to Berlin from London after a wonderful weekend seeing friends.  So finally, here is an update on my propagated succulents.  Look at them!  They are growing little plants on them.  I really did not think that this would work at all.  But I guess all you need is a little patience and time.  

It is soooooooooo exciting!  Also new on the gardening front, I had a bit of an Asian culinary week last week and bought round rice paper to make summer rolls along with udon noodles and lots of fresh vegetables to stir fry.  And decided for the first time to try cooking with lemongrass.  It is a wonderful herb.  I put the lemongrass that I didn't use into a glass of water, and look at these new roots growing!

I LOVE PLANTS.

..love..

Succulents and seedlings

My tupperware greenhouse is doing really well already.  My cucumbers are shooting up, tomatoes, beans and peas are also starting to sprout.  Even my papaya seed is opening up revealing a little white shoot.  I took this picture on Saturday.  Today is Monday and everything is even BIGGER!  I guess it has been a really sunny weekend and being inside a tupperware box on a sunny windowsill is perfect for plant seedlings!

view inside the tupperware box on Saturday the 1st of March

 view inside the tupperware box today the 3rd of March

Today I went to visit the Kakteengärtnerei Matk in Lichtenrade, south Berlin.   They specialise in cacti and succulents which they sell to big shops like Bauhaus.  They had a HUGE selection of different cacti and succulents spread out over 5 or 6 large greenhouses.  It was wonderful.  I left with these two beauties.  A Pacchyphytum oviferum and a Sedum pachyphyllum.  They are really beautiful.  I could have left that place with a lot more succulents but I restrained myself.  What I liked about my purchases is that they look like juicy grapes, and I LOVE grapes!

..love..

Starters and more.

Although I started this blog yesterday I have been taking photos of some of sown seeds before that.  

On the 9th of February I started by sowing chives, spring onions, coriander and putting lemon and papaya seeds in a jar with a moist tissue for germinating.  By the 16th of February the chives, spring onions, and coriander seeds had started sprouting!  The lemon seeds and papaya seeds had started going fuzzy and growing a small layer of mould on them so I wiped the seeds and changed the tissue.

On the 22nd of February I sowed some more seeds.  I sowed cherry tomatoes, kumato tomatoes (seed saved from a store bought kumato), yellow pear tomatoes (seed saved from tomato plant bought in 2013), and salad cucumbers.  These little pots I made from toilet rolls I put into a tupperware box next to some seeds I put in for germinating.  On the moist tissue bed I put bush beans, peas, and sweet pea flowers for germinating.  I put the tupperware box into a really sunny spot in my room and now have to wait to see what happens.  The tupperware box technique has been a success for many years so this will hopefully also be a WIN!

I took a photo of my non-edible plants as well.  (That's a lie, my scotch bonnet is hidden in there)  Look how sunny it is!!!!

To finish off this blog post here is a picture of some leaves from succulents which I collected.  I went to a plant shop and noticed all of these leaves lying on the soil in their plant pots, since I recently learned that one can propagate succulents from their leaves, I decided to take them with me and see if propagation works for me.  I am now letting the ends dry out for a couple of days before I lay them on a soil bed.

I have been reading up about succulent propagation on these two websites, if you're interested you should check them out, they are really wonderful.
http://needlesandleaves.net/blog/2013/5/31/propagating-leggy-succulents
and
http://www.succulentsandsunshine.com/ 

OK then, that's enough for today!

..love..