Tomatoes as houseplants

Two Wheels Urban Farm Update

Spring is here and the transplants are going! So far we have peppers, eggplants, tomatillos, onions, leeks, and lettuce. Hopefully our spring will dry out a bit and give me some pre-season time to prepare the beds for transplanting (transplanting is my favorite time of the year!).

Leek sprouts

Indoor Tomatoes

This winter I set up a light and shelving system for growing the urban farm's transplants this spring. I did some testing back in December with tomato plants and afterwards decided I couldn't throw out all of these healthy, beautiful plants, so I kept a single cherry tomato. The variety I kept was a Sunburst, which is indeterminate-- this means that it will continue to flower and grow new stems over time. Hypothetically, unless my plant gets diseased or I forget to water it, it should last indefinitely, just like your everyday house plant. I have my friend Lea to thank for her inspiration. She told me about a tomato plant living indoors in Alaska, and I realized there is no reason I can't make this work!

Interested in growing your own indoor tomato? Here are some steps to help you.

The pot I used is 10 inches across and 5 inches deep. I would think you could go quite a bit larger, but you definitely don't need to use a large pot. 

Transplant your seedling into very light soil or soiless planting mix. I used what I had around at the time, which is a soiless seedling mix. Anything light should work, since the objective is to keep the roots aerated.

I water my plant every day or two when the soil starts to dry (this depends on the size of the plant and how sunny and warm it's been) and I fertilize once a week with a water soluble organic vegetable fertilizer.

South-facing window.

Your plant should live in a south-facing window if at all possible. Even with this set up, because the winter is so dark here (the sun is very low in the horizon and there are a lot of cloudy days) I still need to keep some supplementary lights going during the day. I used two 18" grow bulbs in shop light fixtures (I picked up these lights with the fixtures for about $15 each at the hardware store). I keep the lights on from 6am until 10pm. But now that it's spring, there is a lot of light so I don't need to use them.

Your indeterminate tomato plant will need some kind of physical support-- this could be a traditional tomato cage or you could tie it up to a window.

The flowers will need a little help to become pollinated!

Lastly, and most importantly, how do you get fruit? At first I had flowers but no fruit. Then I realized that there were no insects flying into my flowers to spread the pollen around. In order to mimic those bugs, once you have flowers on your plant, give the flowers a gentle shake once a day to get that pollen spread around!

Starting to ripen...

Ready to eat!

If you decide to grow an indoor tomato, let me know how it goes!

The ugly side of winter and Parrot Flower Power

Typically winters in the upper Midwest are snowy, with many bright days and surprisingly bright nights, when the snow reflects all of the light and makes midnight look like daytime. This is especially pleasant to view if you have an outdoor hot tub available.

But this winter we have had some oddly warm days followed by normally cold temperatures, resulting in melted snow turning to ice.

The low spot in my yard collected all of the melting snow and then froze into a solid mass of dirty ice (unfortunately, I have to cross this twice a day to check on the hens-- Yaktrax really do help).

It's hard to believe it with the mini glacier in my yard, but planting starts next month (indoors) so I've started working on my planting plan. (A sneak peak at the 2017 season will be in the blog next week!)

For now, my new toy!


Parrot Flower Power

The Flower Power is a small, waterproof, indoor/outdoor sensor that gives real time (as well as historical) information on a plant's growing environment. I decided to try one out because we needed temperature information under the indoor lighting system. There is a slick app to run this Bluetooth enabled device, so I can sit in the living room and watch tv while checking on the plants. Not only does it track temperature, it also monitors light intensity, fertility, and moisture. The only thing it's missing is the ability to monitor humidity.

The Flower Power is set up to monitor the conditions for a specific type of plant. In the app, the user designates the plant type and the advice given is species-specific.

The app's display is easy to understand and the reminders to water and fertilize are handy.

The Flower Power has been fun to play with, especially with my tomato plant. The light I'm using isn't really bright enough for tomatoes (they need very intense light), but it's good enough that I do have some baby tomatoes-- fingers crossed some of them mature! Luckily, the lights work great for growing baby salad greens!

Baby tomato and a flat of salad mix.

Baby greens with some lovely organic tomatoes from the co-op. A 10" x 20" flat of densely seeded salad mix gave us 10 side salads. And the baby greens are so cute! I've never seen anything like them for sale.

So for now, I'm thinking ahead to spring weather, but keeping my fingers crossed for some nice, new snow for fat biking before the winter is over. I'm also enjoying my last 45 flexible winter days, because once I start growing transplants, the fun doesn't stop until fall!

Indoor/Outdoor

Last of the outdoor harvests

The upper Midwest is getting a very late start to winter this year, so I was able to harvest salad greens and kale through end of November! But it's freezing at night more consistently now, and this week our hardy Swiss chard finally gave in to the cold. So even though tomorrow is supposed to be up close to 50F, I'm calling it-- winter is here! Time to bring in the last of the fall veggies.

These are the Short 'n Sweet variety of carrot that does well in shallow beds or heavy soil. They are also very sweet and I like to roast them whole.

The hens love eating the leftovers and scraps! I'm also working to winterize the chicken run with plastic on the north and west sides to protect from wind and blowing snow.

Last of the outdoor greens. Frost-sweetened and delicious! I could use a double walled tunnel to continue to grow outdoors, but since I have the space and interest, I have decided to move production inside for the rest of the winter.

Oregano has been a very productive herb. It is very hardy, disease resistant, and saves beautifully. I harvested it today, picked off any bad leaves, washed it and air dried it on a towel.

Then I then bunched it up and hung it to dry. Once it's dry (a week or two), I'll break up the leaves with my fingers and put it in an airtight container.

Setting up and testing out the new indoor grow space

I've always had an interest in indoor growing-- greenhouses have been a part of my entire adult life until very recently. But since we currently don't have a greenhouse, I'm exploring indoor options. The main purpose of this growing space will be for seed starting. It will allow us to save money on plants (seeds are much cheaper to buy than seedlings) and will allow us to produce interesting and more well-adapted varieties on the urban farm.

The new lights reflect a lot of the light produced, saving energy and providing the bright light needed for young plants.

The test basil is looking good! I can't wait to eat it!

Another test is with tomato seeds/seedlings. We want to make sure our transplants next spring are sturdy and healthy, so I'm looking at different distances between plants and lights.

I've also started growing lettuce indoors for my own wintertime salads. Perhaps someday I'll be able to produce enough to sell. For now I'll share it with dinner guests! 

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! It's a great time of year to visit family, catch up with friends, or spend some time with yourself doing something that you love!

Microgreens all winter long

When my outdoor harvest was completed late last fall and my last collard plant was composted, I felt a sense of loss--the cold winter was really on its way--and I immediately started missing all the fresh greens from my garden. Luckily I had discovered a fantastic resource called The Urban Farm Podcast. I love this podcast and have listened weekly all winter, storing ideas in my brain for how to improve and expand my urban farm.

One of the guests on the podcast around the darkest time of the winter was Peter Burke, who wrote a book called Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening on how to grow microgreens easily indoors all year long. I had seen local microgreens in the grocery store for around $5 for a pint. If I could grow my own, it would not only give us healthy winter food, it would be a way to keep my garden going, so it was worth a try. All I needed was a window sill, seeds, seed starting soil mix, newspaper, and some aluminum bread pans.



I found the seeds at my local garden store, and the brand I purchased has instructions inside the seed packets. They have a great selection of different varieties at this store, so I was able to try a lot of different options. My favorite turned out to be sunflower for general salad use, though the Savory Mix (a mix of radish, chard, mustard, cabbage, etc.) is very good on my Microgreen Caprese Salad:



The directions I follow are very simple. Mr. Burke's book and the seed packets gives additional information.

1) Soak seeds in a small cup of water for a few hours (I usually do this for just 2-4 hours). Start with two tablespoons of the smaller seeds or three tablespoons of sunflower seeds. Adjust for your next planting based on how dense your greens were.

2) Fill bread pan 2-3 inches deep with seed starting mix and water until it feels like a damp sponge.

3) After soaking, spread seeds over moist soil in a single layer. The seeds should be very crowded.

4) Cut a few sheets of newspaper to fit your pan. Get these wet and lay on top of the seeds. (I tried using a layer of dry soil over the seeds, and it creates very dirty microgreens, so this step is very important!).

5) You can then put the bread pan in the dark or in the window (though it will dry out faster in the window). Either way, keep the newspaper moist until the sprouts start to push the newspaper up.

6) Once the cotyledons have emerged, discard the newspaper, make sure the pan is in your sunniest location, and keep it moist.

7) To harvest, use scissors and cut the greens close to the soil. I let mine get 2-4 inches tall (6-10 days after planting), but I harvest them before they get their first true leaves. Bonus: you can then compost the soil and roots.

8) Microgreens can be stored in the fridge for a couple of days (don't wash them before storing, however).

Some money saving tips:

• I found the aluminum bread pans at the dollar store (3 for $1).
• Because my family eats so many sunflower microgreens (I start a new tray almost daily so we can have a salad for dinner) I bought organic sunflower birdseed instead of the more expensive packets of human seeds. I save a ton of money and then I can spend more on the non-sunflower microgreen seed mixes. Just don't tell your friends you're feeding them bird seed.
• Some of the instructions I've seen on the web mention using fertilizer. I don't use fertilizer.
• Also, many of the web instructions talk about "bright light" in your sunny window. In Wisconsin we don't have very sunny winters, and the sun is low in the sky even on the brightest days, and my microgreens do just fine.

I ran right out after the podcast and started microgreen farming that day, so don't be afraid to experiment first and learn the intricacies later!

My birdseed salad right before harvest: