It's a Splendid Sparkle Season Down on the BathroomFarm!

Probably no one else in the world thinks this is the perfect time of the year to start a garden. That's what makes indoor growing so unique. In the particular circumstances of my BathroomFarm, I can take advantage of the extra light from increasing sunlight flooding through my south-facing windows and the subsequent natural increase of daytime heating and nighttime cooling to create an optimum situation for my garden to grow. This is truly the ideal time for me to get a start on my new garden!

This is also the time of the year when the northern hemisphere celebrates the return of the sun and the renewal of life. So, on the solstice this year, I hung my minigreenhouses on the BathroomFarm wall with care with the hopes that my lush garden would soon be there! Too bad there's not a mythical being - or at least a roving band of benevolent garden gnomes - who will come and plant it for me. I got down and dirty and sowed seeds on Sparkle Season Sunday to get it going myself.

On the 2014 bucket list for the BathroomFarm is perfecting the art of growing food from food. I thought I'd start experimenting with potatoes since other people have had success growing them in all kinds of atypical situations. I don't have the space to stack tires in my bathroom, so I invented a "tater sack" from a wire hanger, severed tights leg, duct tape and safety pins! I can roll down more of the stocking and add dirt as the potatoes grow. Theoretically. Gosh. I really hope this works because I would like to have a stocking element in this holiday celebration in my garden.

I made some changes in my soil mix this year, too. I am using basic dollar store dirt amended with perlite (because I liked it better than vermiculite), worm poo, and sphagnum moss. Sphagnum moss is NOT sphagnum PEAT moss. It is the plant that eventually becomes peat moss which is mined and damages the environment. Sphagnum moss is renewable, grown and dried and has the same properties as the peat form. The only change is that I has to crunch it up into smaller pieces with my fingers to add it to my mix.

So I selected the seeds from my stash and soaked some of the larger ones to give them a little jumpstart and proceeded to plant my new crops. I transplanted some purple pepper seedlings I started awhile ago and planted my tater sack. I direct sowed radishes, carrots and collards into containers. My collards grow in pots on a chilly window sill and truly do love this time of the year! In my little greenhouses, I started mint, spoon X piccolo hybrid tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes, Minnesota midget melons, lemon cucumber, globe pepper, lettuce, cilantro, Swiss chard, and purple beans! I have discovered by trial and mostly error, that many of these container-grown plants like to be started and later transplanted instead of direct sown.

So here's to a Happy and Prosperous New Year, Y'all, from Down on the BathroomFarm as we nurture good things from the past and make room for everything new!

shhhh...Here are my TOP SECRET transit/walking directions to The Growing Places Indy Farm Stand at The Chase Legacy Center

NOTE: DO NOT FOLLOW MY SHORTCUT DIRECTIONS. There is a new gate at the entrance to the real estate where the Farm Stand is located and it is locked! You have to walk the ridiculously long distance to the Oriental Street entrance and all the way back to the Chase Legacy Center building. Transit riders can get off and board at the 10th & Oriental Street stop and walk south to enter the real estate. It is a longer walk this way, too. Driving to the location is the best option. Apparently, the best solution for dealing with the food desert situation in the 46201 is to drive. But. Wait. Isn't one of the situations that define a food desert in the first place connected to lack of access to a car? And, another one has to do with the distance to the food, right? See. This is why persons with low incomes opt to spend their resources on junk food at convenience and dollar stores in this neighborhood. 

OK. This BathroomFarmer is all about playing by the rules most of the time but going blocks and blocks out of her way to follow driving instructions is out of the question. One of the best things I've learned by walking my green talk is the art of the shortcut and here's how to get to the Growing Places Indy Farm Stand at The Chase Legacy Center on the Arsenal Technical High School campus in Indianapolis.

The biggest challenge about finding out there is a Farm Stand just one block from my house as the bird flies is the fact that The Chase Legacy Center entrance according to the driving directions is more than 1/2 mile away because of the multiple school compound next to my neighborhood. I was playing by the rules and walking down Michigan Street toward Oriental Street but was led into temptation at Arsenal Avenue and decided to enter, OK maybe trespass is more accurate, at the drop dead gorgeous Arsenal Technical High School guard shack entrance.

[I want to add right now, that in the event this wonderful tiny house ever goes missing in the middle of the night, I know absolutely nothing about it.]

I was being conscientious and actually did knock on the door like the sign said. But no one was there. No one meaning the armed school police. So I decided to trust my luck and hope no one would actually shoot the old lady with her shopping cart and started to stroll across campus when I encountered a nice lady driving an Indianapolis Public School truck who rescued me and drove a-l-l the way around to the other side of the campus to where I needed to be.

DO NOT TRY TO ENTER FROM MICHIGAN STREET. IT'S A REALLY LONG WALK. TAKE MY SHORTCUT FROM TENTH STREET INSTEAD!

If you are walking your green talk and taking public transportation to the Farm Stand, both Routes 10 and 11 pass the corner of  10th Street and Newman. Buses run 4 times per hour at this stop so it's one of the quickest and easiest trips to and from downtown Indy in our whole transit system. The automated recording will announce the stop as 10th and Newman and you want to get off there. So, if you have a transit pass and ride the bus to your job, this is a quick and easy after work side trip adventure in the big city! I actually lived in that house in the background for three years and it was like having an actual, real urban lifestyle in Indianapolis!

OK. You want to be on the south side of the street. If you are coming from downtown, you are already there. If you are coming from further east, and got off at the stop in the picture, cross the street. You want to be on the side of the street with the schools and start walking east toward Woodruff Place, just a little bit east of the bus stops. Right on the edge of the Potter School, there is a gate. My inside sources in that area told me that they've never seen that gate locked and judging from the weeds growing over the post, I have a tendency to believe it. OK. Be bold walk right on through that gate, don't look right or look left, just keep on going straight ahead!

You're walking down a paved road, past some parking lots and toward a modern looking new construction building on your right which is The Chase Legacy Center. Resist the temptation to head over toward the football field and track. Just keep walking toward the new building. You are in back of where you want to be, but there is an easy way around it. Observe the north side of the building. There is a path with a ramp that goes around to the front!

Be bold again! Cut across the grass toward the walkway/ramp and follow it around the the front of the building! You are now "legit" in your journey and can relax! You should see the little yellow canopy with a treasure trove of beautiful veggies underneath near the entrance in the middle of the building. In case the weather is crummy on Thursday 4pm - 6 pm, the Farm Stand will be inside.

Meteorite Hit Indiana!

I posted this image earlier today on twitter as a tease, asking if anyone knew what it is. It is proof that a meteorite struck Indiana! Before my passion for the planet turned green, I studied exploration geophysics. A science-y background is serving me well as a BathroomFarmer because I have a science-y vocabulary and can read serious science-y publications without dying of boredom and I can fail forward on the BathroomFarm in a systematic science-y way so no one in the future has to make the same mistakes when growing an indoor garden of his own!

If you have ever been to Newton or Benton Counties in Indiana, you know it has some of the best farmland in the world. It's nice and flat with a thick topsoil of glacial till washed all the way down to Central Indiana from the glaciers that carved the Great Lakes. There's nothing but farm for miles around and that also makes it an ideal place for a giant wind farm spanning several counties, too. Well, except around Kentland, IN,  where it gets a little weird.

Here's the weird. This is called the Kentland Structure. Around 97 million years ago, a really big meteorite impacted this spot. It is one of the biggest impact features in the world and the 4th largest known such structure in the United States. I won't bore you with all of the ho-hum science, but this area is a quarry today. The "money rock" at this operation is called St. Peter sandstone. It's a white sandstone that is almost pure quartz and is used in glass manufacturing.

This is a hand sample of what St. Peter sandstone normally looks like and what the grains look like under magnification. It is glistening and gorgeous in large outcrops. There's plenty of this rock at Kentland, but there's also something amiss about some of the sandstone, too. My rock sample at the top of this post is called a shatter cone and is pretty well recognized today as a result of meteorite impact. I visited this quarry in 1979 with a class. We toted tripods and theodolites all over that quarry and measured locations and angles of the St. Peter sandstone that was altered by catastophe and now looked like dull, gray cones. Some of these cones were more than 3 feet long. We were trying to replicate the study behind a hugely controversial theory from one of the most famous geophysicists ever. In the old days, when we carved our class notes into the same tablets of stone we studied, people thought Robert Sinclair Dietz was a little, well, "out there".

CLICK HERE TO READ A PDF BIOGRAPHY OF ROBERT SINCLAIR DIETZ

I still think it's pretty cool that his original scientific theory was formulated and, now agreed, proven, right here in the Great State of Indiana. What makes the Kentland Structure the location for the study is the almost complete flatness of the area, which has always been flat throughout the history of the planet. There is, therefore, no necessity to reconstruct the position of the rocks at the exact time of impact. When we say that nothing changes in Indiana, we truly do mean EVER. Once we measured angles of the cones, it was possible to calculate per Dietz's idea, where the points of the cones intersected above the ground. That's the actual point of the impact. Almost no very large meteorites ever hit the ground. Friction from our atmosphere cause the explosion to occur well above the ground, which is the case here.

It still packed a giant PUNCH, though. It blew a dome 12.5 kilometers in diameter and created faults in the process. It exposed some really valuable rock that was deeply buried. It pulvarized the quartz particles in some of the St. Peter sandstone into rock flour. Some of this rock flour was instantaneously rehardened by intense, fast heat and pressure into cones making a record of the event. In case you ever need something smart to say at a cocktail party, the shock metamorphism that made the shatter cones is technically called cryptoexplosion deformation. How big was the blast that made the Kentland Structure? It would be the equivalent of the force of an earthquake measuring XII+ in the Mercalli Scale, but concentrated in a tiny area.

Persons settling "these parts" in Benton County, IN had no idea what was hidden beneath their crops. As erosion thinned the topsoil, revealing rock with economic use and quarrying began, people observed the big clues to a catastrophic past. Studies conducted in this site have contributed to a better understanding meteorite impacts that are studied all over the world. No doubt, geophysicists will be heading to Russia with their tripods and theodolites to look for the new clues. What makes the Valentine's Day Impact very exciting to study is that there are videos and eyewitness accounts to add to the information in the rocks! Who'd a thunk all this ruckus started back home on Indiana farmland?

Free Lunch for the BathroomFarm

I have to be a little bit careful about letting people into the inner sanctum of my sustainist lifestyle where doing more with less is a way of life. One day I happened to open my freezer in the presence of a longtime friend who happened to notice an unusual container in there. Not being shy, he had to inquire why I keep garbage in there. Uh-oh.

It wasn't ANY OLD GARBAGE. No-sir-ee. It was the beginnings of a new carefully curated experiment of supplementing specific nutrients in the BathroomFarm. I don't have a worm bin of my own, so I order worm poo (castings) from an Etsy seller which is an ideal all-purpose fertilizer to add to my potting mix. But, it has also come to my attention that plants have specific nutritional requirements for better growth and designer plant food can be pricey. Remember, my goal is to keep the cost of growing an indoor garden as close to being free as possible.

Lucky for me I have a discarded old blender and lucky for me I drink lots of coffee and eat lots of eggs. I'm also really good at prowling the Internet for free samples, so I have a regular supply of organic coffee in small quantities. Any coffee is OK to use, but organic is better if you can get it. Drink the coffee and save the grounds. Likewise, eat the eggs and save the shells. I keep that mess frozen until I have a one-quart container full. Then I put it in the blender and make a frappe which is quite luscious to tomatoes and many other plants.

Mixing this goo into my regular potting mix of dollar store dirt (because its cheap and easy to get within walking distance of most urban Americans) and peat moss, perlite and a bit of worm poo makes a growing medium that's ideal for plant growth. It's very important to have extremely nutrient-rich soil for container gardens because plants deplete the nutrients quickly. It's also important to keep the medium fluffy and help it retain water better and perlite and peat moss help with that. The worm poo works wonders in providing basic nutrients as well as trace minerals. The reason for adding the coffee and eggshell frappe is to supplement calcium which is essential for tomato growth as well as increasing the acidity of the soil thanks to the coffee. You can add this goo to the soil of any calcium-loving plant that grows best in acidic soil. You can also add it to plants already potted to improve the soil.

When transplanting the seedling, I buried its intentionally leggy stem deeply in the pot and and covered it up with the potting mixture, leaving a few leaves protruding from the dirt. In general, tomatoes like being transplanted and their stems can be buried to sprout a better root system.

It seems happy and healthy immediately after transplanting. And, though taking awhile to sprout roots along the buried stem, it has started growing like crazy! I've had less than perfect results with tomatoes, but I am more optimistic than ever after putting more thought into the composition of the soil.

I made a tripod trellis from sticks found in my naturalized yard to wind this vine around to keep it compact and less unruly. Go little tomato plant, go! I'm glad you liked your free lunch from common kitchen scraps!

Do You Know Your Seeds, Really?

EIEIO! It's Super Sow Sunday, the day that officially kicks off the North American gardening season and when we begin starting seeds indoors in anticipation of warmer days ahead. My BathroomFarm is not a seasonal garden. It grows all year 'round, but I look forward to the participating in the community of gardening at this time of the year. I, like everyone else, have a desk full of seed catalogs. But, really, these days, we need to stop and think about how well we know our seeds.

Look at this! This is an aging chart showing how most of the seed companies in the world are owned by chemical engineering companies. Nothing about that sounds too tasty for the table. More and more small companies are being acquired every year, so it's a good idea to check the history and ownership of the sources of your seeds. It's true that most of these companies, are supplying seeds for factory farms. It's also true that many people are growing their own food because this is exactly what they don't want.

Really, are you completely breaking free from this corporate system, and all of the creepy frankenfood associated with it, by gardening? You think that by buying heirloom or organic seeds that you are no longer supporting the downward spiral in biodiversity.
I was shocked to learn, that in its quest to monopolize the American food production industry, that Monsanto has begun buying the names of varieties of heirloom vegetables. When you buy seeds from plants with names owned by Monsanto, Monsanto is getting paid. Money fuels their fire for world domination. There is some good news. None of these plants have been genetically modified. All that is owned is the intellectual property of the name of the plant.

CLICK HERE FOR A LIST OF HEIRLOOM SEED NAMES NOW OWNED BY MONSANTO.

The plot further thickens for farmers who grow plants from seeds whose names are owned or whose genetic patents are owned by chemical engineering companies. H. R. 193 is now pending in the United States House of Representatives. If passed, this law would require farmers, who grow seeds with intellectual property owned by another party, to register saved seeds and pay fees on them.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT H. R. 193

There is good news, though. There are plenty of ethical organic and heirloom seed companies who want your business and are willing to take a pledge to assure their customers of the integrity of their products. To make the simple act of buying seed with conscience simple again, be sure to ask your supplier if they have signed "The Safe Seed Pledge". If they have not, but want to make this commitment to quality of their products and to biodiversity, please share the link below with them. I believe that this is going to be an important factor in consumer choice in the very near future.

PDF OF THE SAFE SEED PLEDGE

Once you navigate all of this madness surrounding the once-simple seed and mindfully purchase your seeds, you have some planting to do! Freshly planted seeds and tiny seedlings do need some tender loving care. I make upcycled "watering cans" from empty milk cartons. It's simple to do. Just punch holes in the cap to gently spritz water on your tiny plants.

Don't Just Hug That Tree, Say Happy New Year Instead!

For thousands of years, people have written stories that mention trees and we still read these stories today. My owl is snoozing in the old sycamore tree in my yard, and honestly, I never gave much thought to just what a very big deal it was for someone to scale one of these trees to listen to a teacher until I lived with this species of tree and learned that it sheds its bark, leaving a very slippery, smooth hard-to-climb surface. No wonder the owl feels quite safe there.

Owning a fruit tree was a form of wealth in Biblical Old Testament times and, in an age where the religion and government were one body, it's safe to say that there was a tax or tithe to pay:

When you come to the land and you plant any tree, you shall treat its fruit as forbidden; for three years it will be forbidden and not eaten. In the fourth year, all of its fruit shall be sanctified to praise the L-rd. In the fifth year, you may eat the fruit.
                                                                                          -Leviticus 19:23-25

Just like there are many modern years, such as calendar years, school years and fiscal years, it was necessary to create a standard for determining years for a tree for tax/tithe purposes. Tu B'Shevat, today, is the is the day when all trees age one year from Tu B'Shevat last year, regardless of the calendar date when they were physically planted in between. This day remains on the Jewish calendar because it's a tradition although not all that many Jews grow fruit trees in the 21st century. However, green-thinking Jews have evolved the holiday through time, making it a Jewish Earth Day!

During the 17th century, the Kabbalists were inspired by Deuteronomy 20:19, "For man is like the tree of the field." A ritual for Tu B'Shevat was created that included a special order service called a seder. The idea was to repeat this ritual annually to contemplate the relationship between humanity and trees. In order to be consistent, there is a written text, called a haggadah, that was followed during the service.

CLICK HERE FOR ONE VERSION OF THE MODERN TU B'SHEVAT HAGGADAH TEXT.

Tu B'Shevat seders always include the idea of planting. Sometimes, parsley seeds are planted as part of the ritual because there is exactly enough time to grow a windowsill pot of parsley to be harvested for use in the ritual of the Passover seder. Others participate in planting trees in Israel to remember the victims of the Holocaust.

Today, and I do mean right now, Jewish green organizations are making commitments to reduce inefficient energy use and wasteful food consumption as reported in news today. What began as a necessary part of the taxation process has completely evolved into the Jewish Earth Day celebration. Yes, and with celebration, there is song and art! In closing, I'll share a fun Tu B'Shevat song for children! It's truly a great day to sing and dance among trees!

Preparing for Winter

Winter on my BathroomFarm is much different than winter on the outside farm. In fact, it is my optimum growing season. My bathroom has south facing windows so I get a little boost from the sun. The wall my garden "grows up" has a dead air space behind it and a source of heat in front of it and my garden lamp shining on it. The cooler window ledge on the other side of the room is ideal for growing collards, a cool weather crop, in pots on the window ledge.

I started some new seeds for my winter crops and they are hanging in the milk carton "greenhouses" on the wall. Empty milk containers are such a great supply for my garden and I love the built-in handle hangers. My fingers are crossed that the green globe peppers, spoon tomatoes, Minnesota mini melons and the Easter eggplants all get off to a good start.

The seedling on the left is a cherry tomato plant discovered growing rogue on an Etsy seller's farm. I chose it for it's aggressive nature. So far, the seedling looks awesome. If the tomato vines currently growing, but not blooming don't improve by the time this one is ready to transplant, they are going to be pulled up to make room for something that's going to be hopefully better. Space in my garden is too precious to curate plants that aren't productive!

Also from the same Etsian's farm, I'm hopeful about growing very small "spoon" tomatoes. They were hand cross pollinated from two different tiny tomatoes growing in a container and the fruits are the size of a currant. I like that they were grown in a container so hopefully they will work for me, too. I got the Easter eggplants which grow white egg-size, soft-skinned eggplants from a different Etsy seller. I "heart" Etsy for garden supplies!

I moved my cucumber vine from a flower pot into the larger suspended trough container on the wall. There's twine on the wall for a trellis so it will have plenty of room to meander! This vine blooms like crazy but only recently has started producing female flowers. Like the peppers, cucumbers also require paintbrush pollinating because there aren't insects indoors to do the job for me! Because there was some room in this hanging planter, I direct sowed some parsley and cilantro seeds. I'm planning on making a lot of falafel this winter so fresh herbs would be great on hand!


My chili pepper plant which has been producing continuously since last Christmas has once again outgrown its container. This jumbo pot has been sitting outside of the carriage house growing nothing but weeds for a few years. With a huge pot full of extra nutritious homemade mix and regular spritz of magnesium-rich Epsom salt water, I can't wait to see how well this healthy little plant grows!

My BathroomFarm is reorganized and is going to be left to grow into it's next phase of development while I work hard on my Halloween projects. Halloween is like Black Friday for Baisebeige Studios, my textile business. And, shortly after that, there's the real Black Friday to consider. In fact, I start Etsy Holiday Boot camp to prepare for that today. Time is flying on the BathroomFarm!

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My First Year on the BathroomFarm

It's been a year and a week since I planted the wall on my BathroomFarm and it has been a wonderful year indeed. My landlord bolted a flooring scrap for a better nailable surface on the wall of my bathroom during post fire renovations. I filled various beverage containers with dollar store dirt and barely thriving seedlings, hung them up and turned on my homemade BathroomFarm lamp.

This first year has been quite a learning experience which is fine because I am the Queen of Failing Forward and willing to learn from every mistake and try anything a couple of times. I have gone from an inexperienced gardener with not one clue to actually eating food from my garden. I've read zillions of books and blog posts and Googled every stupid gardening question ever asked. And, I keep doing it because I believe that it is 100% possible to empower yourself by gardening even if you you have no yard, no experience, no traditional gardening tools and no money.

The BathroomFarm is designed to be a very low cost, almost no cost venture. Many urban people are finding themselves without a source of fresh food these days and many people are also finding themselves in financial situations they have never expected. That's why I designed my garden with simple and inexpensive materials and use grocery store and dollar store seeds. Food producing plants and seeds can be purchased with food stamps if the retailer accepts them as a form of payment. It was an exciting moment to become a partner with snapgardens.org and help spread the word that food stamps grow gardens.

It's true that gardens require more than seeds, so I raised the money to buy things my garden needed (like the materials for my garden light and some products like peat moss and Perlite to make my dirt better) by having a yard sale and earning Amazon.com gift certificates answering surveys online to demonstrate that resources can manifest to support the needs of a garden without stressing a budget. By Christmas, the fruits of my labors were starting show!

I was inspired to learn more and work harder to get more of these positive results. I am studying the needs of each plant and making the conditions as optimum as possible because the goal is to have a variety of fresh food all year long in a compact space. The really interesting thing about container gardening indoors is that plants with proper care can live a very, very long time without needing to be replaced. The only reason many die after one season outside is because of the change in the weather.

Thousands and thousands of people follow @BathroomFarmer on twitter. As soon as they stop laughing, they click "follow" because there are so many good reasons to grow your own food. The price of food is always going up and the questionable quality of food these days has people very concerned. I have a solution for many people who thought a traditional garden was just not possible. I do not believe in *not possible*! Growing bell peppers indoors is not possible, they say. If you need to be really, really impressed, this little pepper is growing indoors and upside down from a beverage bottle upcycled into a wall pocket!

I pollinated that pepper blossom with a paintbrush on the way out of the door to speak at the first ever Indianapolis Food Independence Day event at Earth House. It's such a good idea to come together as a community and share ideas about growing and eating better food as a community because it does inspire positive cultural shifts in the community. The good word about personal empowerment by gardening was further spread in print and online articles in Indianapolis' NUVO newsweekly! Speaking at the event was good, but attending was even better. There were so many great ideas shared that day, I will keep quite busy on the BathroomFarm until the next Food Independence Day.

So here's my year old BathroomFarm and such a wonderful garden it has become with plenty of room to grow. This is probably one of the best and certainly one of the most unusual ideas I have ever had. I'm really proud of the results so far, but, most of all, I just love to let it be. All  gardens are such wonderful things. I grew this myself. From seed. With faith. Just like the real farmers do.

Super Sow Sunday

While the majority population was rapt with watching the premier sporting event of the year, I joined a group of gardeners and participated in a twitter chat celebrating the kick off of the 2012 gardening season in the northern hemisphere. This is Super Sow Sunday, a special online event of the popular garden chat forum hosted by BGgarden. It does seem to be a bit early to think about gardening, but it is realistic to start seeds indoors and then transplant them after the threat of frost. Although, BathroomFarming is independent of the cycle of the seasons, this is the time of the year to buy seeds in retail stores and a little community spirit doesn't hurt either!

Last year, I started seeds in toilet paper cores well in advance of moving back into my renovated room. This year, I decided to try something different and make seed starting

containers from upcycled milk jugs to put on the wall of my BathroomFarm. I was inspired by Susan Klatz Beal's article:

How to Make a Mini Milk Jug Greenhouse for Starting Seeds.

I, however, wanted to make changes in the design to be able to hang them on my wall.

Many other people were getting their hands dirty with gardening activities while chatting so working on my garden seemed really natural. First, I cut the side open on the jug, leaving the handle intact. I also punched some drainage holes in the bottom as well as a few holes around the opening to loop paperclips through to be a closure. The original design is to cut the top all the way off. But this compromise gives me an easy way to hang the little greenhouse as well as an easy way to open it for watering and tending the plants.

Then, I kept true to the original design and lined the interiors of the bottoms with wet newspaper. I like the idea of being able to use the newspaper to easily extricate the seedlings for transplanting. If I am very clever, I can design wall pocket containers that will make transplanting easier by planning ahead for the shape of the bundle to be removed. It won't be difficult to cut the soft milk carton plastic apart with scissors when I'm ready to do that. I can go ahead and plant the newspaper along with the seedlings in the wall pockets and the newspaper will biodegrade gracefully adding carbon to the soil.

Then, I got my hands dirty and filled the newspaper lined milk carton bottoms with wet potting soil mixed equally with perlite and peat moss. Since I fluffed up my dollar store dirt, at the suggestion of Susan Klatz Beal, my garden has been doing much better! I started some cherry tomatoes and spinach first. The nice thing about BathroomFarming being independent of weather and seasons, is that I can add crops gradually. I think this is my best strategy because container gardening is more challenging than I had anticipated. It would be best to master it slowly and have better results in the long run.

The final step was to close the little greenhouses up and hang the handles over nails on my wall. I edited a picture of my project for the evening and posted in the chat. What an interesting and fun thing to do!

I was also surprised by winning a great gift basket from BBB Seed containing wildflower seeds and heirloom vegetable seeds as well as some personal care goodies! How awesome is that?

Cycles in My Sustainable World

Gardening is a world of cycles. Even though it is January, our attention now becomes focused on beginning our gardens for the next year. Every year on Super Bowl Sunday, there is a huge gardening chat anyone can follow at #supersowsunday that takes place while the football game is being played. Even though my city is hosting the Super Bowl this year, I don't feel any deep connection with things athletic, so this chat interests me greatly.

I'm not much connected to the out-in-the-yard gardeners, but do choose to participate somewhat in the usual culture of gardening. Starting seeds as a group and planning a garden online is a great way to participate in the larger culture. The BathroomFarm is a year-round venture independent of the calendar seasons, but I can learn much from the out-in-the-yard growers. I also intend to volunteer in gardens this summer to get more experience.

For all of time, gardening has been not only related to the cycles of the seasons, but also to the cycles of the moon. Many ancient sustainable cultures looked to the sky to better organize their time in the fields. In more modern times, growers look to the phases of the moon and one of the best known references, The Old Farmer's Almanac has moon-based planting information. I love all things moon! Astrologically, my sun, moon, ascending sign, and Venus are all in moon-ruled Cancer. Historically, my childhood was spent rapt in watching the goal of America landing on the moon. When my parents and I were watching my hometown hero Frank Borman read from Genesis while orbiting the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, they gave me the tiny gift of a Fisher Space Pen accompanied with the giant announcement that we were going to watch the Apollo 11 launch! One thing that always interested me was that moon cycles were often used to organize time. Everyone's heard that from the new moon phase to the full moon is a great time for beginning new things but what happens for the rest of the lunar cycle?

That mystery was solved when I became acquainted with Rev. Michele McGrew who gave away a simple system for planning time by the phases of the moon in a self-self giveaway. The reality is there is no wrong time to do anything but there are better ways to do everything when moon energy is harnessed. I won a free coaching session with her and was able to discuss these ideas. Do they work? I'll find out! I blocked out one of my planning calendars shown above with the phases of the moon to remind me of time. I have never thought that time was anything but a "made up" parameter, with which now science agrees, so any act of organizing time is personal. My view is to use time and organize time and radiate positive thoughts about time and NEVER, EVER be a victim to it! By using moon phases in BathroomFarming, I can feel attached to a system of cycles. If nothing else, I think people feel soothed by familiarity found in cycles and other patterns.

January 2012 has never been a better time to experiment with moon phase marketing and organization principles! The first new moon phase of the year started on January 23, a Monday. Yeah. I know. I just can't turn off being the oldest living Duran Duran fan. Not real sorry about that either. Enjoy!

'Tis the Season for Chili Peppers!

BathroomFarmer feels like dancing this holiday season because results are showing after failing forward on this project this year! I started with nothing but a willingness to learn and to experiment and I think I'm finally getting my personal permaculture act together!





The peppers have grown much since my last post! The chili peppers have started to bloom. Because of total lack of BUGginess in my garden, I need to help mother nature and "get in the business" with a water moistened paintbrush and pollinate the flowers by hand.



Look at this! Teeny tiny chili peppers are starting to appear as the blossoms fade! The best news is that there are many more buds forming. According to many sources, chili pepper plants will live for several years in containers!










The collards have also begun to develop sizable leaves! They are growing both up and down in this inverted beverage bottle hung on the wall. I'm not sure if I like inverted growing, but wanted to try it anyway. So far so good. It is definitely an option to better use the space at the lower edge of my nailable surface.




Not to be out done, the green globe pepper plants have nearly doubled in size since I added the fluffier soil mix containing peat moss and perlite to their containers. And, yes, I do see buds forming here, too!





The official holiday foliage on the BathroomFarm is definitely chili pepper blossoms this year. No need for poinsettias here. For all of you who prefer a traditional decoration, here's some more musical inspiration from the Red Hot Chili Peppers!

The Peppers Look Good!

It has been almost exactly one year since I got the idea to grow a BathroomFarm. I am truly proud of myself for making as much of this happen as I have so far. After all, there is no perfect instruction book for growing a vertical vegetable garden in one's bathroom. I am also feeling serious disappointment for the lack of productivity of the project.

I am doing the only thing I know how to do when there is an obstacle and that is to go right through it. I spent the better part of this afternoon planting new crops. I started a LOT of seeds this time because I have been optimistic in my expectation that every seed is going to grow which is not the case. Being too conservative has definitely hurt productivity. The big change this time was to make a fluffier soil by adding peat moss and perlite to the potting mix. I have noticed that the potting soil I have been using turns into "concrete" and the plants begin to wither and die. The ones that do survive look good, though, but seem to develop slowly. I am not disappointed at all in this chili pepper plant. I also have to take into consideration that some plants do develop slowly especially when grown in containers.

Another big problem that I personally have is the tendency to compare my progress with the timetable of the out-in-the-yard farmers. No matter how hard I try, it's hard to ignore the natural cycle of the seasons even though they don't apply to BathroomFarming. One thing I'm planning for the New Year is to devise a moon-based calendar for my particular activities to focus more on what is actually happening than be constantly distracted by what I think should be happening. The tendency to compare is a bad habit and reframing time will help.

Because winter is coming, I decided to postpone hanging more plants on the wall and started seeds in pots instead. I did plan on cold weather issues and the surface of the garden wall was built with a dead air space behind it to insulate the plants from the exterior wall behind them. I'm just not certain how well this design will work yet. There is a major positive side to winter in the BathroomFarm. As the trees in the south yard outside the windows are losing leaves, a tremendous amount of sunlight is flooding into the room! And, there are no bugs! There were a few issues with insects coming into the room during the summer.

I made a few mistakes simply from inexperience and misunderstood what I should be pinching off the tomato plants. There is a good chance thatI may have been pinching back shoots that should have bloomed. I just won't do that again! I started several varieties of tomatoes and two of the vines already growing are more than four feet long and appear healthy. The green pepper plants appear healthy, too. I am optimistic that I will eventually fail forward to bountiful harvest success!

And, did I mention that the peppers look good?

Too Much Of A Good Thing!

When planning my BathroomFarm, I often worried that light would be insufficient for growing vegetables indoors. There is precious little information on this subject and the information is often presented in terms so different it's hard to determine how anything applies to this situation. I know I added 7,000 lumens to the ambient sunlight in the room. I'm not sure how that compares to research with results measured in foot-candles or how that applies to the "plant in full sun" on the seed packet.

Apparently, things are growing. That's a good thing. However, I have noticed that as the plants grew toward the light, some leaves would appear to burn. It has been a little bit of a challenge to keep the plants distanced from the light which is intense. I have also looked into companion planting to solve part of the problem. Companion planting is interesting because it can solve a variety of problems just by placing plants in proximity to each other. Because container gardens can be crowded, I'm going to take advantage of many physical and chemical advantages companion plants give each other.

My ceiling baskets were a disaster. I wanted to grow leafy greens in them and nothing was

working. The spinach and Swiss chard seeds died as soon as they sprouted. It turned out they were getting too much light for too long even though both seed packets said "full sun". I browsed random Internet gardening forums for guidance. It turns out that greens aren't that keen on sun worship. My solution is to not keep the light on for as many hours, to lower the baskets away from the light and plant green beans as a companion for shade. After less than two weeks, the results are showing. The spinach has sprouted and started to grow!

The amount of time the light is on may also be

inhibiting the flowering and fruiting of the plants.

My Minnesota Midget Melons have been vining LIKE NUTS but not much more. I read about the forcing of flowers and learned that long periods of simulated sunlight might inhibit flowering so I cut back on the hours and have the room completely dark at night. I had been leaving standard

fluorescent bulbs in the wall fixures on at night, but I stopped that. Voila! In less than a week, the melons have started blooming!

I'm glad I was a little bit conservative in the quantity of plants I started for the initial BathroomFarm because it has been challenging to determine what this system needs as it develops. The plants on the wall are doing well. I have a 5' long tomato vine growing in a gallon milk jug. The changes in light should also benefit its fruiting. I will probably not use milk jugs for future plantings although they do work. I do like the gallon beverage bottles with plants growing up and down.

I have collected canopies from umbrellas that had bad experiences in Indiana thunderstorms for making wall pockets. I feel that I can confidently add more crops at this time. I'm making wall pockets to fill in the space on the wall and using more containers on the floor and on top of the slipcovered

shelves I use for my garden shed. I also decided there is absolutely no reason to start seeds separately from planting them directly somewhere in my garden. Of course, I decided that after starting more seeds! So, when I transplant the seedlings now on the window ledge, I'm going to use that space for growing collards in pots and vining zucchini around this extremely sunny window!

Temperature has also been an issue in this room. I may have kept it a little too cool during the day and a little too warm at night. I'm going to try to maintain 80 degrees during the day and 65 degrees at night and see how that works. The window ledge where the collards will grow IS a little cooler than the rest of the room, but they should be fine in cooler conditions. I'm not so sure the zucchini will like that so I also started some plants in pots on the side of the room with the vertical garden which is warmer and will let them vine on to the wall.

I am always willing to fail forward on projects with uncertain outcomes and the BathroomFarm is no exception. Now that the light and temperature issues have been resolved and results are showing, I can move forward more quickly now. Winter may be an optimum season in the BathroomFarm. There were some insect issues throughout the summer that are over now. *Something* ate an entire basil plant in just one night! There were other casualties, too, but nothing so stunning. I am optimistic that the most difficult parts are over and the fantasy of plucking midget melons from the vine while soaking in a hot, bubbly tub in the dead of winter will be a reality!

My Garden IS Growing

EIEIO! WOW! This Bathroomfarmer is pleased to report that my garden is growing. I spent time this afternoon rearranging the BathroomFarm and being generally pleased with the progress I am seeing. The seedlings I planted were in questionable shape from lack of light and cool temperatures while I was waiting for room renovations to be finished but most of them rebounded nicely and are growing like crazy!

I made a few changes on the wall. Because two more of the tomato plants did not thrive, I discarded them and planted carrot and radish seeds in their place. I have this idea to execute my projects with the phases of the moon in a farmer almanac-y kind of way, so I decided adding root veggies to the wall during the waning moon was a good move keeping with the folklore of farming.

I also compressed the farm into a smaller space to take better advantage of the light I designed. I want to stick to using upcycled food containers on the wall for awhile because this is the lowest skill and cost option. I want everyone to be able to achieve good results with indoor growing with minimum expense.

Some collard greens seedlings were planted upside down in a bottle on the left. The tomato plant originally in there was the first to die. It's better to plant the upside down plants in the bottle first, but I carefully inserted the little seedlings with the help of an ice tea spoon and I'm hoping for the best! The green pepper plant planted upside down next to it was in very bad shape when I planted it but is growing well now!

I tidied up the inside of my garden shed which

is second hand metal shelving covered with upcycled bedsheet. There were already two pots of cucumbers growing on top of it. I added some small terra cotta pots of herbs that I started on my window ledge next to my desk. I noticed when I water the plants in the milk cartons on the wall, the excess water drips through the holes punched into the bottoms directly onto the pots below! There is a south facing window next to the garden shed and I have had good results in the past growing houseplants here. I do have one of the floor lamp bulbs focused on this area, too.

The third growing area is the large pot on the floor in front of the wall with a right angle trellis made from an upcycled display easel behind it. Everything in this pot is doing well. The midget melons are ambitiously vining toward the wall. The tomato, green pepper, and lettuce plants are all growing. I sowed some more lettuce seeds in there and those are sprouting. I added just a few carrot seeds today to see how they would do.

The spinach and Swiss chard greens in the hanging basket by my ceiling light replaced with a grow bulb have also sprouted. I have a few new seeds started on the window ledge next to my desk. The collards were transplanted today, but the only other one that's sprouted is chili pepper. I will be starting new seeds with regularity because the idea

is to have a continuously producing garden. It's nice to be able to disregard the seasons. It's equally nice to garden in an airconditioned room, far away from the dreadful Indiana heat and humidity! I DO keep this room warmer than my bedroom adjoining it during the day but let it cool down a little during the nights. It seems to be working.

The Lay of the "Land" in the BathroomFarm

Because most seedlings rebounded nicely with light therapy, I decided to plant the first of my crops in the BathroomFarm and move forward with the sowing of the next seeds. This is just the beginning. Unlike many of my projects, that have a beginning and end, this will be perpetually in a state of evolution. In keeping the project very simple and low cost, I used common materials. The proceeds from my Quality Junk sale financed the purchase of potting soil from my neighborhood dollar store. I collected some sticks on the way home to use as plant supports.

The first containers I used to plant my BathroomFarm were containers I already had and some I made by upcycling food containers. It doesn't matter how pretty the wall looks in the beginning because as I add more

plants and everything grows, The foliage will obscure the containers. It was more important to start the project with what's on hand than to agonize over aesthetics at first. The biggest goal is to make a productive garden at the least expense.

The garden grows up along the whole wall using as much space as possible. I set two pots of cucumbers on top of my "garden shed" made from second hand shelves covered with upcycled bedsheet. I put sticks in the pots to keep the vines under control until they reach the wall and can grow up the twine I laced around nails. Upcycled milk cartons have tomatoes planted in them. There are peppers growing upside down and green onions and green beans planted in the tops of the large beverage containers on the lower left of the wall. A tomato plant that was planted upside down did die but I had suspected that I damaged it during transplanting. I certain of it now.

I have a lage pot on the floor on the left of the BathroomFarm. I upcycled a display easel by lacing twine around its legs to make a right angle trellis

for the Minnesota Midget Melons planted in it. I also planted green peppers, tomatoes, and heirloom lettuces in this pot. Because it's a very large container, I embedded a quart size bottle with the bottom cut out during planting. When I water this container, I fill the bottle to channel water into the lower part of the pot efficiently.

There are two other areas I am making use of for the BathroomFarm. I replaced the ceiling light bulb with a grow light and hung two baskets planted with spinach and Swiss chard leafy greens and suspended them next to the light fixture. There is a fan wired into the circuit which is on when the ceiling light is on so it gives a little extra ventilation in the Bathroomfarm which is good. I am also using the window ledge next to my desk as a seed starting area. I left the grow light in the clamp lamp that I suspended there for reviving my seedlings when I first started moving in. The next crops I planted are terra cotta pots with oregano, chives, parsley and cilantro. I also started yogurt cups with collards, zucchini and chilis!

So far the only problem encountered is that the lights are interfering with our cordless Internet phone! If I don't answer it right away, it's because I'm turning off the grow lights and lying to my crops about having a solar eclipse!