Ann's Air Gardens

A Sweet Potato Slip

I love vines, especially edible ones. 

Leaves of the Ipomoea batatas are tender and sweet when young, but they do turn bitter if allowed to get much bigger than these.  The good news is that this vine will not only keep producing tender young edible leaves indefinitely, but pinching them back will make the plant spread out and become more attractive as well as more edible.  The edible leaves, moreover, are a rich source of lutein,  as well as Riboflavin and Vitamins A and C.

Ipomoea plants are easily propagated by stem cuttings.   

Extra nitrogen will encourage more leaves and discourage the formation of tuberous roots.  Red lines and/or yellowing leaves indicate nitrogen deficiency, unless you are dirt gardening and have tubers below the ground.  Then, of course, the yellowing leaves indicate they are ready for harvest.

As with cucumbers,  long hours of daylight interfere with the production of flowers.  That is one reason we seldom see sweet potatoes blossoming. 

More Goodies from my Window Sill Garden

This is a detail from a leaf of the Asia Red Amaranth described in this article:

My Article on Amaranth Tea

There, if you are so bold as to look, you will see me cup in hand enjoying my latest fortuitous accident. 

The Asia Red Amaranth Breakfast Nog was good and before I forget what went in there, a list is in order:

• Several sliced amaranth leaves
• Two leaves of sweet basil
• Two leaves of Thai basil
• Two sprigs of oregano
• The sliced top of one scallion

And here it is again: 

Such a pretty color!

This experiment came about after my brother, who like me grows basil in his kitchen, mentioned making tea from fresh basil leaves.

We both have wisdom wands (heat-safe blown glass straws with holes in the bottom to strain the liquid out of this kind of tea) so I ran to the kitchen to pick a few leaves and dropped them in boiling water to steep for five minutes, not expecting to be thrilled with the flavor.  But it was actually good and so pretty, too.    So this morning, wanting a healthy hot drink, I looked to see what else might be tasty and ready to pinch back. 

The Asia Red Amaranth cried out "Pick Me!"  So I did.  Since the red amaranth is not as tender as the green, I boiled it a few minutes instead of adding to the already hot water and just letting it steep.  Then I looked to see what else wanted to become breakfast. 

Raving About the Neighbors

We have had good neighbors and bad ones over the years, but we fell into a pot of gold with the folks in our latest community.  They are just special in many ways, but in addition to lending helping hands and handing out good cheer, they are avid sharers of cuttings.  Even though they grow their plants in dirt and mine are mostly confined to water, the young cuttings do not know any difference. 

Thanks to a friend from up the street, I now have three kinds of begonias to play with and what at first glance I took it for a striking new purple portulaca:

We took the cutting after dark and I just stuck it in the glass, snapped the photo and toddled off the bed without thinking much about it.  But when the flower opened up in the morning it was clearly NOT a portulaca.  

On closer examination the leaves, although needle-like, are more triangular, and the flower looks like some kind of ice plant.  Whatever it is, the color is just brilliant and we shall soon find out if it roots in water.

I do hope it is not poisonous, whatever it turns out to be, as I put it in the same AeroGarden as my Asia Red Amaranth.   I'd like to have a rule about not growing any poisonous plants, but that would require getting rid of my beloved Pothos and that is not going to happen.   Periwinkle, too.  And all the lovely Morning Glories.  Sigh.

Speaking of what to munch and what not to, although the leaves of portulaca grandiflora are rumored to be edible,  I will stick to my favorite weed Purslane for fresh greens--that and the delicious Nasturtium greens that I munch daily.  It is rumored thought that the seeds of grandiflora are good though, and quite nutritious. 

I just harvested an armload of my pampered organic purslane today,  and is it ever scrumptious in vegetable beef soup.  The other veggies were onions, baby carrots, celery, and broccoli.  I always put rosemary in my beef soup, too. 

Here is someone else who extols the virtues of this purslane as a snack:

Au Potager 

I especially like this articulate blogger's post on "les légumes oubliés" (the forgotten vegetables.)

My Plant Planner

With as many experiments going as I have, a planner is necessary.  Here is the one I am currently using:

GTD is heavily goal oriented with integerated planning, lists, and calendar.

The lite version is free, but various upgrades are also available to power users like me.

The first entry I made in has to do with when I am to pick up a Madagascar Jasmine plant that a neighbor is kindly growing for me.  She has about 25 of them started and they are all about yay high, and looking great.   She is going to keep the one that is to be mine while I chase around Arizona for the holidays. 

I have not learned which lucky neighbors are getting the others, but presumably it will become apparent when they start blooming all over the place. 

And now for a few ads from my sponsors, some of which look so interesting I'd like to click on them myself, but that is a no-no...

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Something Else to Do with Scallion Tops

When I started "growing" scallion tops on the window sill, it was because I like to float them in broth for recipes such as my Amaranth Soup.   It was frustrating to buy a whole bunch of scallions just to get a few and then wonder what to do with the rest. 

In my first experiment, I cut the tops off very close to the bulb and secured the roots in Hydroton rocks in a  little ebb and flow container and waited quite a while until the new leaves grew.  That works, but I have also learned that in a pinch we can just cut the leaves off part-way down and stick the rooted bottoms in plain water in a tall narrow glass.   With the second method, they grow so fast that we are back to square one--what to do with the rest?

They are good sprinkled over the top of fried rice, but today I decided to try this:

These whole grain rolls are made from Montana Seven-Grain Cream of the West roasted cereal flakes (hard and soft red wheat, white white, oats, barley, rye, triticale and spelt with additional wheat bran added).  I ground them into flour in the Magic Bullet blender along with a handful of instant oatmeal, some rosemary and flax seeds.  The leavening was rapid rise yeast.   My favorite version of these rolls is flavored with green curry paste.   I cook a diced sweet onion in a tablespoon or two of green curry paste, then add warm water and a little honey to supercharge the yeast. 

As suggested by the picture of butter melting over the top, these rolls are best served warm.

The rolls pictured above are the same recipe, but I left out the curry paste and used  fennel instead of rosemary...and added a handful of chopped scallion greens.   The greens turn sort of khaki colored from the baking but they still look nice and taste delicious in this bread.     I don't know how this works in a regular oven.  I bake mine for 15 minutes in the NuWave InfraRed Convection countertop oven. 

Another Critter

Now that we are not in a second floor condo any more, there are critters to contend with, at least outdoors.  I am still keeping most of my plants inside in the protective care of the Aerogarden planters with my little home brew passive containers along side and in the window sills.  But having seen a neighbor's lovely Lantana plant with its abundant Spanish Flag colored blooms surviving the August drought and heat I had to clone it and now the baby is big enough to live outdoors and show off its own lovely blossoms:

So I got out the shovel and dug some pot-in-pot holes so that I could put this beauty in the ground without leaving it there permanently.  But when I lifted the inner pot out from the buried pot that it nests inside, look who came leaping up through the drain hole:

Incidentally, the pot-in-pot system is working out great, and I need to get out and dig some more holes.   

I am not expert on reptiles, but I think that one is a sagebrush lizard, although it could possible be a western fence lizard.  If anyone has an opinion on this, please let me know! 

Yellow on Yellow

Cucumber blossoms look quite pretty on top of a bowl of egg salad and taste good, too.  I harvested some of the oregano that basks in the light from the Aerogarden mini which is currently home to Amaranth. 

  How could I not eat this?  

Also enjoying the lumination from the grow lamp are various cuttings, including Creeping Charlie from a neighbor's shaded porch.  It is actually Swedish Begonia, I think, meaning the edible houseplant with the Latin name Plectranthus australis.  It is also called Swedish Ivy, not to be confused with Ground Ivy aka Creeping Jenny.    I was searching for information online to collaberate my experience that Plectranthus australis (a coleus) flourishes in sun or shade.  Naturally all the hits that came up spoke instead of ways to get rid of a noxious weed that takes over any part of your lawn if you have one and let it.  But that would be the aforementioned ground ivy which is Glechoma hederacea. 

Swedish Begonia is edible, I believe--at least I eat it, but the medicinal herb that was much aclaimed by ancient scientists would be the ground ivy. 

They are both in the Lamiaceae (Mint) family.   

    So is the oregano:

 Here is my Creeping Charlie Grow Log:   Not the Weed

Here is my Cucumber Grow Log:  Cukes

 

Flowers on the Lantana Clones

Finally the lantana cuttings I took in July are blooming:
 

Just glad to know I can do it and will post more photos, time allowing. 

Lavendar Roses

No, I did not grow this:   

But what a nice holiday gift a dozen of them would make. 

Grower's Flowers sells them HERE . 
 

Evening Glories

That is what my brother calls moonflowers.  I love them.  The best of all worlds is having the blue morning glories blossom in the morning and then the white moonflowers coming out at night.

This photo is 20 days after planting.  I sprouted the seeds in the Sproutman's Hemp Bag that the aforementioned brother gave me for my last birthday.

 

Why didn't somebody tell me what a fun houseplant these moonflowers can be?