winter gardening indoors

Psych!

It's just seven little seeds. That's all. The whole kit is just seven little seed pods each containing one little seed, with tiny plastic domes and a small bottle of liquid fertilizer. 

The whole kit could be $1.00 but instead it's $17.00 and that's such a ripoff in terms of what you actually get.

So, right now, new seed kit and new fluorescent lamps.

This machine is the old style that came out first and I'm tired of buying new lamps for it all the time. That's just muy ridículo. They fade in intensity and sometimes burn out. 

This might be the last time. I'll have to give this unit to Goodwill. The new ones have led lights and those don't have to be replaced. But the information on models is a bit overwhelming.

The way I'll pick the new one will be to look at the list for the highest wattage then go down the list for the lowest cost model with the highest wattage. Whatever features they add on to that like phone connectivity probably are not so much worth the additional cost. And right now that model turns out to be the Bounty in this chart.

And they keep adding new models to keep us confused. They've added an even bigger model for actual gardens indoors that are much stronger and different from all previous models. But for me, that's going too far. 

Pot growers are really into these things. They uploaded tons of videos to YouTube. They're taking over the whole video demonstrations.

I've been growing mint and basil purchased from the grocery store and rooted at home. I have better luck when I root the clippings in a cup covered with a plastic sandwich bag than I do by sticking the cuttings directly into the machine. 

And I've been using the lights for photography for my specific task in my specific spot. It's been handy as plain lamp.

To compensate for not showing an indoor garden, I'll show the aquarium garden planted as tiny clone plugs. I already showed this first photograph. 

Now it looks like this.

Two plant species are slow-growing and the rest are rampant and aggressive intruders. Tomorrow I'll cut them back into their patches and clear an area around the slow ones. Or else the whole thing will be one huge tangled mess.

It's time to get fish for this thing even though I'm satisfied with just plants. 

The problem is my favorite aquarium supply shop has closed. And now I have to establish a new favorite store. I've already been to plenty of aquarium shops around town but none stick out as backup favorite. And I need to buy about a hundred of those little bitty fish. 

Maybe fifty. 

Some plants grow runners that extend horizontally faster than the plants grow vertically. They're trying hard to intrude. And they'll have to be knocked back continuously.

They're already overtaking the slow growing species. ↑ The light green will completely block out the olive green species. The same situation occurs on the other side. 

Invading each other's space.

They're fun!

This is showing the growth in one month. 

Takashi Amano wrote in one of his books about a setup he made for a restaurant in Tokyo. They called him at the last minute before opening. Customers would come the day that he set up the tank so there wasn't any time for the water to clear much less for the plants to settle in. The whole thing would be little plugs all over the tank. His client didn't understand what they were asking. 

A year later he went back to check and the tank was completely overgrown. Filled to capacity with plants duking it out for supremacy. Neglected by the owners. When he asked why didn't they trim it back they told him that nobody dared touch it. They considered it the work of a master so it was not possible for them to interfere with it. They wouldn't know where to start. It was art, like Rembrandt, and their ethics and their humility prevented them from touching it.