Window gardening

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Madame Du Feu

Being all excited and that I started seeding out plants to grow our own seedlings. Seeds are cheaper then grown plants and it can´t be so hard to get a few plants growing.

Meanwhile the humble little pots I seeded have grown a bit out of range, so having a meal at the kitchen table isn´t possible at the moment – the futer food has to grow somehwre first, right?

Peppers - I have red ordinary kitchen peppers, fancy sweet peppers and some sort of hot chilly peppers called fatalis.

Artichokes - I have never eaten any fresh ones and if everything is growing according to plan I will this year

Tomatos - sporting, red ones, yeallow ones and very expensive red ones (one seed 20 cents, which I would have never bought if the amount had be written n the package)

Cauliflower - coming quite well and will be the next batch of plants to be potted into a bigger condo. If I would have the space!

Strawberries - tiny and hopefully delicious one day!

Parsley

Onions - maybe not the best idea to grew them indoors? I dunno, Let´s wait and see...

Stevia is a plant that sweets everything that you put it into but doesn´t add any calories or so they say. One of the first seeds that sproutet, but ever since it didn´t grow much, artificial light and all.

Unknown citrus - I just put seeds in soild from citrus fruits I was eating. One is a Grapefruit, the other one hopefully an Ugli. i know they won´t become great fruitbearing trees, but as i read everywhere it is easy to grow them, I just tried. Tada.

All the plants got an artificial light (cold white LED for about 10 hours additional brightness a day). I also grow some Wisteria, even if it takes forever and a day for them to sprout and even longer to become huge trees and flower. I do hope that all 4 are sprouting and I can try to turn one into a bonsai one day.

In the garden center, where we were looking out for greenhouses, I bought some cottonseeds. It´s said they are also very easy to grow and make beautiful potted plants. Thinking that whithe cotton fluffs on plants would go nicely along my cat´s withe hairfluffs flying around the whole flat i am really looking forward to see if they succeed. So far one seed is sprouting after 1 day, but the rest of the pots caught withe hairy mould. I try quarantine and a bit less water.

oO!

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Madame Du Feu

Quick and determined as we are, we walked over the 5 minutes to the gardenareals. Plan was to try to sneak a nice little preview on the plots and to see if we like the colony at all. The first walk around didn´t look very promising. Kind of messy and jumbled. I did like that, Mr. Herrisson wasn´t that impressed. Walking around and trying all the entrances we got a bit of different views over the plots as the areal was below streetsurface.

Oh my! A lot happening here!

One of the nicer views we got on first glance.

Could that be it?

Biggest problem with all the areal was, that there are big buildings on the southwest and as the colony isn´t that big, most plots on the south or west side were in the buildings shade for parts of the day, some of it barely saw any direct sunshine at all. We sure didn´t want any of that plots.

Arguing about wether we liked the place or not and what our preferences were we walked round to try the last gate as well (all others were firmly closed). Luckyily enough we spotted a resident walking his vivid Jack Russel Terrier. The guy turned out to be a gardener there for about 30 years, sporting a “Kantine” a little self build place to drink beer and hang out on sunday mornings. Herr S., coming across as a grumpy old guy, tough but with maybe a golden heart hidden inside (we didn´t look that far) let us in and showed as around.

The colony is a very small one, only 64 spots alltogether. Some of them better kept then others. First he showed us the free plots the guy I was calling talked about. Two there were and both were, hmm, have a look for yourself.

Plot number 1 (number 8 really):

First look: shady and wet

Not getting much better, innit?

The shack. Or the leftover of a shack. You see the wall on the right side on the pic? This huge building means shade from 10 o' clock on.

Inside the Shack. This we could buy for 1000,- €

Yeah, that was that.

I mean we spoke about a challenge. But this challenge actually means to relocate people of 50 flats to tear all that buildings down. Not gonna happen. This shady little moss terrarium can stay were it is, for our sake.

But alas! There was a second spot available, for the fabulous amount of 0,- €! Ok, no hut on it, no structures and only water. But we can build, can´t we?

Tja! We could, if we had the space:

The nice bit. 100m² and that is the nicest spot available.

Raspberry Hell i would call this plot. This is just plainly covered in unattended raspberryplants. Getting rid of those alone would take weeks.

The 'terrace'. And more wild plants

I think this is what you can expect for free.

Hu. I expected gardening to be fun, but this calles for a complete and entire clean up. And by clean up I mean rooting everything up and burn it. Everything needs to be doing, and it will take weeks! Herr S. mumbled something about everyone wants to make same cash and 10 euro a day and a few beers and everyone helping, but I wasn´t quite sure what to make of it.

The plot definitely needs some doing.

Good that we met Herr S. as he pointed out a few more possible available Plots.

This one is called ‘Irmchen’ after the woman who is left alone with it.

Irmchen is nice and sunny and top cared for.

Also only available from may on. maybe you can go on there earlier if Irmchen agrees, Herr S. said.

Irmchen´s lawn

The guy of this plot died. Not on the plot. He sports a pond with some special electrical device and a groundwaterpump. Very convinient. He also liked stone houses.

The pond with the magical electric device

The stone house. Very beautiful, innit?

Only probleme: the inheritance situation isn´t solved yet. So nobody knows what and when is happening.

The bathhouse sports a bath. Is available from *mumble mumble mumble* Herr S. wasn´t quite clear on that one. Someone else died a while ago and the daughter obviously wants to get rid of it, but who knows?

And finally the last spot, contract running out to may:

Very accurate and well kept

Sunny, bright, lawn

Tidy and lovely

The last one we liked, the stone house we need to see from the inside. The first one (N°8) – quite the horror. Raspberry Hell attracts us for the prize onle. Who can beat coming for free? We could take this and use it for planting only. And buy a spot with a little hut on it. Like the last plot we have seen. Or the stone house.

Meanwhile the gardenguy from the first plot we visited (Vogesang, you remember?) called us up to express his dissatisfaction with the cancellation of the old appointment. He would know this process from former experience and he was generally very sympathetic with us. We wisely kept wuite about our Plan B, as we liked the Vogelsangspot alot. But if the former owners don´t manage to hand it over? So we are still without a garden. Damned!

Gnargh! and Ah! and questionmarks…

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Madame Du Feu

All the plants and seedlings are coming along fine. We planned the renovating of our little hut, the first steps in the garden and informed ourselves about dealing with the misplaced plants. Good thing we had the appointment scheduled with the former owners to get the paperwork done and to receive the keys.

Alas, no appointment today, to make a long story short, they cancelled due to whatever reasons and after the hassle to get them to agree on an appointment in the first place we don´t trust the whole thing any more. A ruined morning and some party unpleasant discussions later we agreed on Plan B: we keep the option on this garden as long as we can, but go and have a look for another one.

Hail the internet!

It took me only 5 minutes to get a new phonenumber, a quick call and Yippieh! we have another viewing appointment on Saturday. The areal is even closer to my home (literally down the road) and there is not one, but alltogether 4 plots free. So 2 are free now and 2 are going to be free somewhen soon.

The 2 free ones are a bit of a challenge, to articulate it carefully. The cheap one sprouts a sort of hut on it that is due to destruction, the other one is free and doesn´t even have a hut, nothing, only water. Being the adventurous me I already picture wild jungle gardens with a yurte on it, lovely wild flowers all over the place, monkeys swinging from palmtree to palmtree, romance poor!

Then I remembered! I heard about the shuting down of a vew allotment areals accroding to traffic development or rebuilding them as infrastructural areas. Another quich internet research revealed articles vom the BZ and the City of Berlin!

Oh my! nasty sounding texts about the destroying of little romantic and wild paradises for the sake of capitalism! And our future garden in the middle of it! I found the area mentioned in both articles, amongst the safe ones till 2014. This is in 2 years only! The only small relief could be that it says it will be only a partial destruction. There are sure a lot of questions to be asked on saturday!

Being impatient next to adventurous, we are sporting a little walk in the rain down to the areal now and have a look around, if we find any open gates.

Wish us luck!

Green Fingers + Garden = 3

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Herisson

I am thrilled at the prospect of having the opportunity to potentially put my green fingers to good use. Having an outside garden is different to having one indoors, you know. It’s like the difference between an inside lavatory and a brick shit-house, I suppose. If you are really lucky, you have both, but for as long as I can remember (I suffer from the most terrible anemia and forget lots), I have only had pot plants on the window sill, all of which turn up their toes and push up daisies, so to speak, after next to no time.

I was at the doctor’s the other day and he said that I ought to take brisk walks in the countryside, mainly because I am over-weight because I forget that I have already eaten. My auntie, who looks after me, says that I can’t be trusted to walk briskly in town, let alone the country and so she suggested that we get a Kleingarten and while she does the weeding, I can walk backwards and forwards, as long as I keep away from the potatoes she plans to plant. We looked at a Kleingarten the other day and Auntie joked that we were running the risk of becoming Spießbürgerlich, but I think that it would mean that we were moving up in the world. Middle class, here we come, I say!

We met the current owners, and they want to get rid of the garden, because it is too much work for them. They looked very sad. Still, I thought, that is their bad luck. You can only move up in the world by stepping on toes and climbing on shoulders and jumping on heads after all.