Well, there's some sign of the carrot!

I never realised carrots would take so long to grow. Back in July we planted them. Just sprinkled them in a window box, which was apparently deep enough (after all, they were Japanese seed - from Korea I think, and there are really tiny carrots here!) So, stupidly enough I just sprinkled them all over the place, and for some reason, when they were just seedlings there were a couple of them round the edges and the rest all nicely lined up along the middle. It would've been nice if it had been along the middle, lengthwise, but unfortunately it wasn't. So after having tried to transplant (don't try to transplant carrot seedlings, they'll just die!) I just left the remaining leaves just as an experiment. I really should be more ruthless sometimes! 

You'll probably remember what they looked like back in September. They've just been looking exactly the same, but bushier. And just when I thought nothing was ever going to happen, today I discovered the tip of a carrot pushing it's way out of the soil! I tried to take a photo, but carrot leaves are green, the carrot itself is green, and I have a very shaky hand... so if it comes to anything I'll post a photo here ;)

Now, what do I do with this?

Tempting, though I don't know where they could possibly go! Anyway, time for some research on garlic :)

"Please, just poke me in some soil..."

Tomato plant - back to life (or so it seems)

When we got our tomato plant it had been grown from seed, in a tiny pot, and I moved it into a less tiny pot. It then started growing really fast and looked beautiful until one day we had a typhoon... it sort of stayed bent over and didn't snap, so we bought it a little "cage" (as you can see in the photos) so at least it wouldn't fall too far! 

Then all the leaves started getting dry and droopy, and it started needing lots and lots of water (it still does... it's bone dry within hours of watering!) so we went on a mission... after lots of looking into what it needed we went off to try and decipher the contents of all the fertilizers and so on locally. Eventually we found one with a photo of a tomato on it, and managed to figure out the contents, and that it was good for tomato and strawberry plants... So after about 5 weeks of giving the tomato some fertilizer once a week, it's looking much better (just try and imagine what it was like before!), although for some reason the stem is still thin at the bottom, it seems to be growing up the way and the top is thick... take a look at the photos (sorry the first one's a bit fuzzy...)

Here's the whole plant in its "cage"

The stem of the plant

Some branches near the top

Hey! What's this! I never thought this day would come...

Strawberry's home for good!

I may have mentioned that once again, I moved the straberry plant... it was rooting like nobody's business and the runner was getting in the way when I tried to water, so we bought a strawberry container, planted the strawberry in the middle and tried to get the runner you can see at the bottom to settle down. It didn't work though, and I just noticed the other day that naughty little one on the top left-hand corner settled in on its own, right next to the border... ¬¬

I think I'm just going to let it do its own thing... *sigh*

Knitting tutorial part 2

In the first part of the knitting tutorial you learn how to make a single-coloured scarf using the knit stitch. Although I've been combining those videos with others in order to learn, here are some more from the same series which show you how to purl, join different balls of yarn (so you can change colour if you like) and join squares.

Garden update!

I haven't been posting about my garden because I've been knitting (or trying to, anyway!) and nothing much seemed to be changing, so here's what's been going on.

My herb garden's not doing all that well, especially the basil. Some of the thyme has died out, but a few seedlings are still hanging on there! The basil has some strange spots, which I think (hope) after looking around the Internet, may be due to cold weather. So while it's nice and sunny (20ºC) out there, my little pranter full of herbs sits outside, and it goes into the toilet overnight (so it doesn't overheat with the air conditioning, that is!)

My strawberry has moved again since my last post about it. Lazy me... more on that later.

Our tomato plant is terribly confusing... overall it looks terrible, but is still managing to give some fruit! 

The carrots look like they're coming along nicely, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens! I though by now we'd have some, I guess it may have something to do with the overcrowding in the planter, but I really feel too sorry to pull out any carrots!

The onions look exactly the same :(

My herb garden two weeks later...

A couple of weeks ago I put rosemary and basil in a new pot, and planted some thyme... so, here it is today - basil growing nicely, and thyme started popping up last week :-)

Some thyme has also landed down beside the basil...

Can't wait for the thyme to grow even more! 

Knitting tutorial

Here's a tutorial which is great for absolute beginners, I managed to actually make things thanks to these videos!

(beware of the extra stitches! I learnt that the hard way!)

This is all you need to make a lovely scarf! I'm currently working on socks, and have seen tons of videos on Youtube... if I find any really good ones I'll post them too! ;)

Strawberry has a new home

While I was at it yesterday (and before the weather turned nasty again) I also finally put the strawberry plant in its new home, aka the bottom of a Coca Cola bottle. It looked lovely in the yellow pot it came in, but the roots were already starting to come out the hole in the bottom, so it obviously needed more space. I haven't done anything about the runner yet, because I have been thinking about where to put the plant, but I'll keep an eye on it. 

This is what I pulled out of the pot...

...and here's the plant now! Fingers crossed...

My wee herb garden

After many days of not doing anything in the line of gardening, we finally got round to buying a container to grow our herbs in! The rosemary, which was bought locally, had been sitting in the pot it came in for a couple of weeks at least, the basil was a cutting which surprisingly enough rooted, and the containers in the middle contain thyme seeds which we planted today, which will hopefully end up in the same container (in the middle, right where they are now!). 

Just poked a stem in some earth in August, and these are the roots it has now

Et voilà!

Oops...

It turns out we had a couple seed packets hiding in a plastic bag, and we can barely stand on the balcony because of all the pots we have... and we also have some rosemary and strawberry plants to be transferred to a larger container. The strawberry plant we bought about 10 days ago, and due to weather conditions involving strong winds I've not dared transplant it yet... but despite being in a tiny little pot it's growing like nobody's business, and now it even has a runner! I'll have to see how I can sort everything out, my guess is I'm going to use yet another window box on a metal frame so I can fit some of the small pots underneath...

Tomorrow's going to be an interesting gardening day - weather permitting. Otherwise, it'll be another fight-with-your-candy-coloured-crochet-hook day! (The hungrier I am while crochetting, the more I realise why the hook is "candy colour"...)

...and carrots!

Well, something in the garden I actually enjoy eating!

We planted these from seed a couple of months ago, in a window box. Read lots about planting carrots in a container, but not enough obviously. I scattered the seeds all over the place, and for some reason they have only grown right in the middle of the box! Everyone talks about thinning them out, though I feel sorry for the carrots 'cause we only have seven! Thinking of just leaving them there and seeing what Nature does...

 Next time, carrots and mustard are going to be planted individually, no matter how many seeds and how little space we have. That's what we did with the broccoli, more on that later....

They're so pretty... :)

The onions are giving signs of life...

Or at least one of them is! I wasn't expecting it that soon, but then again, it's the first time I've ever planted onions. With the onions we spread the seeds nicely just where they should be - in a container, about 10 cms apart. Not all the onion seeds fitted in the container, and it's not like we can fit many more containers on our balcony! We'll see how many come out, and when we can plant the next batch.

Parsley's back!

About a month after the first parsley seedlings died (too hot, maybe? But why did they germinate?) there's one little seedling coming through again! I tried to take a photo of it but it's still too small and it's just a green blob, but hopefully now it's cooler it'll live and I'll be able to post it when it's bigger! Now that's a surprise I wasn't expecting! :)

Tomato plant

So, here it is...

Someone gave it to us when it was quite small,  and after putting it in a bigger pot it started to grow quite fast. It's not me who takes to edible plants, but I must admit I think tomato flowers are beautiful!

I think it's meant to be a cherry tomato, and hopefully one day it'll give us some fruit. I've done nothing but worry about it these days - there was one day I really thought it was the end of it, after a huge storm - I'm pretty sure part of the plant went missing! Anyway, it's growing nice green leaves and lovely yellow flowers, and I don't really know what's going to happen when the next storm comes. The only thing we've done is buy it a frame (intended for training morning glories, but who cares!). I've been looking up ways of strengthening the stems - the fan is not an option, the wind will do that already! Anyway, we'll just have to wait and see...

Ah, my beauty... (just ignore the 'slime' on that leaf above the flowers!)

Time for some crocheting

Now that I've finally finished knitting a pretty normal scarf, I'm sick of knitting needles and have decided to go for crocheting. Unfortunately, intelligent little me did not bring my amigurumi kit (hook and yarns) and amigurumi pattern book to Japan, partly cause of all the cursing and stressing over a hook which was too small for someone who can do pretty much nothing...

So I went down to the 100 yen store (again!) and got myself a 7 mm crochet hook. And now I just have to decide whether to start on amigurumi, socks, or blanket (which we already need!). Or then again I might just start reviewing my crochet skills and see if I actually get anywhere! Just wait and see...

My new "candy colour" (aka red) hook. Nice and thick so I can see what I'm doing!

Oh, mustard...

One of my main hobbies (not too good for my economy) is to drop by the 100 yen store and pick up... I wouldn't really say anything, since there are lots of weird and freaky things (no use trying to figure it out, either!), but we got a whole bunch of seeds (2 sachets for 105 yens). At that price it's worth a try, surely...

Amongst other things, we got parsley and mustard. Parsley - big failure. Mustard - real scary!

Here's the mustard 2 days after we planted it... I kid you not!

And here it is now, about... 7? weeks after planting it. There are actually a few strong plants literally pushing some of the smaller ones out of the container. We found quite a few seedlings just lying on their side, completely unearthed. Transplanted them into an empty bottle container with holes cut out for drainage, but not sure if they'll make it after last night's storm. In any case, lucky we only planted about half the sachet, and we most certainly will not have a lack of seeds and / or plants!