A weekly garden routine for healthy leaf babies

We’re not saying our garden routine is the hands down best, but it’s pretty good

Honestly, we’ve had our share of garden funerals. Sobbing while we add dead leaf babies to the compost tub and clean out their pot is not our favorite thing. So we’ve kept track of our routine and have a pretty good success rate. Given that we’re relegated to mostly indoor gardening this time of year, this post focuses on our indoor garden routine and is generic enough for most plant care.  If you think you have a brown thumb and want to try and not murder the next leaf baby someone gives you as a Christmas gift, give this routine a try. It’s simple and quick even if plants outnumber people in your home four or five or ten to one like ours.

You don’t need a lot of expensive tools or a lot of time

Our garden routine in the winter time covers well over 30 individual leaf babies at the start of the season and can easily grow over 100 at the end of the season when we’re starting to get ready for spring.  Assuming you already have pots, dirt, and drip pans, and give a crap, you probably have just about everything else you need in your kitchen:

1. A pitcher (how big or small depends on how big your garden is)
2. Scissors or kitchen shears
3. A small trash bag or waste bin
4. Paper towels
5. Sandwich bags
6. A couple of envelopes
7. Twist ties or twine

The only specialized piece of equipment we use is an inexpensive (under $10) test probe to make sure we’re not under or over-watering and that the soil is right.

The garden whole routine takes us about 2 hours on a Sunday and maybe 10 minutes once or twice during the week.

Here’s the garden routine

Left to their own discord, plants survive pretty well on their own with Mother Nature’s four seasons and periodic rain, sun, wind, etc.  But when we gardeners take them out of their natural habitat they depend on us a lot more.  So here’s how the garden routine goes

Measure all the things

Before yo go watering everything, use the soil probe and make sure you need to. Watering an already drenched leaf baby will make it sad and could hurt it. If you’re not sure what kind of plant it is,  you should feel bad about yourself and give the plant away, you’re an unfit leaf parent…. or maybe just look it up on the internet.  It’s good to check because even though most plants do pretty well with damp soil, some prefer a good soak and some prefer to be more dry.

Water

Regular ol’ tap water is fine. Room temperature if you can manage it.  Too cold or hot can cause stress or damage.  Our 30 plants drink 3 – 4 gallons of water per week in the beginning of the winter. As it starts to get on toward spring when the days start getting longer again the same number of plants can drink up to 10 gallons per week… Growing leaf babies need their water!

Keep a towel handy for overflows and drips.  Drip pans overflow a lot faster than you think. Don’t forget to fill automatic watering bulbs if you have any.

 

During the week we double check our thirstiest plants to make sure they’re not dried out.  Some plants need a little extra to get them through the week.

 

Prune

Now’s the part in our garden routine when we check for disease, pests, and make our plants look pretty.

Go through your garden plant by plant, leaf by leaf and look for brown spots, curled edges, yellowing, or anything that’s not supposed to be there.

It’s okay to cut browned curling edges of a leaf. The idea is not just to make it look nicer but also to cut out any fungus or disease that may be harmful to your garden. Clean any leaves out of the pots that may have fallen. Use twist ties or twine to add support for thin or spindly leaves or branches. If you see mites or pests you can usually spray them with a little soapy water.  Make sure to throw away any of the damaged cuttings or fallen leaves you collect. If they’re diseased you don’t want to use that in your compost.

 

Harvest

If you brought in any plants from your outdoor garden to your indoor garden over the winter, don’t be surprised if they give you presents. Right now we’ve got limes and Carolina reaper peppers just about ready for harvest.

Indoor plants that bear fruit in the winter will take a lot longer to mature because there’s less light.  These are great sources of seeds and its so much fun to get summer or spring fruit in the cold gray winter.  If you’re harvesting the seeds from these leaf babies don’t forget to dry them and then label them.  We use a regular letter envelope and a felt pen.

Plant

Different seeds need different treatments to start.

Starting seeds in a damp paper towel

starting seeds in a pot of damp soil

Some seeds (like citrus or beans) do well wrapped in a damp paper towel and set inside a plastic zip lock bag on a sunny sill.  Others like peppers or flowers do well in damp soil.

To fertilize or not … to be continued

This is not a weekly thing or a monthly thing. This is more of a May / December thing and really depends on what kind of fertilizer you use and what kind of plant you have. We’ll cover this one off another time, because it really deserves it’s very own post.