oddlight

my indoor garden experiment

Ok, today I share with you a poorly-kept secret. I am a greenie, a hippy, an environmentally aware citizen.

I do use plastic bags sure, but I also have a growing collection of those recycled (and recyclable!) green supermarket bags that I carry up to Giant at Sungei Wang and back. I'm still trying to impress upon the checkout staff there the point of the things, even though they sell the bags, the higher purpose does seem to be rather lost on them.

Compare that to Sydney where they seem to be the oh-so-cool-look-at-me-I'm-environmental latest fad for all sorts of things, not just grocery shopping. And why not, they're a cheap, tough, useful carry-all.

Anyway, I digress... I have been living in my little one-bedroom apartment for a little over a year now without so much as a balcony to put some pots on, and I've had enough. I've had a few leafy things growing in jars with that hydroponic jelly stuff, but I've decided that it's time to kick it up a notch.

So what I did a couple of weekends ago, is bought some large 'self-watering' garden tubs (see above) and stocked them with a few bits of greenery that I thought might be tough enough to survive with only infrequent waterings and filtered sunlight to brighten up my place, and clean the air, and do all the other little things that indoor plants are reknown for.

So far, so good. Everything seems to be still in the shades of green rather than brown, and I have the added advantage of coming home to the smell of marigolds 14 floors up.

My long term plan is to be able to grow a few simple vegetables or herbs up here. I'd like to try cherry tomatoes as they're hardier than the large variety.

If you haven't smelt a tomato plant, you're missing out.

I'll keep you posted on how things go.

=)