Growing At Home: My Green Thumb

I’m living in a small studio apartment and have been growing vegetables for the first time. Perhaps what feels most impressive, at least to me, is that I’ve been able to keep a store bought basil plant alive the whole of lockdown! I know! All it took was planting it in some soil that hadn’t been drying out for several weeks — seriously, why did I ever think that the compact, dry mass it comes in would be nutritious enough?

Offcuts into new plants

When lockdown officially began, I came across an infographic about how you can regrow new vegetables from the bits you cut off. I’d had some bok choy/pak choi (did you know those are two names for the same vegetable?) and decided to give that a go as it seemed simple enough and it was either going to rot in the trash or PERHAPS become my new source of home grown green goodness.

I had three ends to use so I put them in a little dish of water, with just their ends covered. Apparently if you put in too much water then everything turns to mush, but if you cover the bottoms only then they flourish!

I changed the water a couple of times, every other day, and within a few days there were new shoots. They were adorable tiny little leaves, like the pak choi you’d want to use in a tiny food kitchen when preparing snacks for hamsters.

I was impressed that they appeared so quickly. Now, the instructions at this point were to bury them up the new growth in soil, but I didn’t have any soil. Where would I keep it in a place that still has all my books in boxes because there is not a single shelf in the whole apartment?! As a result the little new plants got to grow a fair bit longer in the little water dish than they needed to. But they survived and I got to drag a garden centre approved sack of soil back home.

I planted these new little plants and sat back.

Did you know vegetables have flowers?

A month later and each of the pak choi has its own pot and these little leaves have grown into tall plants. The leaves grew first, then long stems, then more leaves and stems, seeking out the sunlight that bathes them in the one window of my apartment.

Then, somewhat to my surprise the long stems began to grow flowers. Yes, obviously I was aware that plants flower but you don’t usually think about the flowers on vegetables when you don’t grow anything yourself. I also don’t know if the flowering is a good thing. I read once that you aren’t supposed to let basil flower if you want it to keep growing and since I don’t remember why I’ve ignored that for now.

My bok choy continues to grow and making sure it gets enough water to grow is one of my daily pleasures. At the end of a hot and sunny day — which is most days in this apartment with very poor ventilation — I can see the droop in the leaves and then can watch as they become more rigid again the next morning after a good watering.

My basil plant also began to flower. The bok choy has these trumpety yellow flowers which pale to white as they wilt away. The basil plant has tiny, delicate white flowers. They are both quite similar, with long stamens and only a few petals.

While I’ve been struggling with feeling lonely in lockdown, having plants to tend to, touch, see and smell has made all the difference.

A pepper experiment

Since all the plants so far have flourished, not to mention a spider plant that has gone wild and can’t stop sending out new shoots with spider-babies. P.s. I am not a fan of spiders or bugs in general and the name really doesn’t make you think a spider plant is a pretty plant to have. BUT IT IS. It’s sleek and bushy and a lovely bit of greenery.

So, since the other plants were going well and I still had an industrial amount of soil left over. I decided to plant some pepper seeds. Now, I may have made a mistake here as I only had a small pot but decided to bury the whole middle of a pepper. I’m pretty sure it only takes one seed to grow a new plant, but how could I know if the one I planted would work? Also, I didn’t even think about it until the thing was completely buried in the soil and I could not be bothered to dig up anything that had been decomposing for so long.

Nothing happened for quite a while and I started to wonder if I’d buried it too deep or missed a step in pepper planting — it wasn’t included on the infographic. Then a shoot appeared with swooping long little leaves. Then another one. Currently, there are two stems of new growth and, I imagine, little peppers coming into their own below.

Green Thumb Living

I don’t think all this new growth actually means I have some spectacular green thumb, especially as I have done very little research and had a lot of time so really how could I get it wrong. It does, however, give me confidence to keep growing new plants. And a little boost to my mood as I look over them each morning.

What other vegetables can I grow indoors? Suggestions?