Category: fresh herbs

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How to Root Plants in Propagation Tubes

Propagating cuttings from your existing plants is a great way to increase your plant collection, plus it’s a fun way to share your plants. Propagation tubes are easy to use, but you don’t need tubes, tiny glass bottles would work well. Most plants can be propagated this way. With clear tubes or containers, you can check for the beginning hair roots and watch the rooting process.

What you Need

The list to get started is pretty short: Fresh water; a container; and string if you want to hang your container. If you are using propagation tubes you can hang them on the wall or use a frame or something to keep them upright, a rooting hormone, and of course, a plant from which to take cuttings.

For some plants rooting hormone isn’t required, but I do find that I get better rooting, faster using the hormone. There are several brands of rooting hormone on the market. Some come in powder form, with a hardness standard of soft, medium, and woody. Others are in gel form. It doesn’t matter which you choose, but the gel seems to be the most popular.

Propagating Cuttings

Ideally, to use a propagation tube your cutting should be 4 to 5 inches long with 2 – 3 leaves above the water for photosynthesis and one set of leaf nodes** in the water.

  1. Select a tender, young stock on your mother plant. Propagating cuttings will be more successful with young, tender cuttings. Pick a cutting that has 3 leaf sets including the tip. If a multi-leaf plant, like rosemary or thyme, try to take your cutting in a more tender stem. Make a clean cut just below the third pair of leaves to take your cutting. Use a knife or very sharp scissors so you don’t crush the tender stem.
  2. Carefully pinch off the bottom leaf pair**, taking care not to pull fibers off the stem. The roots will emerge where the leaf pair were. If you won’t be able to put your cutting in the water right away, take the cutting roughly an ½” below the leaf pair. Just like fresh flowers, you’ll want a fresh cut to germinate.
  3. Dip the end of your cutting in a bit of the rooting hormone. Make sure to cover about 1/4 inch of the cutting with the hormone.
  4. Remove the cap from your tube. Fill the tube with water to the depth that enables about an inch of the cut end to be in the water. Ensure you maintain that level of water in your container. Refresh the water every few days.

Rooting Stage

  1. Depending on the opening of your container don’t let your cutting develop too much of a root ball before transplanting into your media or you may have difficulty getting it out without breaking your new tender roots.
  2. Hang or place your container in bright but indirect light.

Transplanting your New Plant

  1. Once you have a few 2” roots it’s time to transplant. Transplant your new plant into a 2 to 4-inch container with potting soil. Make sure the roots are covered with soil and just below the surface of the soil.                       
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Eggs and Cress

adding cress to scrambled eggs
Eggs and cress, these two just seem to be made for each other. Certainly the British feel so with their love of watercress on egg salad sandwiches for tea time. These curly cress are different that watercress. Watercress have a wide round leave and a more woody stem so what you find these days are baby watercress. Curly cress have a slender pointed leaf. They are a very pretty microgreen, whether served in food or sprinkled on top.
I think you can start the day beautifully  with lovely, soft eggs, scrambled and lightly tossed with beautiful, peppery curly cress microgreens. Who needs something with hollandaise sauce just to make a fancy breakfast dish? Of course a great bread, with or without gluten. For this breakfast I used a delicate kolach bread, but any bread with a slightly sweet, soft texture will make a tender toast. I buy our kolach from Robert and our eggs from Brenda. Both at thecurly cress microgreens Deville Market at North Cooking Lake.
I love La Vache qui Rit from Fromageries Bel.  It’s just about my favorite cream cheese. I’m also passionate about the combination of generous folds of delicate cold smoked salmon with scrambled eggs. My favorite is J. Willy Krauch & Sons smokehouse salmon, if you can find them. It’s a treat I enjoy any time I am down east. Going to the smokehouse is a guilty pleasure and well worth the drive, if you are taking a Maritime holiday. But I digress. If you aren’t a fish fan, a soft and mild prosciutto is also equal to the task.
Farm fresh country eggs are just about essential for a good scramble, as far as I’m concerned. Fresh eggs from a local coop almost always means the chickens were fed a better diet, frequently allowed to scratch for a living and are a happier chicken. All to give us eggs with a beautiful, upright yolk, a firm shell and just an all round better tasting, never mind more nutritious breakfast.
Of course we respect those eggs by cooking them over gentle heat, in butter, not oil, after having whipped them to fluffy perfection. Adding water to the eggs, not milk when whipping makes for a fluffy scrambled egg. The water will steam during the cooking process. The perfect scramble is pushed around the pan while cooking to keep it tender and soft, and still a bit runny. It shouldn’t take more than 2 minutes, making this a breakfast that doesn’t have to wait for the weekend. Note the addition of a tsp of water to the eggs. A lot of people add milk to scrambled eggs, but milk makes a tougher egg.
Ingredients per person:
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 tsp of water
  • 1 tbsp butter
  • 2 slices smoked salmon
  • 2 pinches of Curly Cress
  • 1 triangle of La Vache qui Rit
  • 1 slice kolach bread
  • Salt and Pepper to taste

Method:

  1. Whisk together eggs with the bit of water until light and fluffy.
  2. Heat a saute or fry pan over barely medium heat. Melt the butter in the pan.
  3. Make your toast, spreading with the cream cheese. Fold your salmon and place on the toast so you can see the edges of salmon draping over the toast. Eating is all about appearance, so it’s worth the extra couple seconds to make the first meal of your day pretty.
  4. Pour the eggs into the heated pan. Immediately and gently push around in the pan with a firm silicone spatula, don’t stir. The idea is to have nice, full, fluffy eggs. That requires a gentle touch. As soon as the eggs are showing signs of starting to set, sprinkle with the cress.
  5. Eggs should be just done, still having a slight creaminess to them. That will take barely 2 minutes.
  6. Mound the eggs onto the prepped toast and sprinkle with salt and pepper, as desired.
  7. Mmm, now that’s breakfast.
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Learning to Grow Hydroponic Strawberries

I love strawberries. I don’t know too many people who don’t.  Even people allergic to strawberries find themselves inexplicably drawn to them. But I don’t love those little red triangles that we get in the grocery store from Sep to Apr that come from somewhere way south of us. I know, it’s consumerism at it’s worst to want something so very much out of season, but I do.

But let’s back up the story. I grow hops, indoors, in special buckets. It’s in a system called hydroponics. Like those guys growing the funny weed that has been the topic of news for some time now. Well I have been reading about growers who been working out the kinks and creating a variety of hydroponic systems for growing these beloved little berries. I looked at my little hydroponic hops farm and realized I have unused real estate under those big plants. They take the same level of light and the same water and nutrient levels as strawberries. And there it was, the beginnings of an idea.

I phoned wonderful Apache Seeds and asked about starter stock for strawberries. These are the same starter plants farmers use to grow in the fields, tiny little runners, tied in bundles, virtually bare root. Sure enough they could get them for me. I had previously brought in runners from my backyard plants, and you could, if you wanted to carefully wash the roots. I have experienced first hand, the time it seems to take for them to acclimatize to the hydroponic system. These little starter stock plants have settled right in. In fact within a month of being planted they are already rewarding me with blossoms.

Why Hydroponics?

By now you are probably asking why hydroponics? Why not plop the little things in soil and let them do their thing? Some people argue that plants grown in soil taste better and maybe, to some, they do. The internet is full of arguments for both sides, but we’ve come a long way from the basic fertilizers and florescent lights.  Much study has been done on the nutritive values of hydroponic plants, grown under lights. Certainly they have to taste better than those grocery store red things that have traveled thousands of kilometers to get to us. For me and many other indoor farmers, hydroponics is a clean way to grow. I can create a wonderful environment for plants grow in: the lights overhead; the medium in which they are grown;  the chemistry of water; and the nutrients they receive. I am learning about the use of biological controls to balance insect predators and what to do to minimize problems  like powdery mildew. Research has made it easier for my green thumb to work. All that being said, and science aside there is something magical about coming into the farm in the morning and seeing the first buds turning into blossoms. Especially in an Alberta winter. I can’t wait for a few more to open up so I can wield a paint brush and start pollinating.

Could you do this? It’s sounds complicated. Well, yes and no. There is a lot to learn and after asking a bunch of questions, you may decide that soil is the way for you. Just know that if you really want to grow great food indoors, there is still a learning curve, but the results are so worth it. Your local hydroponic shop can set you up with just about everything you need, if you want to grow hydroponically and a good garden center has experts to help with soil based farming. There is lots of great information online about growing both ways. I’ve learned a lot, reading and taking courses. There are kits you can purchase with everything you need to start with a few herbs, greens or microgreens before you started something more complicated, like strawberries, but certainly you could.

The Basics of Hydroponics – Water

Strawberries grown indoors require water with a pH of 5.3 to 6.5. You’ve probably not thought of testing the pH of your water before you water your plants. It might surprise you to know that our Edmonton city water rates at the 8.5 mark, which makes it more alkaline, what they call hard water. It’s that residue in your tea kettle and around the edge of your bathtub. A pH of 7 is considered to be neutral. If you have ever struggled to grow anything in your backyard, someone from a garden center may have suggested that you get your soil tested for pH. For your houseplants 5.5 to 6.5 is ideal, unless you have something that requires a more acidic soil. There are all kinds of amendments you can add to garden soil to change the acidity, but in hydroponics, a product called pH Down and a simple test kit is all you need. Even your houseplants would benefit from water that is adjusted for pH.

Along with higher pH, what comes from your tap has chlorine and sometimes chloramine in it. Anyone with a fish tank knows about the importance of treating for that. Have you ever collected rainwater for your plants, or noticed how green your lawn is from the rain compared to watering it? Chlorine and sometimes the disinfectant chloramine are added to our drinking water to keep it safe. The problem with those two chemicals for watering your plants, particularly in hydroponics is the removal of any beneficial fungi and bacteria which help plants take up nutrients. You can remove chlorine by allowing it to sit out in the sun for 24 hours, but chloramine has to be removed by filtering or chemically.  Campden tablets will remove the chlorine and chloramine from your water, but they also increase the sodium levels. Before I lose you to all the science, if you want to grow better plants, and especially if you are thinking hydroponics, find yourself a good shop and ask about your options. If you are like me and just have to do the research, check out this article from High Times.

Growing Media and Containers

Back to my strawberries. They are growing well in their Bato or Dutch Buckets, wedged in between the hops. Bato Buckets are a frequently used system for growing a variety of  tall or vining plants such as: tomatoes; cucumbers; or peppers. To learn more about setting up a Bato Bucket system, check out this great article from Upstart University.

So far I have used perlite as the growing media, especially for the hops as it drains very well. The side effect of perlite is the dust. You need a mask to work with it. There are other options but you need to consider drainage. Each media has a system for which it is ideally suited. Perlite drains well, but with little water retention, you have to set up a timed watering or be prepared to hand water every few hours, depending on plant requirements. Rockwool holds a lot of water is not ideal for Bato. Perlite/vermiculite mixtures are good but vermiculite holds a lot of water. Coconut fibre is becoming much more popular and is something I will be testing for the growth of the strawberries. From GPN an older article but it talks about a variety of growing media. Whatever you choose, if you are using Bato Buckets you need to keep the media from clogging the system. Painter’s filter bags are a great way hold the growing media and prevent it from being washed down into the watering system and into the pumps.

This article barely scratches the surface of growing hydroponically. I have much to learn but so far, with the strawberries, I have blossoms, and soon I hope to have berries. Whatever you choose to grow and however you choose to grow it, have fun, much luck and enjoy.

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Scrambled Eggs with Everything

It’s minus brutal outside, but we have a fridge full of breakfast makings.  Most of the time breakfast usually depends on what’s in the fridge, but today I was a bit more prepared. I was thinking western omelet or frittata, something interesting, but I decided I want to see all the ingredients. So I created a plate that was separate layers. That is especially nice when you have ingredients like Blue Oyster mushrooms from Gruger Family Fungi. Making this is a little more effort, because you have to prep and cook each of ingredients separately, before cooking the eggs. If this is more than you want to do first thing in the morning, do what I did and make it more of a brunch dish. This would also make a great lunch plate or breakfast for supper, as we’ve been known to do.

The ingredients are a quantity for breakfast for two, but I’m sure you can do the math to increase it. The joy with cooking like this is that if you don’t have all the ingredients, or you have preferences it’s easy to change it up. The one thing I always use my freshly dried basil leaves. Crumbled basil leaves have far more flavour, especially when you rub the leaf bits in your fingers, just before adding to the eggs. I can never get enough of that aroma.

Dice or slice each of the ingredients, as noted, so your presentation is uniform. If you are going to the effort to make a dish with multiple layers like this, presentation is everything. We eat with our eyes first, so why not make your meals feel like you are dining out and take a couple extra minutes to plate everything.

Ingredients:

  • 2 eggs per person
  • 6-8 oyster mushrooms
  • 2 pinches dried basil
  • 1/3 cup each, red, orange and yellow pepper
  • 4 slices lean bacon
  • 1/4 cup water
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 1/4 cup finely grated cheese

Method:

  1. Chop the peppers into 1/4″ squares.
  2. Slice the oyster mushrooms into 1/2″ wide, long strips.
  3. Slice the bacon into 1/4″ strips.
  4. Saute the bacon until almost crisp. Drain on paper towel and set aside to keep warm. Leave the fat in the pan.
  5. Saute the pepper mixture until tender and set aside to keep warm.
  6. Saute the mushrooms in the bacon fat, adding the 1/4 cup of water to keep the mushrooms tender. Set aside to keep warm.
  7. Rub the basil leaf to refresh the aroma. Combine with the eggs, and a bit of water and beat.
  8. Reduce the heat and cook the eggs until just done.
  9. Plate the eggs, then sprinkle on the bacon. Spoon the pepper mixture around and on the eggs.
  10. Top with grated cheese, and if desired a sprinkle of salt and pepper.