2010-07-13
The last grafting experiment (2010-06-11) failed, as can be seen below. I've begun on another experiment, this time with a potato plant. I'm also using plastic foil to try to keep the grafting point moist. It is actually two experiments in one: in one I have taped the plant parts together, and then wrapped plastic foil around it, and in the other experiment I've first wrapped plastic foil around the grafting point and then tape at the top and bottom of the foil.
2010-07-10
radishes-third-attempt.avi is now finished. Beginning on a new movie, habaneros.avi.
2010-06-22
radishes-second-attempt.avi is now finished, and I've started on a third attempt.
2010-06-15
The time-lapse experiment with the CD jewel case is done. It was only reasonably fun. I've started a new one, though:
2010-06-11
I moved the time-lapse experiment a bit, so that it isn't affected by sunlight that much. Also, trying out grafting of a part of a mango plant to another part of the stem. It's will probably not work, but still, an attempt.
2010-06-06
Beginning on another longer time-lapse experiment: seeds for radishes and sunflower have been placed in a CD jewel case. One 640x480 picture taken every 20th second, using
streamer -s 640x480 -r 0.05 -t 1000000 -o f000000.jpegwhere each resulting image (after post-processing) looks something like this:
Here is the setup:
The seeds were old, however, so maybe this particular experiment will fail. If it does, I'll try with other seeds.
2010-06-05
Making a time-lapse movie of a Peace lily (fredskalla) recovering when given water, and taking some pictures of the balcony and the growing plants:
2010-05-25
More pictures.
2010-05-16
1) Planting seeds from very large habanero and red chili fruits, 2) a picture of the growing tamarillo, and 3) a picture of the curled-up new leaves on one of the tomato plants.
2010-05-13
Updates on the various growing things: 1) Avocado, 2) Begonia (new leaf), 3) habanero and kumquat growing in the mini greenhouse, 4) habaneros, 5) kroton, 6) pepino, 7) rambutan, 8) tamarillo, 9) tomatos on the balcony, 10) new leaves on the mango plant.
2010-04-23
A picture of 1) the growing tamarillo plants (limiting to two, there were about 50 or so to begin with), and 2) the habanero plants bought as packaged seeds (2010-04-14) have started to appear!
2010-04-22
Pictures of the growing avocado plant (1), the growing pepino (2), and a new timelapse setup for the habanero plants (3) (hopefully better looking than the previous one).
Apart from the pictures above, the following things have just started to appear: a tamarillo plant, a rambutan, and a Spanish pepper (regular chili). All these are just one millimeter or so above to soil so far.
2010-04-14
Moving the tomato plants to the balcony. Buying Växtnäring (for the first time?) which I've poured on most of my plants. Also for the first time (I think?), I've bought habanero seeds from the store. Previously, I've planted habanero seeds directly from fruits.
2010-04-12
Creating a page for the time-lapse experiment: Habanero-kollen
And some more pictures: 1 = an overview of the plants in the main window, 2-3-4 = extracting and planting seeds from some more rambutan fruits, and 5 = new leaves are appearing on an unknown plant ("Kroton"?).
2010-04-11
Making a time-lapse setup with a webcam and the old laptop (running Ubuntu), taking images every now and then of a growing habanero plant. The plant is barely visible when watching the pot from the top, so it is hopefully a good starting point for a time-lapse movie. Picture (1) below shows the setup.
First I tried something like
while true; do streamer -b 24 -c /dev/video0 -j 85 -o `date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S`.jpeg sleep 59 donebut this caused timeouts after about 30 pictures had been taken, so now I'm instead hoping that streamer's own take-multiple-pictures functionality will work:
streamer -r 0.005 -t 10000 -s 640x480 -o output0000.ppm
0.005 frames/second is about 1 frame every 200 seconds, i.e. one every three minutes. 10000 images is slightly more than 23 days, which should be enough to see the habanero plant grow to something meaningful. Let's just hope the laptop survives that long without overheating (!).
The plan is then to encode this using ffmpeg using something like:
ffmpeg -b 750000 -i output%04d.ppm test.mp4
The other pictures are: 2) other growing habaneros, 3) new leaves on the old mango (which I thought was dead), and 4) the cactus flower.
2010-04-08
Spring is getting closer! I've extracted some seeds from a Tamarillo (1) (I don't remember how far the previous experiment got, but I'll try again anyway). Also taking pictures of the growing habanero and mango (2), tomatoes (3), kumquat (4), avocado (5), pepino (6), a new monstera leaf (7), and a flower on the cactus (8).
2010-02-20
Planting some seeds from a Pepino. (I've tried this before, but that plant didn't make it.) Also: The tomatos are growing, despite the Winter-like conditions.
2010-02-06
Planting a mango seed.
2010-02-04
Start of 2010! Planting two avocados (one "hanging" in water, the other one straight into soil), some tomato seeds, and some kumquat seeds.
A week ago or so, I planted some rambutan, habanero, jalapeno, and spanish pepper seeds as well. The lemon seeds planted in July didn't make it, and it was a long and dark Autumn with nothing interesting, when it comes to plants. The only new thing that has survived the Winter, apart from the usual ones, is a reasonably new sprätt-iväg. Also, the date plants/palms are growing slowly but steadily.
2009-07-10
Planting honey lemon seeds:
2009-06-23
More pictures:
2009-05-10
Some pictures of the growing plants:
2009-04-24
Planting two Castanea sativa seeds.
2009-04-20
Planting pumpkin seeds and tomato seeds.
2009-02-21
Extracting seeds from another Red Chili. Also taking pictures of the mango, and the habanero/date/ramiro red/red chili growing in the mini-greenhouse:
2009-01-23
A mango planted three weeks ago is growing fast: (three pictures within a 24-hour period)
2009-01-08
Habanero, Ramiro Red, and Red Chili have all started growing (as expected).
2008-12-27
Cleaning up the mini greenhouse, and putting the Red Spanish Pepper pots in it. Also planting some Habanero, Dates, and Ramiro Red seeds.
2008-12-21
Planting the first seeds for the upcoming spring. Most likely too early, but I need to plant something. :) Some Red Spanish Peppers. Also replanting the Pepino plant, which seems to have survived Swedish Autumn.
2008-12-08
The habaneros have turned orange, but I guess December in Sweden isn't their favorite time. Also, some insects/bugs seem to have invaded them. I hope Spring 2009 will be better for plant experiments.
2008-09-28
Flowers have appeared on another habanero plant.
2008-07-06
Harvesting the habanero, and eating it.
2008-07-05
More pictures of the chili fruits: 1) The habanero is turning from green to orange/red, 2) the "red chili" is turning from green to red, and 3) the "yellow chili" is turning from green directly to yellow.
2008-06-14
Two days ago, I harvested and ate my second Fresno chili:
It was spicey.
2008-06-09
Pictures: 1) My first actual Habanero fruit :-) 2) One of the Fresno chilis is turning red. 3) A growing "normal" chili. 4) Apelsin plant. 5) Avocado plant. 6) 5 of 11 carambola seeds started to grow.
2008-05-25
Some more pictures: 1) One of the four apelsin seeds has started to grow. 2) Avocado. 3) My first plain Chili ever (note: not Fresno, I've already eaten one of those :-), 4) some new Habanero plants on the balcony.
5 and 6) Planting 9 citron seeds. 7) Flowers on the "new" kiwano plant.
2008-05-08
We're getting closer to Summer :) The plants like the new semi-warm weather. Some new pictures:
1) Ananas (pineapple). My last attempt failed, this is a new one. I have simply stuck down the top of an ananas into some soil. 2) Avocado. 3) Fresno (whole plant). 4) Fresno fruit. :-)
1) The largest tomato plant has been moved out onto the balcony. 2) Picture of the first flowers on one of the tomato plants. 3) Lychee.
1) The best-looking of my two Mango plants. 2) Carrots. They look fragile. 3) Radishes.
2008-04-26
Some more pictures:
1) The tomato plants are growing fast. 2) The fresno chili plant has started to grow its first fruit :-) 3) Picture of one of the Habanero plants. 4) Picture of the potato plant. 5) One of the mango plants is getting a second round of leaves. 6) Picture of a kiwano (front) and jalapeño (back).
2008-04-18
The tomato plants are growing fast. I've replanted them into larger pots today, and also thrown away some old habanero plants (these were plants that were planted during Autumn), and planted new habanero seeds too.
2008-03-23
Planting some radishes, some pumpkin seeds, throwing away the boring physalis plant, and replanting one of the young habaneros into a larger pot. Cleaning up in one of the larger windows (moving away larger plants, keeping the smaller ones, to let more sun come into the room). Cutting the China Doll tree in half (!) and sticking the top half straight down next to the main branch.
We also actually have snow now! This is the first real snow we've had this Winter, apart from one or two days in January.
2008-03-21
Some pictures of the growing beef tomatos, the four different kinds of chili I have ("red" chili, jalapeno, fresno, and habanero), and finally the potato and the garlic I planted two weeks ago. The garlic has grown to 43 cm (!).
2008-03-16
Assembling a plant workbench I got from my parents as a birthday present, and planting two nektarin seeds.
2008-03-13
Planting coffee seeds #8, #9, and #10. The garlic thing has grown to 11.5 cm (!) in just a few days. Also, the potato I planted has already begun to show two small "antennas" above the soil.
2008-03-09
Moving the beef tomatos out of the mini greenhouse, and placing them in an optimal position (sunlight-wise). Also taking a picture of the garlic, which actually grew by perhaps a centimeter tonight.
(The bigger green plant in the first picture is a habanero; the beef tomato plants are the two plants closest to the window. You can also see a small kiwano at the lower-righthand corner.)
2008-03-07
More pictures of the plants:
1) "Bifftomat" and Fresno chili, in the mini greenhouse (currently without the roof). 2) Citron. 3) Mango. The leaves have turned from redish to pure green. 4) A new tiny kiwano plant, planted 2007-08-18, but it didn't start to grow until now. 5) Pepino. 6) Tamarillo.
Also today: planting garlic (!) and half a potato (!). Perhaps it is not possible to get these to grow simply by planting them, but anyway, it is a fun experiment.
2008-02-25
Today's pictures: The first two show how I extract the mango seed from a mango, and the third shows how my (so far only successful) mango attempt is growing.
The last three pictures show: 1) "björnbär" on the balcony, 2) the current state of the carambola plant, and 3) some of the growing red chili plants.
2008-02-21
Planting the 7th coffee seed, after having it placed in water for one week. The latest mango attempt (picture 1 below) seems to be working! It has grown to 15 cm already.
2008-02-11
Planting the 6th coffee seed. I've also planted some "biff tomat" seeds and some seeds from a red chili (yesterday).
2008-01-26
Planting the 5th coffee seed: no preparation, putting it in a small plastic pot on a computer monitor (which is usually turned off), plastic cover to keep the soil most. Also threw away the red spanish pepper planted in August or whenever it was; it was too boring, and has some kind of bug on its leaves.
2008-01-19
Planting the 4th coffee seed (no preparation, putting it in the mini greenhouse). Updating the inventory page.
2008-01-15
Pictures: 1) Planting the coffee seeds etc. that I got a few days ago. 2) A picture of an Amaryllis I got as an X-mas gift.
2008-01-13
It seems that I am not very good at growing Mangos. All of my attempts so far have failed. One came up a few centimeters above the soil, but died (perhaps it was too late in the autumn). The others have been eaten by some kind of small white worms. Yuck. I'm moving the only experimental mango I have left to the mini-greenhouse.
It is slowly getting brighter. The sun still goes down way too early, but today we had actual sunshine for a short moment. :-) Mostly it is just gray and rainy, though.
2008-01-12
I have now received seeds from Impecta. 10 seeds of Coffea arabica (plus another 10 seeds for my mom), 14 seeds of Passiflora edulis, and 4 seeds of Baobab tree (adansonia digitata). I will try to keep track of how/when I plant the coffee seeds, in an experiment column on the right of this page.
2007-12-14
Bought a chili mix: I am planning to plant most of these, today I planted some seeds from the orange habanero, some fresno seeds, and some yellow chili seeds. I also took a picture of the tiny yellow Kiwano flowers (well, just one, but the plant has perhaps 20 or so), and I bought a Nashi pear and planted the seeds.
5 of the Nashi pear seeds are planted in my mini greenhouse, and 5 are in a normal plastic pot on top of a computer monitor (where it should be warm and comfortable).
2007-12-07
Quite some time has passed since my last News entry. Several plants have died. Some new have been planted. Here are some pictures of current experiments:
From the top: 1) Björnbär, 2) Carambola, 3) Kastanj (Sweet Chestnut), 4) Lychee, 5) Mango, 6) Pepino, 7) "Sprätt-iväg", and 8) yellow habanero and lychee in old 0.5 liter Jolt plastic bottles.
The Jolt cans work like tiny greenhouses. Hopefully the plants like it.
The carnivorous plant has died to 99%. I have replanted the tiny surviving part.
The kiwano plants have grown tiny yellow flowers :) Perhaps December isn't really the best time, but they are maybe out of synch, since I planted them in August.
Only a few weeks left now, and then the Sun will start to stay up longer and longer. :)
2007-09-30
Today's pictures: 1) Planting three sweet chestnuts (kastanjer in Swedish), 2) the kumquat is growing, and 3) most of the ten grenadilla seeds seem to have emerged. :-)
Also planting three more lychee seeds, and killing the corn (because I needed a larger pot to replant an avocado seed).
2007-09-23
Pictures of 1) the new carambola (which does not seem to be damaged like the previous one), 2) five more avocado seeds, and 3) the growing peach plant.
Correction (2008-12-02): The leftmost picture is not a carambola, but a sprätt-iväg.
2007-09-19
Planting some prickly pear (kaktusfikon) seeds (picture 1 below), and yet another mango seed (the fourth one so far). Also taking some pictures of the growing mango (2), kiwano (3), physalis (4), and tamarillo (5) plants.
2007-09-18
A mango plant has started to appear! It is the second one I planted, the one which may be somewhat broken. (I killed the first plant.) Pictures will come later, or when the third planted mango starts to appear.
2007-09-16
Removing 2 of 3 lychee plants, so that only the best looking of them remains. It is 17 cm tall (measured from the soil up to the point where the leaves branch out from the main stem). The second picture shows how one of the removed lychee plants looked.
I have murdered the second basil plant. A peech has also started to show (picture 3 above). It is just 1.5 cm high or so, and looks a bit unhealthy, but hopefully it will survive.
2007-09-13
What I believed was a vinterek (Winter Oak) was actually a silverek (Silver Oak). Interesting. By the way, the tallest lychee tree is still growing; it is 15.5 cm now, plus the leaves, which are of a dark red color, quite different from most of my other plants.
2007-09-12
Removing some tamarillos and galia melon plants, so there are now only two of each. The tamarillos "feel" different from ordinary tomatos; they took quite a while longer to germinate, and several of them had three instead of two initial leaves. (Maybe three initial leaves is not that uncommon, but I have not been planting stuff for that long, so for me it was a surprise.)
The tallest lychee plant is now 14 cm high (!), excluding the leaves. It has grown quite quickly these last few days.
2007-09-11
The lychee trees are growing quickly; the tallest one is a thin red stick, approximately 10 cm long, and some leaves have begun to form. The kumquat is about 1.5 cm high. :)
The radishes died. That's ok, because I had some earlier during the year as well, and got a chance to eat them. These last ones were planted in August, and I guess that was too late.
2007-09-08
Bought a vinterek at the grocery store (1). Also taking some pictures of the growing plants: (2) the somewhat broken carambola (*), (3) the beef tomato, (4) a pepino plant, (5) a habanero plant, and (6) some galia melon plants which just started to show today.
(*) I have planted four more carambola seeds in other pots, which hopefully will look better.
2007-09-04
Bought a grenadilla, a squash, and another carambola, and planted the seeds.
2007-09-03
A pepino has started to appear (1 mm above the soil so far), and the lychee plants are also growing (the largest one being a few mm above the soil).
The pictures show 1) some peat tablets ("torvtabletter") I got from my mom, which make it easy to plant large 2D arrays of seeds; 2) the balcony after cleaning up most of my plant experiments there; and 3) the first few millimeters of the lychee plant.
2007-09-01
Planting a new mango seed (the third one so far). I will try to not peek this time. :-)
2007-08-31
Moving in more plants (the big tomato plants and some other things) from the balcony. The only things left out there now are a dracena, the China Doll mini-tree, and the Dr Westerlunds Hälsoblomma.
2007-08-29
The first tamarillo plants have started to show. (Just one mm so far.) I have now moved most of my plants indoors because it gets too cold at night; only the big tomato plants and a few more are left on the balcony.
2007-08-28
Planting some sharon fruit seeds and some passion fruit seeds. Also planting the second mango (although the seed may be broken). Plants that have grown through the soil during the last few days include: corn, red spanish pepper, biff tomato, and something in the kumquat pot. (Not the kumquat though; I dug up the kumquat seeds to take a peek, and they have just started to grow a little, but just one mm out from the seed.)
2007-08-27
For some reason, I wanted to peek at the melon seed, to see how far it had grown. Unfortunately, I think I broke the root (which had grown quite long already), so I went to the store to buy a backup melon. Interestingly enough, there was also a melon-lookalike thing called a pepino which I have never heard of before, so I bought one of those as well. I've planted the seeds, but according to Wikipedia, bringing up pepino plants from seeds is hard.
I also bought some new plant lamps, which I hope the plants will like.
2007-08-24 - 2007-08-25
Yesterday I bought some kumquats, and planted some of the seeds. The citrus lemon is about 4 cm high already, and the physalis and habanero plants are growing nicely.
I also dug up a lychee seed, which I planted five days ago, and took a peek; it has started to grow a little. Some kiwano plants which were planted about a week ago have started to emerge (no picture yet) and I've planted some jalapeño and aubergine seeds.
2007-08-18
Today I bought a kiwano, a pineapple (ananas), an avocado, some corn, and a galia melon. I also ate one of my green paprikas; it didn't taste too well, but it was fun while it lasted.
The kiwano is very odd-looking, orange with "spikes" on it. The inside is green, and feels as slimey as the little ghost in Ghostbusters (the little green one). I'm trying to plant the seeds, hopefully some of them will grow.
I planted the ananas by simply placing the top of the fruit in a pot with a lot of soil. Apparently, the top will grow new roots. Hm.
2007-08-17
I have just eaten my first home-made Tomato. It was extremely tasty. Also, the radishes have grown very quickly, and some citrus lemon (citron) plants have started to appear.
2007-08-12
Planting some iceberg lettuce, some tamarillo seeds, some radishes, a mango seed, and some apricot seeds. Perhaps some of them will grow.
I cut open the mango seed's outer shell with a pair of scissors, to help the actual seed inside to be able to reach out. (The last 5 mm or so of the hard shell is actually above the soil.)
Other things that have been planted, but not started to appear yet, include citrus lemon, peach, carambola, and järnek (European Holly in English). Five habanero plants have begun to grow; they are a few cm high already. :-)
2007-07-29
I now have a carnivorous plant, a Venus Flytrap. I replanted it into a larger pot; I don't know if that was a good idea or not. Time will tell.
Dummies Guide On How To Plant StuffFor all you computer nerds/geeks out there who have never experimented with plants (after all, they are quite non-technological things), I will give you a quick guide:
That's it. That's what I do. And sometimes the seeds grow. It is fun, but one must be patient. It can take several weeks before anything shows up. After a while, you will notice a few things, such as:
It is often a good idea to look up a plant on Wikipedia, or Google for it in general, to find out more details on how it likes to grow. |
Dummies Guide On How To Make Plant Time-Lapse MoviesThis can be done in many ways. To do it the way I've done it, you need:
Then run e.g.: streamer -s 640x480 -r 0.01 -t 1000000 -o f000000.jpeg to record one image every 100th second, up to 1 million images. Using ffmpeg, these are easily combined into a 25-frames-per-second MPEG4 movie: ffmpeg -y -b 1500000 -i f%06d.ppm test.avi The command above makes a 1.5 mbit/second movie with no sound. It should be easily playable using e.g. plain mplayer in Unix/Linux, or VLC in Microsoft Windows. My results (*):
(*) The .jpeg images from the web cam were post-processed before running ffmpeg, by combining/motionblurring multiple images together, and adding a simple line of text with the date/time of the picture. |
