Flowers!

Can you freakin' believe it? These things are actually blooming! They're trying to make tomatoes!

Here's what they look like with the LEDs off -- under lighting you're more accustomed to.

Yep, those are undeniably tomato flowers.

So, now what? At the present time, there are no bees at VOA. I haven't brought it up with the General Services Administration yet, but I suspect they'd frown upon a swarm of bees flying through the Cohen building. So who's gonna pollinate these flowers?

Me. That's who. With an eyeshadow brush. I'm comfortable enough with my masculinity to peruse the cosmetics section looking for a brush that'll do the job. This was the smallest one I could find.

I kinda dabbed the flowers with the brush. And thus begins my career in artificial insemination.

Did it work? Who knows? Probably would be a good idea to get a primer on tomato flower anatomy to figure out where the boy bits and the girl bits are, and how to get the pollen where it needs to be. I guess I'll know in a few days, if the flowers shrivel up. Regardless, it's still going to be a long, long time before these things become tomatoes, if they ever do.

Buds! OMG!

Hey, check this out -- the cherry tomatoes are actually putting out the beginnings of flower buds!

It's gonna be a long, long time before they're tomatoes. But it's a start!

What if this thing actually works?

Back in the lettuce patch, I forgot to mention that last week I harvested a 1 1/8 oz. salad from the second box. That's 42 cents not spent on Whole Foods mixed greens. Woo hoo! At this pace...uh...never mind.

When I harvested the first salad, I carefully snipped the ripe-looking leaves and tried to avoid the tiny little baby leaves to give them a chance to grow back. For the second salad, I said screw it and just clear-cut the whole box.

This week, they've both grown back fine. So I'm clear-cutting from now on.

I snipped another 5/8 oz. of lettuce from the upper lettuce patch today. Yep, that's nearly one quarter of a sawback that remains in my pocket.

There's a mystery plant growing among my salad greens. It kinda looks like parsley, but I don't think it is.

Could be a weed. But it tastes OK, so I'll let it live.

The control plot

Every experiment needs controls. A cherry tomato plant that I started at the same time as the two in the cubicle farm currently is basking in the sun outside my apartment, in an Earthbox it shares with a regular tomato. How's it compare to the cubicle-farm tomatoes, you ask? I'd say growth in the cubicle farm is somewhat less vigorous.

The cherry tomato is on the right. Trust me.

Yes. A bit less vigorous, the cubicle farm is.

Food security solidarity

Another experiment from outside the cubicle farm: my food security crop, potatoes. International-development types promote potatoes for farmers in developing countries because you get a lot of calories and a fair amount of nutrition without needing much of land, water, or fertilizer. So, in the spirit of solidarity, I'm going to see how food-secure I can make myself growing potatoes in a couple 20-gallon trash cans.

The idea is, you drill some holes in the bottom of the trash can, put some dirt in there, and bury your starter potatoes. As the plants grow taller you bury them up to the top leaves with soil. Potatoes are tubers -- horizontal stems -- that branch off the vertical stem. So the more vertical stem you give them to grow tubers, the more potatoes you'll get. Or so I'm told. We'll see what I get come harvest time, whenever that is.

Postscript to a mission aborted

Loyal readers will recall that last December I aborted the first cubicle farm due to a gnat infestation. I took the Earthbox home and dumped the soil on the then-bare ground next to the front steps of my apartment. Well, there must have been some seeds left in that soil because this spring, among my landlord's lilies and whatnot, some red lettuce and mustard have popped up and thrived.

I'm not planning to eat them, though. It's an old building, and god knows what lurks in the ground there. Possibly lead.