YJL

This morning, I cleaned and tidied up the front window sill. Removed most of golden pothos (devil’s ivy), only two left for climbing up a wire I just added. They will be trained just as one in my bedroom, which has climbed up and half way of the top bar. The removed pothos, I packed into a bag and sealed it, not sure if those would turn into leaf mould.

There were many of green tomatoes still on the vine, the temperature is really low, don’t think they will ripen, so I took the bigger ones, but still left teeny ones on the vine. I took a portion and placed in with banana, the rest went into a brown paper bag. It could be a race.

Afternoon, I decided to prune bean plants, yes, pruning, bean, plants. The two yardlong beans, still alive, the vine still green for at least a meter, but no buds, except the Chinese red noodle one, which actually has six flowers, I was wrong yesterday. The green one is pruned back for about 20cm, and 2 or 3 segments. Hopefully, it will start new branches once the temperature raises up.

While pruning, I spot two caterpillars, this wasn’t the first time, but it seems every time when I saw one, they all were on bean plants. They must be insects particularly like bean plants. I moved these two to purple dick, they can nibble all those leaves, if they like those.

I have too many tomato seedlings, and those indoors are really small while three have been under the cold weather outdoors, looking very healthy. I might give up those indoor ones, besides, two plants still produced flowers up until one week ago.

The pink flower plant, I am thinking about trimming it. Heavily. And training it to grow into a cylinder shape. It’s supposed to grow wide, but there really is not much of space for it. Or I could train it on railing like two tomatoes are doing now, or I could weave those branches.

Today, I learned the most effective way to get rid of fly, the ultimate weapon against new hatchlings,

Organic and natural,

My fingers.

This afternoon I decided to make sponge cake for the first time, actually I did a similar one once, just not with egg. The recipe I found calls for equal parts of butter, sugar, and flour. 125g of each with 2 medium eggs. Not enough butter, just about 30g, that’s with half of an egg. I didn’t want to bother the rest of egg, so I experimented with extra virgin olive oil.

They turned out nice, tasted slightly like egg waffle, especially the thin crust. The olive oil one seemed softer and it looked with green hue, since I didn’t actually measure anything, it might not actually softer, I just eyeballing by volume, even the recipe is by weight. Fortunately, the result was delicious, which is dangerous, because each cake was only just about palm sized, fat and sugar, need not to say more.

Next week, I will try to cut down the sugar and use or mix with other oil, one doesn’t have strong flavor as olive oil. It didn’t taste bad, just olive oil flavor is a bit of weird.

On to other things today, the fly trap kind of worked, I saw a few flies in it, but not many. However, there were hardly any flies around the indoor plants and compost.

I also lightly pruned that “purple dick” plant, three actually, which have overgrown and look very disorderly. My plan is not pruning, but allowing its seed to dry, so I pulled any branches or stems didn’t have seed pods. These three will be pulled off once I get the seeds, although not sure I want to collect those seeds. There is a small seedling — self seeded, of course — that would be the one to continue.

Everything that took off from these plants was broken down and layered on the soil, like mulch, not sure how long until they completely break down. I will plant other seedlings in the same container, maybe peach or grape if I do get the seedlings grown.

Last week, I started to grow bean sprout and celery microgreen (not sure why only bean uses the sprout). Soy and azuki, but the soy bean was never sprouting, like forever, which I have noticed when I tried to plant it. Anyway, after nine days, the azuki sprout is ready to eat. Normally it should take about three days, but I kept it in a place not very warm around 18 degree.

The sprout tasted great, it kind of has crunchy texture and sprout didn’t taste bitter. I could just nibble it as snacks, but I added it to a vegetable soup for a different texture.

Yesterday, I noticed there were some flies around indoor plants and compost. I am not sure if it’s fruit fly or fungus gnat, either is annoying, anyway. However, it’s always like that a handful would hover above, it wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately, some had hatched out from a new planter. I ignored at first, later in the evening, I knew I had to do something because there is also a few new planters near by. If that one got invested, the chance is the others probably wouldn’t be safe since they all got the same growing medium and all with new seeds, some haven’t germinated yet.

This morning, I scrubbed all saucers, with the best effort and elbow grease I could give, the dumping every bit of gunky water, which might contribute to the invitation. I did save a bit of that smelly water, because if it attracted those pesky flies, why not use it as bait?

I got a 600ml bottle and followed the instructions online, cut the top part off and flip upside down as the funnel to the rotten yummy buffet for the fly. I placed a piece of lime, which I used for cooking, poured in some of the gunky water and wine vinegar which I already used for baiting around compost, but didn’t seem to work.

That’s not it, I saw some photos which suggested using yellow Post-it notes, for what scientific reason I didn’t know and honestly don’t care if fly nuts about yellow as bull impulsively charging at red — according to Wikipedia, they are “red-green color blind.”. I thought about stick one up, but I got a better one, IKEA Fantastisk paper napkin, which is yellow and big, three-ply 40 by 40cm. I split them and wrapped one around the bottle as if it needed a coat.

Not sure if this new trap would work, but this is what I got. The old trap for compost had an upgrade. I know you can use sand and gravel, or even a carnivorous plant (I want one), but I have none of them and I don’t want to stack up those into small planters. Besides, there are too many pots.

As for compost, I added a layer of shredded cardboard, then a ply of that napkin on top, I tucked it around the side of container and made sure no gaps. Since that thin layer is obviously very breathable, this could be an easy way to get rid of pest, I hope. I might even use napkin on pots if the trap doesn’t work well.

Only time will tell, and I shall know in a few days.