#microgardening

My up-cycled indoor chia has come to sprouted enough to harvest!

They prefer to be grown in glass but not canning jars, the container must have a flat bottom so moisture levels are more consistent. I've been covering the top about 3/4 of the way with a clear plastic lid from another container, draining them thoroughly after each rinse and then draining what's pooled in the bottom again after I finish rinsing all the other sprouts.

My tap water seems to be relatively good for sprouting as-is, sprouts seem to consistently prefer its trace minerals and light chlorination to water I've filtered and treated with citric acid. So that's cool, less work for me! The only sprouts that didn't seem to mind the citric acid water were the radish sprouts which seem to grow brilliantly no matter what.

Considering my strategy with sprouts going forward. Alfalfa is out for the summer and I'm having trouble getting broccoli sprouts to grow in the heat as well so for the moment I'm focusing on radish and clover.

Radish sprouts are lovely! They grow quickly to a substantial size and they've got that crispness and spice to them that's very yummy. The spice is too strong to use them as the only vegetable for a meal so I've been growing a blend of about 60/40 radishes to clover.

The next problem I've encountered is that like radishes, radish sprouts make me gassy if I eat too many.

I don't want to grow just clover sprouts. They taste pretty good in blends but by themselves strongly remind me of eating grass.

Also did some brainstorming on possible future novels. I've been having trouble making the brickverse into its own thing, so I'm playing with the idea of giving Petra Rose her own book first instead of trying to tell her parents' story.

Alfalfa is still being iffy, but I've ramped up production of other sprouts and I'm starting to have a good amount available again! Very nice.

Yesterday I talked comps with my editor and she agreed that Loveless is probably a good choice despite the genre mismatch, and gave a suggestion for something to try reading for the sci-fi side. The draft still isn't ready for me to edit but that's fine, I have a ton I want to do in the meantime, and the longer I wait to edit the more perspective I gain!

Got another couple of weeks before I start taking my vacation days for the summer, and that's going to be a better time to put major energy into writing anyway. These next couple of weeks might be rough to be working full time moving around without air conditioning, but I have a vast array of survival mechanisms in place as it'll be my fourth??? summer at this job? Wow, it doesn't seem like it's been that long but yeah, I worked there one summer while I was still living at vampire house, and this is the third in the current place. Second since I figured out how to place my air conditioners most effectively.

Yesterday I got home and did the important daily chores before immediately being viciously attacked by sharks and was not able to do anything cool with my free time. That sucked.

Today the plastic tray I ordered to put under my dishwasher arrived, and I cut a drainage hole and set it up and it's a good size and works well! Then I ran the dishwasher which has been needing to happen, and noticed that the leaking water was towards the back of the tray. I checked the hoses the first time I noticed the leak of course, but I checked them again this time and found a loose connection that evaded me before! I'm running the dishwasher again now and hopefully that fixed the problem. I'm still glad to have the tray all set up though! The next time something goes wrong with the dishwasher, it won't make such a mess!

I still haven't quite got the kinks worked out of my sprout growing routine, but I'm trying another round of the alfalfa because I've begun to suspect that the citric acid is actually sabotaging my sprouts rather than helping. I think all I need to do is continue my previous plain tap water routine but grow only in glass containers. I was running out of pickle jars (because dishwasher problems) but then I remembered some wider glass containers I don't use very often and I think they're going to improve my sprouts-to-time ratio - not as much as the plastic trays but still significantly.

I know exactly what to buy and how to replace it to get my slow cooker to stop leaking because it's the crock. I loaded it unevenly once and it went *pop* and has had a slow leak ever since but it's getting to be a faster leak. Ordered a new crock today and will have to scrub down the inside of the casing.

Dishwasher is much more complicated. Since it's a countertop model I ordered a plastic drain tray to go under it until I can muster either the spoons to arrange a repair service or the time to disassemble the whole thing myself to investigate. I had hoped it was one of the hoses come loose but they seem fine and dry so it's probably deep in the guts of the thing and contacting an expert is probably the way to go here.

On a happier note I calculated out my PTO and I have like two weeks still to schedule! That's like two months of Wednesdays off and nice little bite sized two day weeks, which is my jam! I'm planning on starting those mid-july and continuing through mid-september if possible. At least then I should be able to catch up on chores and make time for creative stuff.

Very Excited about the new book! Should be getting feedback from my first pass editor soonish. If everything would just settle down and go smoothly around this apartment, maybe I'll have time to get some serious editing done even before I start taking my summer pto.

1: alfalfa is just that much more sensitive to the heat and I either have to cool my house more when I'm at work or retire alfalfa for the season.

2: the bag of alfalfa seed I recently opened is contaminated with mold and unusable (or possibly in need of some kind of decontamination soak)

3: my plastic sprouting trays are contaminated and need to be retired in favor of glass

So I started an initial test run of alfalfa in a jar. If that goes bad, I'll put the seed away until the fall and test again. If not, all glass sprout garden! I'm going to want one of those canning racks.