Ever lamented the fact that you don’t have enough sun to grow food? Rejoice! There are edibles you can grow in shade—even indoors (and it’s definitely easier than making a mushroom log). Here’s how to grow mushrooms indoors using a mushroom kit.

Last month, on my birthday, I picked up a few things to make my favourite kind of lunch: a couple of gooey, stinky cheeses; a good, crusty baguette; some nice olives; paté; and an arugula salad tossed with balsamic and olive oil. And because it was my birthday, some bubbles.

While at Whole Foods, I noticed kits for growing oyster mushrooms indoors (by fresh-thinking Back to the Roots). They were compact, utilized recycled materials (used coffee grounds! Hello!), and (here’s what really got me) had irresistible packaging. So, because it was my birthday, I bought one.

The package says “fun for kids!” and it’s true. Even if she’s refused to eat them, Lila has definitely enjoyed growing mushrooms.

Growing mushrooms from a kit is definitely easier than inoculating logs with mushroom spawn. Just cut open the bag…

…and soak overnight in water.

Keep out of direct sunlight and two weeks later (after misting one or two times daily), you’ve got mushrooms! It’s that easy. And once you’ve harvested the mushrooms, just soak the bag again and repeat the misting process for a second and third harvest. And once the coffee grounds are truly exhausted? Just toss ‘em on the compost.

Oyster mushrooms: perfect in an omelette. Maybe along with some of my stinky cheese and olives.

From hanging baskets to Woolly Pockets, green walls to palette gardens, vertical gardening is hot. (Just flip through the inspirational Garden Up! by Susan Morrison and Rebecca Sweet to get a sense of how many options there are for smart use of vertical space.)

I recently came across a vertical gardening concept different than anything I’ve seen so far. It’s called Urbio, and it’s a sleek-and-modern-looking system of magnetic pots that, according to the designer, “will help us transform any wall or ferrous surface into a beautiful vertical garden.”

Urbio is comprised of a team of designers lead by Beau Oyler and Jared Aller of Enlisted Design and Tim Cui of Volare Studio, and they are currently on Kickstarter, a crowd-sourced funding platform for creative projects. As of posting, 574 backers had pledged $52,816 toward making the Urbio concept a reality.

Intrigued, I asked creator Beau Oyler for the details on Urbio:

Heavy Petal: Enlisted Design, your product design studio, has a wide range of clients—not just the gardening industry. How did Urbio come about? What inspired the design?
Beau: I’ve lived in apartments, condos, and last year, finally bought a 1014sf house. Everywhere I’ve lived, I grown something. Whether it was herbs in a cup on the window mantle or a potted garden on the porch, I’ve found a place to grow herbs, veggies, flowers, etc. Urbio is the solution I needed all along. Once the idea was expressed, the design team branched out to urban gardeners in their sphere of influence and questioned the concept. Their findings and our design and development skills combined to create a fun product!

Each pot is made of eco-plastic and is equipped with large neodymium magnets that are strong enough to hold almost anything to the wall, or to each other. Stick ‘em together for a neat vase or centerpiece.

Heavy Petal: With more and more people becoming interested in gardening, it seems small-space gardens are becoming the norm, and vertical gardening is one of the best ways to use space wisely. How does Urbio solve some of those small-space issues?
Beau: Urbio is modular; it fits your lifestyle, your space, your wall. Urbio vessels can stick to any ferrous metallic surface, as well as to the wall plates that can easily be mounted to a non-metallic wall. So you can have Urbio vessels all over your fridge, or one 10″ plate with a couple of vessels on your wall or even an entire wall full of plates and vessels to make a living wall.

Heavy Petal: You’ve more than reached your Kickstarter funding goal; what’s next for Urbio?
Beau: We are so grateful to the Kickstarter community for their support and excitement for Urbio! We are in discussions for manufacturing at the moment and once we decide on a vendor, we’ll be manufacturing and shipping product ASAP. We have so many other rad ideas for Urbio, depending on the total amount pledged on Kickstarter over the next [several] days, we may be able to start offering even more magically magnetic products.

Heavy Petal: How does drainage work? Is there a drainage hole?
Beau: There’s no hole. We found that current indoor vertical garden products can be messy and the last thing our users want is mud streaming down their walls. We did a controlled environment test and the best growing environment turned out to be a drain-less vessel with a generous amount of pumice laid into the pot before planting.

Heavy Petal: Urbio is described as made of “eco-plastic.” What is that?
Beau: We’re committed to offering an affordable eco-friendly solution. We’re looking at a number of different types of recycled plastics and manufacturing techniques that will give us the product quality we want, the cost we need, in a solution that will still let us sleep at night.

Heavy Petal: What’s the deal with the mounting plates? Are those totally optional? What kind of functionality do they add?
Beau: The mounting plates are rad, they allow the user to hang Urbio on a normal (drywall) wall. Otherwise, you can hang Urbio on the fridge, table, or any type of metal. [Note: You can also use the wall mount "pucks," shown above.]

Interested? Check out (and pledge to buy) Urbio on Kickstarter. (In particular, you should check out the video, if only because Beau is a total cutie.) I’m already imagining the places I could put Urbio to use!

There’s really nothing simpler.

1. Place paperwhite bulbs in jar/vase/pot/bowl.
2. Cover the bottom two-thirds of the bulbs with potting soil, pebbles, or marbles.
3. Add water.
4. Stand back.

Most paperwhite-growing advice says the bulbs take about six weeks to mature, but that simply isn’t true. These guys were blooming in two-and-a-half weeks. That means there’s still time to grow them as Christmas or holiday housewarming gifts.

Talk about almost instant gratification.

In six weeks, they’ll be flopping all over the place (unless you included booze in their watering schedule).

How beautiful are these handcrafted air plant pods by ceramic artist Michael McDowell? Incredible, right?

Available in matte and gloss white, as well as matte sand, these stoneware ceramic pods are designed to house a tillandsia (air plant) and can be hung—each pod comes with a natural hemp cord—or set right side up (upside down?) for a more traditional display.

Clearly, they look amazing hung in clusters.

Mudpuppy’s air plant pods are available through Dirt Couture (seller of other amazing garden accoutrements such as hose clothes and those lovely Gallant and Jones deck chairs) for $30.

You should also check out Michael’s sweet little peace dove trio, stoneware moon bells, and, my personal favourite, his Peking blue bird sculptures.

Given my penchant for indoor containers with a dash of quirky cool, I had to share GAMA-GO’s Power Planter.

The Power Planter is a small, porcelain, desktop planter in the shape of a nuclear power plant.  It comes complete with organic soil and wheatgrass seeds, and is $16 at GAMA-GO. This would also make a great vessel for growing cat grass. What? Your cat’s always on your desk, anyway.

Other funky indoor planters from my archives:

Science and Sons Park Planter

Vitamin Living’s IV Plant Pot

Pad Outdoor’s Pad Aluminum Planters

Boskke’s Sky Planter

Karim Rashid’s GroBal

Pastense’s Retro Planters

Design Within Reach’s Bordato Illuminated Planter

My husband, Ben, and I celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary on Friday. We don’t normally exchange gifts, but since the traditional gift for a four year anniversary is fruit or flowers, I told him he could at least buck up and get me some blooms.

Being the man that he is, Ben took it one step further, and made sure there was a side of fruit for my flowers. Thanks sweetie.

PS: If you live in the Vancouver area, I highly recommend The Flower Box (in the Commercial Drive neighbourhood). They rock.

PSS: Ben is the co-founder of an awesome blog for food-worshippers. It’s called Foodists. You should check it out.

No, it’s not the latest ornamental allium – they’re leek flowers. Pretty, eh?

In Week Two of the Apartment Therapy Cure, participants are asked to create a “landing strip” (nope, it’s not what you think). In Cure lingo, a landing strip is the place you “land” when you get home. Where you drop your keys and coat, and file through your mail.

Ben and I started the Cure process back in January, so we’re a little off schedule. But I do like the way our front hall (i.e. landing strip) has turned out. Our entrance is very narrow, so we didn’t have room for a console or other table. Instead, we painted out a skinny shoe cabinet (SANDNES from Ikea) to match the wall, switching up the hardware to match the door pulls on the coat closet opposite. It provides just enough room to hold a bowl for keys and a vase of flowers. Oh, and it hides shoes! Always a good thing.

The mirror hung in my parents’ bathroom for the past 30-plus years (and was, at one point, faux gold leafed); I snatched it up during their recent reno. I love being able to “check my face” before I leave the house now.

We installed three hooks at Lila height, to the right of the cabinet. It’s great for little girl coats and daycare backpacks.

I can’t remember where we found the low ceramic bowl that now holds our keys and sundry items, but I love it. And I love that I can (almost) always find my keys now.

I also love the white vase that sits to the left of the mirror. It’s got pussywillows and cherry blossoms in it currently, and I plan to change it up with seasonal blooms or branches throughout the year.

Next: the living room.

Leave it to VivaTerra to carry this gorgeous felted stone mat by South African textile designer Ronel Jordaan. Made of 100% merino wool, I can just imagine how beautiful this would feel underfoot. Yum.

My husband and I are attempting to (re)decorate our living room. (I’m not sure whether we’re decorating or redecorating. We’ve lived here for almost four years, and the living “room,” which is part of an open plan kitchen/dining/living space, is completely dysfunctional.)

As an attempt to finally wrangle the beast, I’m reading—and following—a book called Apartment Therapy: The Eight-Step Home Cure. It’s written by Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, creator of the massively (and deservedly) successful Apartment Therapy blogs. It’s an  inspiring, energizing book that steers you through an eight-week rehab program for your home. (That’s right. I’m having an intervention with my living room.)

My goals?

1. Pull together the jumble of styles (mid-century modern meets what I can only describe as cabin chic… then they both meet toddler.)

2. Acquire some vital missing furnishings, such as the area rug (which we got rid of once we realized the deep, cream, wool shag was not compatible with ground-in bunny crackers), a decent lamp, and some art for the walls.

3. Be able to manage clutter better.

But this is a gardening blog. So why am I talking about home decor? Because I like these  Pod Aluminum Planters by Pad Outdoors and wanted to share them with you.

Despite having no talent for houseplants, I would love to find a place for a really great-looking plant in my new living room. Obviously, choosing the right planter is key. A bit of a splurge at $175 each (and extra for the stands), these spun aluminum planters make me happy.  They’re going in my “style tray,” as the Apartment Therapy book prescribes.

There are so many great options for indoor plants/containers, so I’m going to continue to explore and share my discoveries/living room decor possibilities with you. Check back often this month, and help me create a home I love (please?!). I’ll be eternally grateful.

PS: Yes, I’ll post some “before” photos. Soon.

PSS: Check out my only other online foray into decorating with Lila’s nursery on Flickr.