Bean
The grower behind The Substrate.
I write this site as Bean. The name started as Bönan, Swedish for “the bean”, a nickname that stuck back in Göteborg and outlived the joke. Bean is the version that travels better.
I’m a hobby grower, not a botanist, and I don’t sell plants. I grow houseplants and food crops in a small apartment at Nordic latitude, which means low winter light, dry radiator air, and no room for mistakes that need a greenhouse to fix. Everything on this site is written from inside those constraints.
I publish under a pseudonym on purpose. The writing should stand on the mechanism and the sources, not on who I am. What you get instead of a name is a process: every pillar states why something works, cites where the claim comes from, and says plainly when something is my own observation rather than established horticulture. That process is written up in How We Verify.
Where to find me
Or start with what this site is about and the pillar articles.