My plants have been as busy as me!

     School started a week ago but if feels like three times that. But in a good way. I've been doing a lot of art stuff and my plant's haven't needed much tending to. That's a good and bad thing. They have been growing like weeds though. Goodness!! I think the new balcony has a lot more sun in the mornings; roughly five hours of direct light in the a.m. and seven hours of indirect light the rest of the time. A HUGE wisteria vine (I should say tree) shades the balcony keeping the temperature down, and I've trimmed it so it still lets light in on my plants.

All the plants have grown a good bit. The pepper annoyingly puts out more and more leaves. No blossoms or anything that looks like it could become reproductive. I think it's a dud. The basil seems to have a 1.5ft radius, and is becoming more flavorful. I like to chew on it as a breath freshener, hahaha. The tomato has gotten super tall, one branch being at least 4ft tall and the other not much below it. It also has a dozen or so blossoms, a few of which look like they'll go to fruit (crossing my fingers).

Now the cucumbers...

... they've gone buck wild. Those leaves are about 5inches across. I've pulled three seedlings, but the others are thriving. They naturally used the balcony siding as a trellis, soaking up all the eastern light they can.

In this photo you can really see how they poked their leafy heads through and started growing! The window box  down there just seems empty. I put bits of shell in it as a pseudo mulch. I don't know if it actually works.

One of the plants is growing down. It's leaves aren't as big, nor is the plant as tall/long, but it's doing alright. People below might have to watch for falling fruits soon. The packet says they mature in 60 days, so I've got about a month more to wait.

I'm also waiting to plant some new seeds I ordered from Seed Warehouse. They had a fairly good selection and somewhat local (Georgia). I got several lettuce varieties, snap peas, cilantro/coriander, carrots, and leek. The one thing they didn't have was Bok Choy. I think it's still too warm to put them out. We'll see how long I can hold out.

Oh, and last but not least my strawberry pot! The oregeno is doing the best, practically flowing out of the pot. The sage and rosemary seem to be carrying on alright. One of the rosemary isn't getting as much light, since its on the other end of the porch.  I want to put it down stairs at our entrance, but rather wait til it was full. I just don't know what to put in it. If you have any ideas, let me know!

Strawberry Pot

The last weekend in June, Nicholas and I went to Petals from the Past near Birmingham, AL. They specialize in antique roses, heirloom shrubs and hard to find perennial flowers and herbs. I went there earlier in the summer and got some half-price seeds, including the lemon cucumbers. Nicholas got a whole mess of perennials.

This time Nicholas got another mess of perennials, and so did I! They were continuing their June Special of "Buy two, get one free" and had their pottery half off! Their pottery collection was pretty awesome and fairly priced to begin with. What caught my eye was the Strawberry Pots. They had 3, 3.5+, and 5 gallon strawberries. I picked up the last 3.5g for $21.00. Excellent buy.

I had to fill this pot with something, and since it ws buy two, get on free I picked up some herbs. I got a prostrate rosemary, sage, and oregano. A regular rosemary that Nicholas brought me from work also went into the pot.

I forgot to take pictures of the finished pot, which is super cute, but here is the putting together of it. Whenever using unglazed ceramic, soak the pot in water overnight. Ceramic absorbs water, which makes it really good insulator and excellent at regulating soil moisture, but if you put soil into a dry pot it the soil will quickly dry out. Because my pot was large and funky shaped I didn't soak it underwater, but wrapped a wet towel around it and filled as much of the pot I could with water. Every few hours I re-wet the towel.

The bottom three inches of the pot has soil covering it. In the center I stuck a sodabottle to conserve space/weight. Around the bottle and on the sides where roots won't grow are packaging peanuts for the same purpose. 

When transplanting, I shoved the roots through the hole rather than the leaves. Roots are more robust and its good to break up the rootball anyway. I water it every day from the top and each plants' hole and sometimes spray the pot with water.

I'm not sure what I'm going to put in the rest of the holes. Nicholas wants some mint, but it's not my favourite flavor (except on lambies..mmm). I thought maybe green onions or spinach/lettus. Or just some pretty flowers. Don't let the photos fool you, it's super cute! I'll take another picture when I get the chance.

Updates

Remember my post a few weeks ago, the one with the photo of a tomato flower. Well, that and all the other blossoms have been falling off!

You can't really see well, but that stem in the middle of the photo used to have a flower on it. It fell off!! Now the books talk about a "blossom rot" which has to do with not getting pollinated because of water and the cold and so on, but I don't think it's that because it's not cold and they didn't rot. They fell off. 

A lovely lady by the name of Dianne Craig provided me a answer. She is an expert at growing things and has worked at both nurseriesy and orchards for a good portion of her life. She said that it's too hot out. Specifically, it's too hot out at night. If the nighttime temperature doesn't drop below 90*F or lower, it's very hard for tomatos to set fruit. Now we know.

The pepper plant shows no signs of flowering. It looks pretty much the same, just a few inches taller with a few more leaves.

The basil plant is huge, about 2 feet tall and quite bushy.

The potato plant died. I think it was too hot in that black container and the leaves kept getting sun damage. Oh well. I plan on guerilla composting in the woods behind my apartment when it cools down a bit. The potato will be the first thing in.

Also, Nicholas brought me some mystery seedlings from the nematology lab. Some a more than likely tomatoes, I put them in with the pepper plant since they probably won't make it through the fall. Who knows. A few are cabbage/broccoli/brussel sprouts/cauliflower/kohlrabi/kale. If you didn't know, all those veggies are the same species, just superbred to look and taste amazingly different. If it's kale it could also be ornamental (super bitter) rather than eating.Who knows. Another one looks like a bean or pea to me, but I have no reason for that other than it's growing very straight. Nicholas thinks its violas. Who knows. The last one is a complete mystery. Only a few of the plant's true leaves are showing and they are still quite undistinguished. Nicholas think they might be pumpkin. Who knows.

I'll take pictures when I can and hopefully we'll unravel the mystery together!!

Cucumber Transplant

On June 28, 2010 I decided the cucumber seedlings were big enough to transplant. My books say that once seedlings of most any kind of plant have put out their second set of "true" leaves (their third set of leaves), they're ready to transplant. The intial pair of leaves are cotyledons and look pretty much the same for all plants. The second pair of leaves look distinctly different and more like the type of plant. If you look hard you can see the cotyledons on the demo-pot seedling- they blend in with the true leaves.

The new seedlings were going into one of my new "Self Watering" window boxes that I ordered from walmart. They were the cheapest 30" window boxes that I could find. I think they're fairly good quality and, besides having to wait half an hour for the people at walmart to pay attention to me, it was a painless purchase.


I wasn't sure how best to transplant the newspaper pots. At first I was going to plant both with and without newspaper. Taking off the newspaper and looking at the root systems was a bit more fun than I thought it'd be. So, all the plants had the newspaper taken off. A few kept the bottoms. NOTE: My vegetable-growers books said NOT to transplant cucumbers like this. They aparently have very tender roots that don't like to be disturbed. If you are starting a cucumber patch of your own, the experts recommend sow them directly into the pot/ground you want to grow them or use biodegradable pots to seed them.

I filled the windowbox about half way with very damp dirt. I wish I had put more in beforehand, so there would be extra room for the roots to explore.

A double seedling pot on the left. Close-up on the right, look at its root! And the seedcase.

There are ten seedlings in this one 30" pot. The books recommend spacing cucumbers about 10" apart since they are heavy feeders and usually sprawl around on the ground. I'm growing mine  up a trellis and supplementing with Osmocote vegetable food. I plan on thinning out the weakling seedlings (yay for rhyme) in a week or so so that I have 3-5 plants. I'm still unsure if they will even fruit.

Holy Squash!

Look at what I just found: http://www.luffa.info/

I've used a "luffa" before and loved it! Now I can grow my own!!! Yeah! I might start a plant in the late winter along with my Chayote. The only problem is where to put the two 30 foot vines . . .


Oh. I've done a lot of gardening lately, just haven't been able to post pictures. I'd rather do them together. Hopefully I'll get a new computer before school starts and actually be able to do more than access internet.

Til' then!!