Make Me: Please Salute the Greenness of My Thumb

My plants are still alive! Do I rock or what? Consider that I've managed to kill most of the plants listed as "Hardest to Kill" and I think you will be impressed.

Here are my tomatoes:
Here's the part where you won't be so impressed. The flowers turn in to tomatoes, right? I'm not certain I will have any tomatoes though. There's about five flowers on right now. The plant looks pretty healthy though.

Reminds me that I bought some soap on Etsy and I got a free sample of tomato leaf soap. A sample. A wee little sliver. For weeks I could smell that tomato leaf smell in my whole house! Amazing! Do you think this is why I decided to try a container garden?

I'm supposed to trim the branches at the five leaf mark or some such thing like that. It's supposed to force more flowering and thus, more tomatoes, but I don't seem to be getting more flowers. We'll see. I read on You Grow Girl to water with a little bit of milk to combat disease. So I tried it - doesn't seem to hurt. If anyone has some advice on how to trim these bad boys, I'd appreciate it. I've just been hacking off the leafy bits, ones that don't look like they're planning to bud, willy-nilly.

I'd like to share that I potted these plants in some really old soil I had on my balcony for about 8 years. I bought a bag of soil/potting mix but it wasn't enough and the plants looked like they needed a permanent home right away - so into the crap soil they went.

I've also been reading that some gardeners recommend "starving" your tomatoes for a day or so and then resume your regular watering. I made it one day before I started getting uncomfortable. I don't have quite that much faith in my gardening abilities to let it go past that.

I had to move the mint cuz it was taking over the joint. It needed its own container. Got it just in time too, because it was setting out runners (Runners?! Get me with the gardenese!) It seems to be happy so far. I keep harvesting but forgetting to use it. I'll have to write myself a note to take some into work tomorrow for my tea. The scent doesn't seem to be as strong, but then I've been sick for a week and my sense of smell isn't really stellar right now.

This is in a hanging basket I picked up at (shhhh!) Walmart. Local garden stores hanging baskets were $12 and above. Not a happy-making price for this novice.

The thyme and the basil are looking happier without having that pushy mint sucking up all the good real estate in the box. The thyme looks worrisome, but it's setting out little satellites and still growing.

The basil is delicious. I'm letting it grow a bit because I want to get enough to make some pesto. I'll probably give it a go this weekend.

Finally we have the cucumbers. This is where gardening goes ghetto. Honestly, I didn't know this was a climbing sort of plant. I've grown cucumbers before and it was a tweensy little bush that managed to give 1-2 cucumbers. This is a lemon cucumber and I thought "small fruit, small plant" and stuck it in the window box with the thyme, mint and basil. Two weeks later I saw the error of my ways. That's when I went to the library for books on container gardening. Good thing I did because apparently the cukes don't like to be moved.

So I tried staking them with (can you see?) embroidery floss. That didn't work too well because the container is too shallow.

Take a closer look at my lovely cukes, woncha? Click for the money shot.

I didn't know I was going to get tendrils. Nor did I know I was going to have to trellis this bad boy. I ended up using my tomato cage to try to train it upward, but it's not really having it. It has a mind of its own. It wants to grow where it wants to grow and be what it wants to be. Some of the little tendrils have caught on though. There's hope. By my guesstimates, I should have something worth pickin' in another month or so. Cross your fingers and send happy greenness my way.

I've found one really good book on veg gardening. Theresa Youssef's Vegetable Gardening for Beginners offers a lot of really good advice without being too esoteric. One of the books I picked up claimed to be for beginning gardeners has all the veggies catergorized by their latin name. Say what? Youssef's book is easy to follow and each veg has instructions for growing traditionally and in a container. It also offers advice on getting rid of pests and fertilizing. It's not organic, but because she offers a couple of alternatives in dealing with these issues, an organic solution can be had.

That's probably enough garden talk for now. Dig ya later.

um, this post doesn't look anything like how it's supposed to. Argh! Sorry for the jacked-uppded-ness....pardon me RSS'ers while i try to fix this -