After transplanting my initial seedlings, some didn't quite make it. So a week or so go (depending on which seeds you're talking about), I reseeded some of the plants. Cheyenne Bush pumpkin, Summer Crookneck squash, Red Russian kale, Bush Ace tomato, French Breakfast radish, Purple Top White Globe turnip, Russian tarragon, Monnopa spinach and Correnta spinach, King of the North pepper, Listada de Gandia eggplant, Aurora pepper... Whoa, that's a big chunk of the list. Well, I didn't replant most of them. I just set in supplementary seeds. In case the trauma from the ALL-SUN-ALL-THE-TIME-EVERY-DAY had a negative effect on my beauties, or if the transplanting messed them up. The basil, soybean, other beans, radicchio, and chives seem to be doing well. But as you can tell, that leaves a large proportion of plants that are just meh. (The almost-complete list of what I am growing is here.) Since I started my new-and-improved lighting regimen, most of the plants are doing quite well!
I also (very) recently bought snap peas and a second variety of tomato. The baggies are in the gardening drawer in my dresser, so I can't tell you what they were. That's also where I keep my volunteering uniforms (like for the Science Museum), my three-piece fighting staff, and random other important-ish things.
I got the snap peas because I like stir-fry. The tomatoes were because I only have one surviving seedling, and I'd be pretty miffed if I didn't get a single tomato plant to grow. I have 20 little peat pots planted with tomato seeds, too--not a single one germinated. I didn't have much success with those peat pots. I blame my lack of watering... I should probably water a tiny bit once or twice every day, but I give them a lot of water once every two days. Those things dry out incredibly quickly! But maybe I should get to the plant update (Die Pflanzenfortschreibung) and explain it more.
So, here's the Guerrilla Gardening/Plant Sharing project. Most of the plants have popped up and are green, but I had a little "Whoops, forgot to water for a few days" incident, which I think decimated the germinating sunflowers. Grr....
And the tomatoes for the Seed Sharing? Hm. Still waiting on them. So I bought that new variety and planted more seeds. My coworkers won't have a clue what type of tomato they'll get. If they grow.
Here's a lovely overall shot of my planter box. If you click the picture an view the larger image, you can see there are a lot of dirt-coloured places where plants are attempting to grow, but there are other green-coloured places where they're thriving. Soon, I hope not to be able to see the dirt-coloured, um, dirt.
I freaked out for a while when I noticed all my bean plants getting droopy all the time. Every night when I got home, I would see them limp and depressed, as if there was nothing for them to live for.
But over the weekend, when I'm here during the day and not as bleary-eyed as I am most mornings, I notice that they're happy, turgid, and pretty darn photosynthetic. I guess the whole nighttime limpness thing is normal?
Here's a shadowy shot of some of the kidney bean's flowers. None of them have opened yet--they're taking their time developing.Some lateral growth on one of the soybeans. You can see little flowers popping up. I haven't seen any open, yet, but they must have, or else I wouldn't have little soybean pods growing. I was promised little pink flowers!
This picture reminds me of an excerpt of the book Adam Bede. The excerpt is entitled "Old Leisure." I read it during AP Literature in grade 12. It's amazing that I can even remember these details, let alone the fact that the excerpt complains about how "new" leisure is fast, glitzy, sinful, all those things that we youngins enjoy today, but "old" leisure is sedate, creative, intelligent, admirable, and productive ("back in my day, I had to walk X many miles to school" type of deal). The old always seems tougher, yet more worthwhile, than the shiny, glitzy, cheap plastic of today. And yet, when you're looking at two-and-a-half-month-old radishes next to one-week-old radishes, you wonder, "Are the old ways always the best?" Sometimes, for some people, sure. But those old radishes... I think they need to be shown how it's done. Youngins, get to it!These Cheyenne Bush pumpkins are doing much better than their predecessors... Then again, I didn't dig them up and put them in 19 hours of grow lights indefinitely. We'll see how they fare under my care, mon frere!
Zucchini... By the gods, what was I thinking? More than the pumpkin, I believe I will regret growing these. They get absolutely hunormous!
I will NEVER, EVER, EVER regret buying these! Strawberries are my absolute favourite fruit. It was NOT impulse. Saturday, it would have been impulse. But no, I bought these during lunch today.
And this plant too! I have a houseplant! Wahooooo! It has some flowers--I'd love to see what they look like!
Here's another closeup of the leaves. They are a deep green covered in soft, deep purple hairs. They look like horribly pricky invasive weeds, but the leaves are soft and fluffy. I want to make a bed out of them!
