the indomitable tomato plant

The indomitable tomato

So you remember how I said a few weeks ago that we had a week of wind and one of the big tomato plants fell over and squished my tomato seedlings?

Or maybe I didn't and just posted on Facebook. Well, we had a week of hard wind, followed by a few days of reasonable weather, followed by almost a week of not quite as much wind... and one of my bigger tomato plants fell over and squished the seedlings I'd planted out just before the wind because the weather looked like it was going to hold.

Bigger tomatoes. There may be too many plants in that pot.

After babying the seedlings for a week or so, I decided they were trying to die, so we went to the garden store and acquired a couple of replacement young plants. I planted them where the seedlings were, and just left the seedlings where they were... they got partially buried as I dug holes to transplant the young plants into. This was last week.

Basil

Apparently I shouldn't've given up on the mostly dead seedlings. I might have to acquire another big pot to transplant the seedlings into. The irony is, I don't even really like tomatoes that much... G does, and I like *cooked* tomatoes (there are plans of frozen tomato sauce once the plants start producing). The original two youngling tomatoes are turning into monsters. I need some kind of proper plant-support device (I don't think the stakes I've got going right now are going to be useful for much longer). The tops of the plants are now almost chest-high (the pots themselves are a bit more than a foot tall) and I'm going to have to do some kind of rearranging of the balcony because otherwise the poor rosemary isn't going to be getting any sun pretty soon.

Bean flowers

In other plant news, the beans have begun making cute little purple flowers (though they're not very tall yet). The basil sproutlings are starting to turn into actual plants with incredibly fragrant leaves, though they are somewhat uncentered in the pot. The pansies all died, so I emptied out that pot and planted mixed lettuce seeds. They will definitely need thinning once they start showing individual plant characteristics; there's 5 varieties of lettuce in the seed packet, so I'm hoping to have at least a couple of different varieties per pot (as soon as the daffodils finish dying, I'll pull those bulbs and put them into storage and reuse that pot for lettuce). They're small window boxes, but hopefully big enough for the purpose. I hear lettuce doesn't need much space. There's a few sweet peas bravely making a showing, and hopefully they'll keep going.

Mixed lettuce

Right side of balcony. That's sweet peas and garlic in the middle. The sugar peas are the two pots on the end.

The two pots of sugar peas are kind of interesting. The plants in the older pot have bottoms that are all spindly and turning yellow, though the tops are a fairly healthy green and new growth. The second pot, planted about 2 weeks later, has much shorter plants (probably due to younger age), fewer spindly-yellow bottoms, some much darker green plants. Both pots are producing tasty peas, though. There is no particular difference in how the two pots are cared for. The internet tells me the yellowed bottoms could be viral (thoough I imagine that if it were disease, both pots would be affected, since the two pots are only a few inches apart), nutrient deficiency, overwatering or underwatering. I don't see any bugs on the plants (other than apparently, every single spider who ever though about building a web in my building has decided that in and around the peas is the ideal place to do it) so probably not aphid infestation or something. I've added a bit of compost to the top layer of soil, and I'm going to try watering a bit less for a week or two and see what happens; I figure I can always water more later.

Left side of balcony

I think, however, that the biggest thing I've learned so far about balcony gardening is that seeds and even young plants take up way less space than teenager and adult plants. The young tomatoes we bought a few weeks ago with so much enthusiasm are way too big for their pot and I imagine they'll keep growing... and there's more plants in that pot as well which will probably be overwhelming. The beans are crowded even after I thinned them (I might need to thin again...). The peas are likewise overcrowded (I didn't thin them... I should have).

But pots with soil and not much else look so *big* in comparison to seeds and young plants bought at the garden store...