Practicing Patience

I was starting to get worried- sugar snap peas are a cool weather crop, and mine have been growing for quite sometime. I kept hearing about how easy they are to grow, how profuse the crop is, etc. But not even a single bloom! But I read a similar problem, and read that the person would soon have more than enough- just to practice patience. Sure enough, within that week, the person had a ton of blooms.

So hopefully it goes with me. I just saw the first bloom today, so I'm hopeful that a ton more are on the way. As soon as they start blooming you have to be on your toes for the peas; supposedly you can hardly keep up with them.

Here's the first bloom.




Cute, aren't they?

Oh, and the raspberries just bloomed for the first time this week as well. Their flowers look a bit like spaced-out daisies. =)

Tomato Spots

Not sure what this is, but it's showing up mostly on my Yellow Pear tomato, although I believe it is also on my Burbank Slicing and Black Plum.

First Salad

I wanted to announce the first bowl of lettuce. I can't call it salad as we've eaten all the tomatoes for the time being off the little tomato plants and I didn't want to add anything I hadn't grown myself. So here it is, looking fine, if I do say so myself:



Notice the beautiful mixed greens. Yup, nutrition, growing right on my front balcony.

Ok, first bite, yall get to experience it with me:



UGH!HH! CATERPILLAR!!



Ha ha, just joking. Although I didn't have to, I did wash each leaf. I haven't used any pesticides, and I'm planning on using natural pest control when it comes time (I'm sure it will).

Ok, here goes, for real.

Mmm, whoa! Crunchy, light, and a strong pepper/spicy taste. Cool! It doesn't even need anything else with it, but tomatoes would be good (they're good with everything, Doug says).

Ok, I'm gonna enjoy this salad.

Rainy Weekend

Cooler temperatures, yea!!! Although some of my plants may not like it, I've decided I don't really care. It was getting too hot. I also repotted all my strawberry plants (sigh). I found out it was root rot (most likely, based off the fact that most of the roots were brown- not with soil, because it wouldn't wash off, and on the ends of the roots, the case slipped off down to the core. I added sand to a new soil- organic potting mix from MiracleGro (hated to use MiracleGro, but it's all they had late at night at Home Depot). It combines peat with chicken manure and some other stuff. I added the sand to help drainage- which is what strawberries (and most plants) like and apparently what I was missing. Little did I know that when I was adding half and half of soil and perilite that I was actually making the soil more water retentive. I thought I was increasing drainage and looseness of the soil. Sigh (again). Although, one expert did tell me that my soil may have already been contaminated with root rot (like it's a fungus or disease or something?), as well as my little strawberry plants. Either way... all that hard work and good intentions....

Here are the latest pictures from the garden, taken this morning.

Strawberry Emergency

5/19 (update for today at bottom)
Before I left the house this morning my strawberries all looked great: tall, leafy, healthy and happy looking plants. I just returned home and looked over my plants and was shocked to see my strawberries in a very poor state. This happened in the matter of 3 hours- no more. They are wilting, leaning over the edges of their container, some of the leaves are beginning to get crisp. I am afraid I'm going to lose some of them; it seems almost inevitable based on the condition of their leaves. I haven't noticed any pests on them- I check my plants once to twice a day for pests (I container garden, so this is easy for me to do). A couple of the leaves had some lighter green coloring around the edges, but I only noticed this on a few. When I just went back outside to check on them, I did see a tiny (1.5 mm) fly on one of the leaves that I have never seen before- had some striping on the back end- was not a hoverfly (smaller, less bee-like, and with reddish eyes- didn't stick around long enough to take a picture). Not sure if he is the culprit, as I've never seen him.

I inter-planted spinach along with the strawberries and they appear affected as well. Could it be the heat (they've been fine, though, with the same temperatures up til now, if so)? We are in the high 80's, but I am on a south facing 3rd story balcony, so it could feel hotter, although I thought strawberries liked sun and heat.

Being both college students, we don't have a lot of money to sink into things, but we have invested a lot into our little garden and have been proud of the work so far. It would be heartbreaking to lose any of our plants, especially the strawberries, as they were one of the first plants we purchased.

Before:

Strawberries far (back) left
Strawberries- near left

This afternoon:



A little discoloration on a few leaves:

Spinach in same container:

Update: 5/20- Strawberries in worse shape today. they seemed to perk up quite a bit (not perfectly) last night, but it's not even hot out this morning, so I'm ruling that out. More leaves are dry and turning brown.

I called the county extension (Master Gardener's) and he couldn't think of anything off the bat for some reason. Of course, he can't see them, so that would make it harder.

Pictures from today:

Almost finished...

I've discovered this: A garden, like a home, is never finished.

So- almost finished. For now, meaning this week, perhaps. We'll see. I'm still tempted to get a couple more planter boxes and maybe a few more pots, but I don't think D would go for that so easily. So perhaps it will have to be next month-

Anyway, it was another big push on the garden this week. Got all the planter boxes planted, most of the seeds are in, and besides the other little problems I wrote about earlier, everything is looking B-EA-U-TI-FUL, if D and I do say so ourselves. He mainly provides the support and helps confirm that things look good, so he's allowed to say that without being accused of conceit. =)

Here's how things are looking to date:

Little Banana Struggles...

I got this Super Dwarf Cavendish about 11 months ago, and it hasn't grown very fast, but it's always seemed pretty healthy.

Lately, however, I've noticed that the leaves are doing strange things- they come out, brand new, with a brown spot on them, or the sides will wilt down so that just the main "spine" of the leaf is sticking out, the leafy part hangs down and doesn't fan out like a normal banana leaf would (although the leaf feels firm, not wilted). Today I noticed that beside the brown splotches, there is also some light discoloration going on in the leaves- the green is being replaced by a light brown in some areas. The edges of many of the leaves have areas that are dead completely. The new leaves don't stay looking "new" for more than a couple of days. And (although this has always gone on since we got the plant) it takes FOREVER for the new leaf to mature- about a month at a time (perhaps normal, though).





I have done research on watering for this type of banana, have looked into lighting conditions, fertilizing, etc. However, there has been some conflicts regarding how much of each (some say to let the banana dry out a bit between waterings, others say to always keep it moist, some say full sun, some say full shade, etc. etc.). It's an indoor plant, so there shouldn't be too many pest problems. I tend to allow the soil to get a little dry on top and on the dry side of moist deeper in the pot before I water. I make sure to water thoroughly so there shouldn't be nutrient buildup and I the banana is in our sunny kitchen but not in any direct source of sun.

I've heard descriptions of other people's super dwarf cavendish's just taking off and growing like crazy. I have yet to see that... I did give it a dose of fertilizer about a month ago that had higher potassium llevels because I heard bananas like that- I got one large leaf out of that, and then it was back to slow growing.

Hmmm...

What are these?

I started noticing a couple of days ago that my young spinach plants have clumps of translucent and VERY tiny (immeasurable with any ruler I have) structures. I know spider mites are supposed to be very small, but I haven't seen any of these move. I am wondering if these are eggs of some sort. They are mostly at the center of the plants, where the leaves all connect and where new growth comes from, as well as being on the backs of the newer leaves- not so many on the larger ones. When clustered together, they have a whitish appearance, but they are more translucent individually. I tried taking them off by hand (not individually, obviously). They seem to have a firm texture and a round shape when I rolled them around between my fingers- they didn't break under some pressure from my fingers (I really wasn't attempting it too much, didn't want the mess on my hands from whatever they are!).

The first picture is a reference- I am holding a small spinach leaf with the "objects" on it- this is to get an estimate of how small they are. The second is a closer shot, as best as I could enlarge and still be clear. You can click on the pictures to enlarge them, of course, and will probably need to to even see what I am talking about.



I got some organic fungicide/pesticide that supposedly helps control spider mites as well as leafminers (have some of those on my spinach as well, but hardly any- I picked off the leaves that I saw with the damage and egg cases, haven't seen any since) and will control other insects in adult, egg, and adolescent stages. I have only tested it on one plant this morning to see how it handles it, but of course, it is too early to tell.