Houston, we have a tomato

While on the one hand I have totally given up on the survival of my cucumbers (more on that later) I saw, hiding under the leaves, a tiny green tomato. Apparently my vibrating has been successful (see my previious post on indoor tomato pollination)



I have been successful in keeping Buster from eating things only because it is mostly out of his reach. However, the other day I had his cat tree too close to the tables and now my peas have teeth marks in the leaves. We attempted to coax him away from OUR food by planting gat grass for him -- the idea being he will like it more than the other plants and refrain from munching on them. Unfortunately, while he loves the cat grass he still tried to make a pass at the peas again.





My windowbox garden is coming along nicely, I have tried adding a picture here but it doesn't seem to want to allow it. I think the lettuce finds it a bit hot in the house -- it is looking a little wilty, but otherwise everthing looks healthy.

Except for the cucumbers, which I have given up for lost. Reading on the internet, I've found out that they need eight hours of sun every day, which was fine when they were in seedling pots, but when I transplanted them they were no longer in prime window poition. I may try them once the other plants can go outside. It has been recommended online that for containers dwarf or "bush" varieties are generally more successful. Or I may use the cucumber pot for the strawberries my mom is giving me when they take over her garden. :)

Good news...and bad news

Ok, so first the good news: MOST of my plants are doing incredibly well. My peas and beans are getting nice and bushy and my tomato plants even have little yellow flowers that are begining to open.



I wasn't sure how tomato plants pollinate and since we don't exactly have bees in our house I thought I should look it up. I found a website that said, while tomatoes have both male and female parts on the same flower ("they're hermaphrodites," my friend Anna commented), they don't always get pollitnated properly if you grow them inside. This is because the flowers need the wind to blow pollen onto the stamen. So, it is recommended that you "vibrate" your tomato plants between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. (when the pollen is released) to get everything in the right place. Since I am at work during the day I told Kyle he would have to "vibrate" our tomatoes. He told me he would open the window.

More good news: more rosemary is growing!! In addition to the lone sprout I had before, I now have FOUR more rosemary sprouts (I have decided that the other one is indeed a thyme seed).



At this rate I may be able to cut some rosemary for Christmas!

The other herbs are slowly maturing -- they seemed to stall last week but over the weekend have been growing again. The dill actually resembles dill now and I have been sorely tempted to pluck off a little fern from the top. I suppose I know how the cat feels -- he just has less self control.



And now, the bad news:



My poor cukes. I go back and forth between hoping just one or two will survive and deciding what else I will plant there.

Killer cats, and boyfriends

Things are not going well today, though everthing is still alive...so far.

First off, although the sage is finally coming along, I have exactly two pathetic little rosemary sprouts. And one of those looks suspiciously like a thyme seed that made a border forray into rosemary territory. So, here's hoping that one seedling is a fighter.

Considering my friend Linda says she has been growing rosemary for 20 years and has never successfully started it from seed I don't like my odds.

The next menace to my gardening experiment is fat, furry and black. His name is Buster. He's my cat. And he likes cucumbers. He's managed to munch off two leaves of my cucumber seedlings -- most of which only HAVE two leaves at this point leaving two lopsided cucumber plants.

I hope he has come to the conclusion that vegetarianism isn't his bag -- or maybe this is his way of encouraging me to feed him more of his favourite wet food.

The other menage is named Kyle. He's my other half (not the better one today). He phones me this morning and asks if I think it's okay to leave the window (right next to my seedlings) open when he goes to work. "No," I say "It's still -1 outside." I am informed that he is already too far away from the house to do anything about it.

I can only hope that it has warmed up quickly enough that they haven't frozen. He was only trying to be helpful, putting my cucumbers on the balcony and opening the window. Or maybe he was subconciously exacting his revenge for last weekend, when I accidentally laundered his wallet and phone.

At any rate, keep your fingers crossed for my struggling little sprouts!

(Plant) Baby pictures!

Our tomato seedlings, which have grown a fair bit since we bought them on March 1.



Herbs, some of which are doing very well, others....not so much. The blank space to the far left is sage, the one second from the right on the bottom is rosemary. The basil on the bottom right is doing well, as well as the thyme above it and the tarragon to the left. The dill (second from the left) is slow but this morning it was up a bit more than in this photo taken last night.



The vegetables have taken off like a shot compared to the herbs. Peas in front, then lettuce and beans.



And our cukes! Replanted this past weekend.

Aaaaaand they're off!

Well, it's barely been a week since I planted my seedlings and they are doing fantastically well! (I will post pictures I PROMISE!). I have replanted the cucumbers into the large tub they will live in outside. Unfortunately, since we got more snow they haven't been able to go outside during the days, but hopefully by the end of the week I will be able to put them out on my way to work.

Unfortunately, it looks as though I am not going to be able to grow asparagus. Although I found one book that said it was possible, it seems that they need a much larger container than would be feasible on our balcony.

So, the list of things that are sprouting so far:
Beans -- they are about four inches already, I'm trying to decide how soon I should re-pot them.
Cucumbers -- This is why I am loathe to re-pot the beans yet. On the weekend I re-potted the cukes, as they looked like they were getting too big for the little seed containers. However, the roots were not really developed yet, so when I tried to remove them from the old pot all the dirt fell away and I was left holding the seed. They seem to be doing okay in the new pot so I am hopeful the transplantation wasn't stressful enough to kill them!
Peas -- they started earlier than the beans but have slowed down, they are still just small shoots.
Lettuce -- So far a nice, low carpet of green shoots in the seedling pots.
Basil -- Same as the lettuce
Thyme -- I can't believe how small the seedlings are, the leaves are no bigger than pin heads!
Tarragon -- Same as the thyme.
Dill -- I'm a little bit worried about these, there is one lone sprout popping its head out of the container.
Sage -- About the same condition as the dill, which saddens me, I really love sage. It reminds me of camping with my dad as a kid on the prairies. I remember telling him once (I think I was about six) that they should make perfume out of sagebrush -- afterall it smells so much better than what most women wear. ;-)

I hope the weather improves this week so I can start putting them outside for a few hours a day (my mom says it "toughening them up"). Maybe by the weekend I will re-pot the beans, and have some pictures posted!

A new project!

It seems that I have trouble blogging without some sort of project to write about.

While the project technically started a few days ago, it was this morning, while I was lying in bed admiring my fledgling tomato and cucumber plants that I realised I should blog about it.

As you may have already guessed, it involves gardening. Some of you who know me may be scratching your heads. Yes, I do live in an apartment, and no, other than the juniper we transplanted to the corner of the patio of our last townhouse and a few annuals that died from lack of love (and water), I have never gardened.

Not that there wasn't a green gene in the family. I remember on dark, cold winter nights my mom would pore over seed catalogues, with her pencil crayons nearby to add to her colour-coded maps of our yards. I would point out some beautiful flower I wanted her to buy, inevitably in the wrong "zone" so it would never survive in Calgary, which never seemed to support the flowers I liked. We also had a vegetable patch, with military rows of lettuce, asparagus, carrots, potatoes, peas, beans and zucchini (oh, what an abundance of zucchini! We would be eating frozen zucchini cake and loaf until December!) as well as sweet, luscious strawberries and raspberries, just waiting to be popped in our mouths, fresh off the plant.

Luckily for my fledgling attempts at gardening, our apartment seems well set up for it, with a fairly large south-facing balcony. Earlier this week I purchased some seed trays and seeds (cucumber, lettuce, pea, bean, and a a variety of herbs), as well as a fledgling tomato plant (I always hear tomatoes are difficult so I didn't want to try them from seed). I haven't killed anything in the four days they have been in the house -- in fact the cucumbers are gigantic (by seedling standards) and the lettuce is poking its tiny green pinheads out of the soil.

My plan is that, by starting them early and leaving them out during the day and bringing them in if it frosts, I will be able to start a second batch it I manage to kill these ones before they reach maturity!

I'm already thinking how tasty a salad will be with home-grown vegetables!