Its been a month since I sowed tomatoes, chillies and egg plants. I check their progress daily and they are on a growing spree. They are now waiting to be transplanted into bigger pots. Hmm.. thats where the catch is. How big is bigger.
Many websites and university extensions mention that a 5 gallon bucket is the best for tomatoes.Also they dont recommend indeterminate variety in containers( which is what I exactly did ;). So I went ahead and purchased old paint buckets of 20 Litre capacity from a painter.
Each of them needs a whopping 10Kg bag of potting soil. I have a limited supply of soil with me, but I definitely didnt think I will have 100% germination rate for tomatoes, requiring lots of soil. So this weekend I am planning to get potting soil ( basically compost+cocopeat+red/loamy soil).
Here is a 1 month old tomato seedling
And this is the whole bush. They are little leaning on the sides due to phototropism.
And I have harvested the two batches of spinach.
And the next batch of spinach is on its way.
I am growing spinach in my balcony and it is responding very well to the limited sunlight that they get. Anyone who wants to try out veggie gardening should start with spinach.
My next post is on Potatoes….
GG
4 Responses
I agree with you that spinach is the easiest plant to grow even for any novice kitchen gardener. The taste of home grown spinach is a lot better than what we get in the market. The nutritive value of spinach is also very high. All in all spinach is a must have in a kitchen garden.
All the best for your tomatoes, chillies and egg plant too.
Spinaches sure are easy to grow and they don’t need much attention too. IF attended they reward you double the usual! And yours definitely look healthy and happy. Hope you reap many tomatoes out of those beauties. Good luck.
hi gg,
the spinach looks good. are all your plants container grown? I hit upon the paint bucket idea quite some time back but getting the buckets was a bit of a problem . So i would get in touch with friends and relatives who were doing up the house and try to scrounge paint buckets from them. Paint buckets seem to hold the moisture for a longer time provided the potting mix drains well.Water is a very precious commodity here ,of course the position is very comfortable now. But a couple of years back i used to collect the wash water from the washing machine and water the plants…
Hi
@Arundati,
Thanks for the spinach compliments
Yes all my plants are container grown. I live in 4th floor of an apartment with a descent amount of sunlight in the balcony.For the paint buckets, I actually asked the painter of my apartment and he was happy to give to me ( ofcourse for money). For a 20L paint bucket I paid almost 70bucks/piece. Not sure if i was taken for a ride. It was very cheaper than getting a plastic pot of the same capacity. Now I have fill them up with loads of potting mix. :-O
All my potting mixes drain well. I add generous amount of course sand and have seen lots of improvement by giving more drainage.
@GreenThumb, @chandramouli.
I too am hoping to reap some good quantity of tomatoes from this batch. 8 of those plants are indeterminate so they will yield for a long time.
gg