Two weeks of sleeping/thinking about vegetable gardening | Page 2 | Vegetable gardening | GEEKGARDENER

Back after exactly a week. Firstly I need to inform a very strange and beautiful event that happened this morning. I got up in the morning and went to the balcony. The sun was beating and to my horror I found all the leaves of my tomato plant (from the packet seeds) had drooped. I was feeling sad. But I managed to pick myself up and get a couple of mugs of water from the bucket and poured it into the container. I continue doing the watering for the other plants and when I am done and see the tomato plant. Gosh! Amazing! Magic! All the leaves got up and were glee looking at the sun. Wow! I called my wife and showed it to her. She had seen the morning scene as well and so was surprised as well. It confirmed that I was not dreaming. Has anyone seen this before. All this happened within 10 min or so.

The updates:

-- A few yellow flowers on a few tomato plants from home seeds and one on the packet seeds. The tomato plants are getting to 4 feet tall. How tall do these grow? 

-- 4-5 okra - very small as of today

-- Potato - one of them is growing like Amitabh Bacchan and the other just fell off. But now for the one growing I dont have space in the container to hill up. Its become taller than I expected.

-- Red Keerai was plucked and we had a keerai curry yesterday. Green keerai was cut a second time over and cooked mid week. The best part is it grows well. No more seeds need to be put. Spinach vada was made Wednesday as well. 

-- No flowers yet on the bitter gourd. Any manual intervention needed?

-- Methi is growing better and taller than previous attempt.

-- Sad news: Onion shoots just died a week back. The green shoots turned brown and lay down on the soil and withered away. Question: Do we have to give these shoots support with sticks or something? How much water do they need? Another thing: It was in the same container as okra. Does that affect?

-- Thulsi - not that great.

-- Panikoorka - no issues. 

-- Malli (coriander) - one pot gone. The others are ok, but they are not growing fast and tall. The containers are not that deep though. Does it need deeper containers? Should'nt it be in the sun for too long? How tall do they get?

Thanks Camaroon for the enouraging words. Btw now the tomato is 5.5 ft. There is something wrong! There are flowers here and there and they fall off as well.

The okra buds at the junctions - which look like okra fruit - one of them had a yellow flower covering it. A day later it dried up. Nothing happened after that. There are lots of ants (red and black) who are all over these. I tried to brush them aside and this dried flower totally got nipped off. There are other 6-7 of these buds as we go up. The height of the okra is also close to 4 ft.

Why are these guys growing so tall???

So much so that the neighbouring potato plant is getting encouraged and its trying to reach their height and its now 1.5 ft above the can. I cannot hill up any more soil 🙁 The can is full of soil. I was expecting it to grow laterally/horizontally at the edge of the can. Its not always what you think is how things would pan out.

These two have given the balcony a very green look which feels very good. Forget the fruits. Not a grape is sour thing! I am really looking forward and anxiously awaiting them. Its 60 days since these were started up. However the transformation to greenery gives me enthu. The balcony has a shaded look, especially the strong morning sun on a barren balcony no longer exists. Due to this I feel very good.

I can see a white flower and a few on its way to bloom on the chilli plant.

The yellow flowers on the bitter-gourd is few and far between. They are running on the clothes-line and wifey is "can you turn its direction 180 deg" rather than covering the entire line. She is now managing with half the clothesline length.

The thulsi has lots of seeds now. Just revived from the brink of death. Feels good. Wifey had lots of faith all along and its her baby.

Red Keerai/Green Keerai are being enjoyed as usual.

Today its going to be methi harvest.

Camaroon: Buying? No way. I will come with my bag of seeds this week to your place (after giving you a call) and please make good use of them. I just want to see urban green houses. Its so pleasing. Set up the terrace. Aug-end mid-week holidays are on its way. Get it going.

No, I am in listening mode all this while and a couple of 3-day, 5-day west-bound trips to hometown. Quite some developments in the garden front. Harvested atleast 5-7 okra. Good ones. Felt very very fresh I must say. Straight after plucking. All tomato plants have grown equal or taller than me. Lots of flowers but no fruit. We are a bit sad about it. We were out on vacation and the same enthu was not there to help them retain water when we were out but wifey is more sensitive and she left newspaper pieces on the soil surface after watering. When we came back some of them had dried leaves, the couple of okra which were on the plant curled up a lit, but we watered and most of them have sprung back into life. But the bigger question is what do we do of these tomato plant. I was for cleaning up the balcony. Wifey feels a bit sad and so its just as it is now. Just watering.

The bittergourd is also flowering but no fruit.

The potato plant once had a board fall on it and the stem broke. I was anyway not much enthu about it since it was growing taller than spreading wider and was difficult to manage with hilling in that water can.

There is a good news in all the termoil above. Couple of dark green chilli have appeared. The leaves look brilliant and survived the 4 day non-watering (they were smartly placed in a shady place by wifey before we left.)

Time to churn up and start some new stuff. No vacation till atleast 6th October now and so a good time to start.