blackthumblues
How to kill a half dozen plants in four months
and avoid failing two 1 credit courses my senior year of undergrad
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Really Now, it’s the End
Well, don’t I look like a jackass. I thought that was it! I thought we were done! But alas, I was fooled. Since my beautiful farewell was in my last post, I’ll just use this one to tie up some loose ends.
Here was my garden at the start of the year:
Sad, wasn’t it? But the saddest part were those ridiculous little paper signs and me taking these pics at an angle like I was some sort modern photography major doing a piece on realism. Look how cool I thought it was that the edge of that “Herb Mix” sign was the only thing in focus. Embarrassing.
But it got better! The less pretentious my pictures got, the better my garden grew.
(Please ignore the bell pepper and the basil plant being ransomed on the right).
I would like to reiterate that the biggest thing I learned during this course is that worms are nearly unstoppable and tomato plants are weak. Yes, I’m still bitter mine died after the lengths I went to save it. I will begrudgingly have to try again next year. I’m fairly certain the plants that remain will survive Florida’s surprisingly freezing winter (the surprise is you don’t know which nights it’s gonna hit below freezing or just rain in December). I think I’m going to have to buy more sheets to cover them with tho, bc my roommate did not appreciate me using their blankets to assist.
Ah! And before I go, as it is relevant to the unit we just covered, I would like to mention that my roommate’s aloe vera plant defies succulent convention and seems to really enjoy water. It has never looked more green than when it started being watered more regularly. I would show a pic, but it’s currently dark outside and quite frankly, too cold for me to be bothered.
Annnd that’s it! My dark pact with the HOS1014 class has finally come to its end, so with that I say:
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Encore!
Ah, so the time has come. The end is nigh. As author Rae Yang once mused, “what have I gained and what have I learned?”
Well, I’ve certainly learned that growing tomatoes during the close of the year is a hell of a lot harder than I thought it would be! The cold finally achieved what the worms failed to do, and I even brought the stupid plant inside. And yet it rots on the stoop outside.
And yes, someone did inform me that putting trash bags on my plants in winter will kill them. That’s not what killed the tomatoes. Promise.
We will not speak of the microgreens.
I think all of my plants were negatively affected by the time of year in which they were planted. Either that, or I’m the slowest grower ever. Nevertheless, most of them are still growing strong and seem like they will make it through the winter.
My harvest, or my “garden haul” as I’ve been referring to it, was pitifully small.
(Yes, that is Winston eyeing my haul. He thinks he’s being sneaky, but I’m on to him).
As you can see, altogether my plants only yielded a handful of lettuce leaves and a premature onion. The herbs are still growing nicely, though. We may have to beat back the Parsley at this rate.
Do you notice that Rosemary and Lavender in the cauldron? My roommate and I propagated them! They’re my two favorite herbs(?). I can’t wait to have a whole bush full.
Back to the orginal question I posed about what I’ve gained and what I’ve learned from this whole gardening experience - the answer is not what I anticipated it to be at the start of the semester. I can’t say I’m anymore patient, nor have a suddenly bloomed into a garden guru, but there is a soothing tedium that accompanies gardening that I have come to enjoy.
Moreover, I have found that my satisfaction increases with the utility of my garden. I have little patience for ornamental plants, and am at my most happy when taking care of the herbs. Before I had no confidence in my ability to keep such delicate, yet enduring plants alive, and am now delighted that it is so easy! I’m the type of person who often needs technical advice when beginning a new hobby, and this class delivered that. Secretly I have always wanted to learn how to garden, but was too nervous to do so without help. This course gave me the knowledge I needed to begin, and for that opportunity alone I will always be grateful.
Here we are again. The true end. But only for this blog! I intend to be gardening well into the future. So as far my gardening journey goes it is not an adieu, it is encore! encore!
Bonus pictures of Winston to combat sadness:
Oh, and in case you were curious, I dropped out of the other gardening class months ago. :D
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Back off, Jack Frost
I am absolutely determined to keep as many of my plants alive through the winter as I can, especially the herbs. Unfortunately, I cannot utilize the most convenient method available to combat the cold, which would be to bring the plants inside. As mentioned in other posts scattered throughout this blog, my cat has pica and will quite literally anything new that is introduced to his environment. Not only is this undesirable because it defeats the entire purpose of bringing the plants inside if Winston destroys them, but many of them are actually toxic to cats. So in an effort to avoid an emergency Animal Hostpital ER visit, I am forced to cover my garden and leave the rest to the land.
Above is the method I plan to employ to keep my plants appropriately warm through the deep winter nights. I’m a poor college student, so I don’t have any sheets to spare or a tarp lying around. When we were going through the module, I thought that the effects of a plastic tarp could be replicated with an inverted trash bag. The air that rises to the bottom of the bag when it’s inverted ensures that the plastic won’t stress the leaves, and the extra large bags extend all the way to the ground. Thus far I have a fairly solid proof of concept going, but only time will tell if the garbage bag can adequety protect the plants against Jack Frost’s devastating cold. Only one of the plants were covered for the photo, because there is no imminent frost approaching.
Here are some new additions to the garden! My roommate and I bought some more herbs, and are attempting to propagate some lavender and rosemary. I think I will make an exception for them and hide them in my bathroom or a closet to protect them and Winston (my cat) from one another.
#I love how all the people in the other apartments have these beautiful ornamental plants#and we just have this constantly dirty#purely functional edible garden growing
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Whoops
So the Re-Grow Project was an utter disaster for me. Not only did my ginger propagule fail to reach stage five in the re-growing process, it failed to produce any new growth at all. The perimeter of the rhizome doesn’t even have particularly pronounced nodules. I’ve mentioned this in my previous posts, but I’m still not sure where I went wrong. I followed all of the steps provided in the ginger infographic exactly, and even used a secondary ginger propagule to start over and perhaps correct my past mistakes.
Here are all of my ginger propagules that I tried to re-grow. The large one in the back was my orginal propagule, and the ones to the side and to the front are the propagules I started over with after it became clear that the first one wasn’t working. I wrapped each in a moist towel, stored them in the fridge inside of a plastic bag, and waited the expected week. Absolutely nothing happened.
Eventually, in desperation, I just plunked the first propagule that had basically been marinating out in the sun into one of my pots of soil in the hopes that anything at all would happen. Again, nothing. It didn’t even rot!
The top photo is the first propagule after I admitted defeat and brought it inside to wash it off. There are clearly no visible changes to when I initially purchased the ginger, except perhaps a little more dirt than most would like. The bottom photo is of the second propagule I tried to grow, and at first I thought this one showed promise. Notice how the nodes at the top seem to be a little more developed. However, after about a week of no more development, I came to the unfortunate conclusion that this chunk of the rhizome was already like that when I purchased it.
Disappointed with my results, I did some research into why the ginger failed to propagate. There are several factors that could have been at play, ranging from my roommate’s suggestion that the moist-towel-in-refrigerator method probably wasn’t the best one, to the fact that most ginger sold in stores today is irradiated for the specific purpose of ensuring that they do not sprout. If I ever try to grow ginger again - which is a big if because of how disheartened I am - I will have to be sure to buy one that is certified as organic. My only consolation is that this whole expirement has been a lesson learned, and the ginger was still edible after how much I molested it.
#ok it’s not my only consolation#the leeks are still growing beautifully and now I’m trying to propagate some rosemary clippings!#I love rosemary
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Baby Mandrake
I take it back, the ginger propagule doesn’t look like the Radish monster from spirited away or a voodoo doll from the most recent (and brilliant!) adaptation of the Turn of the Screw. It looks like one of those hideous infant mandrakes that the students of Hogwarts learned how to transplant during their second-year Herbology curriculum. I half expected it to shriek every time I uncovered it from its damp paper towel swaddle. It’s lumpy, misshapen form haunts me.
So I cut it in half for my own peace of mind.
Well, I actually cut it in half because it failed to grow significant roots. The ones that it currently possesses are barely more than a quarter inch long and for the life of me, I just don’t know why it’s so underdeveloped. I followed the instructions! It probably has to do with the strange discoloration I saw on it last week, or maybe the paper towel dried out this week because I noticed the one prior was absolutely soaked.
Nevertheless, in an effort to have salvage the project and with the help of my roommate’s genius engineering skills, I suspended the ginger propagule in a cup of water in the hopes that exposure to sun and the warmer outside air will encourage it to finally take. If not, I’m not sure what else there is that I can do.
Thankfully, there has been better luck at regrowing our leeks. They will be planted after it’s time to harvest the onions.
#kind of annoying how well the leeks are doing actually#I put so much TLC into the others and yet these suckers just got plopped into a dirty bowl of water on some toothpicks and they’re thriving!
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Hubris
I am unsure whether or not this strictly applies to organic gardening, but I certainly have learned that there is a need to be more observant when tending to my plants this week. When I last updated this blog, I bragged about finding no evidence of insects and assumed unmolested. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to me, the brown curl that had taken over my tomato plants last week was not a symptom poor watering and too much sun. Worms eating up the tops of my tomato leaves and nearly finished them off before I kenned what was going on. While I found only one worm, there was dozens and dozens of egg clusters, so I was forced to use the pesticides. Not sure how things are gonna go for the little guy, but it was looking better today.
(The tomato plant is the staked one in the lower right corner.)
As you can see, the leaves have abondoned their sickly brown hue and are beginning to look green again. My tomato also no longer sports its signature lean due to the much-neeed supolort of the meat-skewer-turned-stake. The pepper plant in the upper left corner was not really in need of a stake the way that the tomatoe was, but I decided to do it anyway just in case there is one in the future.
The staked plant in the above photo is another one of my bell pepper plants, perhaps even less need of the supper than it previously mentioned kin. Most of my bell plants in general stand straight as an arrow, and some aren’t even big enough to rise far out of the ground. I’m going to add some fertilizer this week to encourage them to be a little make proactive.
#also that tropic storm that blew broke one of my poor sunflowers 🌻#I tried to make a stake splint to save it but alas#it was lost
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Jurassic Cretaceous Park
So much is happening in my garden now. I believe it has reached the Cretaceous period of its development - complete with gigantic fronds and terrifying reptilian carnivores. I am sure that quite literally anyone with even an iota of knowledge about dinosaurs would cringe to read that metaphor, but they will never find this blog! Besides, it’s spiritually accurate. All of my plants are thriving and there are lizards everywhere, which is probably why I have not come across any bugs. The biggest pest that I have to combat remains the Florida sunshine that roasts my plants on the daily. Though it’s supposed to be storming in G-vile this week, so that means they will proabably receive some sort of respite.
The lizards like to hang out in my herbs the most. They just rest there and await any nefarious bugs that even think about eating my plants. Unfortunately, their service is probably repayed by being torn apart by the neighborhood strays. Such is life in the Cretaceous (so I hear).
I also finally planted the Alyssum this week! Admittedly, I forgot about it because my plants weren’t ready for transplanting when everyone else’s were. I didn’t bother taking an independent picture for them, because you can only see them if you bring the camera really close to the basil and pepper plants, but if you’re really determined, you can zoom over my begoogled sunflowers and catch the very tops of the sprouts.
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Waterlogged
I think I made a mistake with my ginger propagule. Where exactly I went wrong I do not know, but I know that there were several steps along the way that didn’t understand quite so well. First of all, I really don’t know what constitutes a “bud” on a ginger cutting, so I kind of guessed they were the little knobs, but now I’m not sure if there was a difference between the limbs of the ginger and the little knobs. There is a solid chance that I either have too many or too little.
The second, and more important, point in the propagation process that I beleive I may have botched was the storage part. It’s possible that I may have over saturated the towel with water, and now I fear root rot may have set in.
I can’t detect any mold or shrinkage, but I’m not sure the roots are suppose to be black like that. My only consolation was that the propagule looked like that when I bought it.
This side of the propagule looks better, but I can’t locate even the beginning of a shoot. Hopefully, I will see some in the coming weeks now that I’ve gotten rid of the waterlogged paper towel and replaced it with a new one.
On another, more positive note, my roommates has successfully began to regrow some leeks that they brought for vichyssoise last week.
(The leek shoots are to the right. On the left is a photobomb from my microgreens.)
I’m thinking about transplanting them in the onion pot after I harvest in December.
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Appropriately Spooky
The crop I selected for my regrow project was ginger, as celery and sweet potatoes are gross, and pineapple seemed too hard. Also, ginger is that plant that I always want around but can’t actually justify purchasing because the amount of dishes I actually use it in is either too small or too niche. So I am rather pleased to finally have an excuse to splurge. In an attempt to make an event of it, I forewent my usually Instacart delivery and instead ventured out into a our pandemic-afflicted world where I braved the overpriced aisles of Whole Foods to find only the most boujee selection of ginger Gainesville had to offer.
After my perilous journey I returned home with this guy! Resting proudly at approximately (it’s hard to measure ginger) 4 inches tall according to my ruler, this mass of gnarled roots will serve as my propagule. I found it appropriately spooky for the Halloweeen season, because the twisted limbs and beige appreance reminded me of a combination between a voodoo doll and the radish spirit from Spirited Away.
Regardless of its unsightly appearance, the useless portions of its limbs was excellent in our dinner tonight. The propagule itself is safely tucked away in the fridge, where it will sit wrapped in a damp towel inside of a gallon ziploc bag for about another six days before it begins to sprout.
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Farmer’s Markets, Frisbees, and UFOs
I have never grown, nor have I ever tried to grow, microgreens prior to this course, but I am a great fan of them. Specifically, I am a fan of the lovely older gentlemen who sells microgreens at the Farmer’s Market in Bo Diddley Plaza. His wares are always wonderful and he is very kind. Once when I was short on cash, he offered to let me take some greens home on only the promise that I would pay him back on my next visit - I didn’t take him up on the offer as I found it unfair to him, but it was still appreciated. I absolutely refuse to purchase microgreens from anyone else, which means that I have been without for quite a while due to COVID-19. Consequently, I was very excited that the little packet of cerulean seeds labeled “mystery” were revealed to be microgreens all along!
Though I am at loss as to what kind of microgreens they will turn out to be, I am satisfied in the knowledge that I will not have to wait long. The idea that I will be able to harvest them after only 10 days feels a little unbelievable as a woman with no previous gardening experience at all, but I feel as if this situation definitely falls under one of those “trust the process moments.”
Unfortunately, I was a little confused by the directions in the beginning. The link to the Shaffer external site that was meant to demonstrate the planting process was broken, but I think I was eventually able to parse them pretty well. Above is a picture of the soaked pad (of unknown substrate material) in one of the bottoms of my planters and the mystery seeds “planted” on top. This picture was taken before the advised 72 hours was up, so not much activity is visible, but they’re definitely there!
Pictured above is a little note that I left myself and my roommate to be mindful of the seedlings. The enclosed container reminds of a shiny frisbee or UFO. Hopefully the tinfoil is as successful at keeping curious little paws away from the seeds as the note will be for my roommate.
#I cannot wait to eat the microgreens!#oh if only I had access to some ready-made tempeh I could make a great sandwich
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Transplant
This week’s gardening activities have been mostly focused on preparing my plants for their first and hopefully final transplant. The second bell pepper and the basil plants have finally grown their true leaves, and my roommate has graciously supplied me with a set of troughs to put the first batch in. With midterms this week I’ve been a little short on time, so only the peat pellets have been transplanted thus far, but I plan on getting to the others by the middle of next week.
(The transplanted basil and bell pepper seeds.)
I initially found the hydroponics system I was tasked with setting up for the lettuce sprouts a little daunting. My first read-through of the assignment did not offer much clarification and I ended up thinking it was more complicated than it was. Thankfully, a friend was over at the time and was able to help me parse the directions. Unfortunately, that did not stop me from missing the part about using a 2 liter bottle, which would have saved me from demolishing two perfectly good 500ml water bottles before I realized my mistake. It was a stroke of good luck that I had a jumbo-sized bottle of Pedialyte just languishing in my refrigerator, waiting to be cut up into pieces and repurposed.
(As you can see on the left, I am also slowly culling all of the weak herb and pepper sprouts in preparation for their upcoming transplant into the troughs. To the very right is the increasingly yellowed aloe Vera plant of my roommate, and the creature looming in its shadow is some dormant milkweed.)
It turned out rather well, I think . The geometric shape of the pedialyte bottle gives the hydroponics rig character. It’s very chic, if I do say so myself. I’m still a little uncertain as to what progress for these little sprouts will look like in such a small container. It would be nice if there were some check-ins in future modules about what our garden progress should look like.
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Tingly
Ah, today was the day. I snatched up my kitchen scissors, trudged outside and ever-so-carefully snipped the heads off of six of my little bell pepper sprouts. I know it as necessary and can appreciate the room it has given the others in the peat pot, but it was still dissatisfying. Not the usual feeling a get from spending time in my garden.
(Pictured are all the usual suspects of the repurposed bird feeder. All have been fertilized, watered, and pruned. The bell pepper plant is in a peat pot toward the upper left left corner. At the bottom are my dingy-but-in-a-cool-way white chunky Filas.)
I felt better after I bequeathed some plant food to my newly sheared darlings in the form of fertilizer. I see it as performing some sort of self-care or a “treat yo self” moment at the end of a particularly stressful day or harrowing experience. Except in this case the extra TLC assuages me in the form of helping my plants gain more nutrients, as they do not care of the death of their plant brethren.
I employed the same methods that I use when cooking to measure 1/4 a teaspoon of the little yellow balls - which basically means that I eyeballed it. As I am not a measuring spoon I cannot be sure if I overshot the dosage or went under, but I tried to make an equal distribution across all the pots relative to their size. I’m sure it’s fine. It hardly looked like I added much at all, especially since the little yellow balls are barely discernible from the little white ones in the potting mix. My roommate and I have had a little baggy of plant food identical to the one I received in my garden supplies kit on a shelf in our apartment since I moved in, and it wasn’t until taking this course that I realized that they were fertilizer. For some reason, I was under the impression that it was a bag of catmint seeds.
(Pictured are the freshly fertilized plants, minus the pole beans and the radishes hanging out in the center of the picture.)
(Pictured is a close-up of the fertilized onion pot ber. You can see the fertilizer better in this shot because I how close up I can get to the soil.)
My hands started tingling after I handled the fertilizer, and suddenly my mind was filled with all the horror stories I’ve heard from the news and the crunchy gurus, about the harsh chemicals found in fertilizers and pesticides that will surely turn you into the Hulk or the Toxic Avenger if you come into close contact with them. I didn’t turn into a mutant, though. The tingling in my fingertips dissipated after I scrubbed them in the sink. Maybe it was psychosomatic. Maybe.
The rest of my garden day was business as usual! I still have to play the waiting game with the plants that are still germinating, so I’m still watering and waiting for the late bloomers to sprout some true leaves and/or become ready for transplant.
(These are four of the six babies that are still catching up. The basil in the repurposed bird feeder are the other two.)
#I got to come up with a different name for the repurposed birdfeeder#maybe ‘plant tray’ from now on?#idk
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Thank God for the Rain
This week has been exhausting. I’ve taken on an enormous course load this semester and deadlines are piling up. If it weren’t for the constant rain this week my poor plants may have thirsted to death (not really, but I felt a little neglectful regardless). I have since abandoned the complicated peat pellet/pot seedling set-up - it’s just not practical to keep shifting them around all the time. Now the germination station features a tiny paper towel platform accompanyment to provide the sprouts drainage, and the repurposed bird feeder full of the older sprouts is staying firmly on the ground so that they can have some sun exposure without me moving them from floor to shelf everyday. However, I am going to have start moving the pole beans, radishes, and my roommate’s orchid into the shade during midday orchard because they’re all looking a little peaked from the merciless Florida sunshine.
Despite these few minor hiccups, my garden seems to be growing at a break-neck pace. It’s like everything just exploded this week! The lettuce seedlings especially have been growing like they’re in a race. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s time to thin out the seedlings just yet, because my planting occurred l a week behind everyone else’s and they all seem a little immature. Tbh, I’m a little thankful. I live in terror of the “Big Pinch.” It’s really very sad! They are all growing so well and now I have to pick which ones to cull. In preparation for this grisly task I’ve been watching YouTube videos and the general wisdom seems that if I’m too hesitant to pinch them then I should cut them with scissors. I think that’s the method I’m going to go for because it seems cleaner and I don’t trust my own tensile strength.
(Pictured are three separate pots. On the immediate left are the radishes and pole beans. In the middle are the sunflowers and zinnias. On the far right are the onions.)
Here’s the big boys! All growing swift and high. I even have three onion sprouts that have popped up.
(The back left are bell peppers. Back right is Scarborough Fair #1. Front right are cherry tomatoes. Front left is Scarborough Fair #2.)
Here are the plants from my other gardening class, and at the center is my basil! As you can see the repurposed bird feeder has found it’s final resting place.
(Pictured is a feral stray tabby from the local cat colony. We are in the middle of a negotiation.)
A little garden helper that stopped by! His name is Ottie - code for “Other Cat.” He has a cohort named Annie (Another Cat), but she has not been seen in awhile. I have been trying to strike up an alliance with Ottie based on the understanding that if he keeps pests out of my garden I will feed him. Initial overtures have gone well, but no formal decision has been made as of yet.
(Pictured are my bell pepper sprouts in the front and the insanely fast growing lettuce sprouts in the back).
Seriously, look at those lettuce sprouts.
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Tragedy in the Garden
This week in the garden began with the most auspicious of starts, as I noticed on Monday morning that at least one of my bell pepper seeds had finally sprouted.
(This bell pepper plant is not from my gardening supplies kit, but rather the seeds I had scraped out of a nearly rotted bell pepper I found in the fridge. It’s on the front right.)
It’s hard to see, but it’s there! I was joyous - you would have thought I had just given birth. I texted nearly everyone I knew with pictures, and received many congratulations (and a few wheedling requests that I hand over any extra plants in my possession at the close of this course). I even insisted that my roommate come inspect the little sprout. Feeling very proud of myself, I lifted up the peat pot to give them a better look and that’s when it happened.
I dropped it.
I have no idea how it happened. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention enough, maybe I was too excited, maybe it was slippery from just being watered. I just don’t know. All I know was that in what felt like only a hundredth of a second my most prized plant slipped through my fingertips and onto the hard concrete. It was brutal - I couldn’t believe the carnage. I swayed on my feet as I stared at what at the time looked like the guts of the bell pepper seedlings scattered on the ground amidst their own potting mix. Thankfully, my industrious roommate is far less reactionary than I and insisted while I was mid-swoon that I scoop up the seedlings and place them back in the pot, assuring me that the pale green membranes were simply unearthed sprouts and that it was perhaps a good thing that they were closer to the surface now.
My roommate has far more faith than I.
I was so upset for the rest of the day that I amended many of my earlier texts to my friends and family, informing them of the sad news (that my bell pepper seedlings were likely on their death bed). The reactions of my closest confidantes ranged from amusement to...more amusement. My roommate belonged to the latter category, which turned out to be completely justified since not only did the bell pepper seedling recover after a bit of babying, but much like the mythical hydra of Ancient Greece, up popped nearly a dozen more sprouts!
(The bell pepper seeds are in the back right corner. Yes, I know my signs are a little worse for wear. This picture was taken in the rain.)
Crisis averted! Though things are getting a little crowded in my germination station (about a week behind everyone else’s) now with the addition of the lettuce seeds.
(On the top right are the freshly watered lettuce seeds the morning I put them in the peat pellets, with Winston assisting in the top left. In the middle is a standalone picture of my “irrigation station,” where I fill up the shallow bottom of one of the plant pots with water and then place the peat pellets on top to soak up the moisture. Below is a golden hour shot of the seeds being watered the following morning.)
I like the mesh repurposed bird feeder screen to allow for balance and drainage on the plant shelf, but soon I might have to have to rethink things. Especially as my irrigation and sun-exposure technique grows increasingly complicated. Typically, I water all the peat pellets by setting them in the irrigation station, and then I water the peat pots and big garden pots with the watering canister.
(The canister in question, again with a helpful assist from Winston.)
However, I end up having to move many of the plants to appropriately sunny places during the day and then put them up the smaller ones at night to keep them all in one place despite the current differences in their needs to thrive. As the number of plants goes up the more convoluted this process becomes. I don’t really mind it yet, though. It’s relaxing. It’s also been rather rainy where I live so I haven’t had to worry about much of the irrigation this week. Well, aside from the brief few hours I thought my basil had drowned.
(Above are my radishes and pole beans. Below are my zinnias and sunflowers. Both of these picture were taken in the rain, but I realize now that it’s hard to actually take pictures of rain. Regardless, this was my primary method of irrigation this week).
I really hope to see the sunflowers sprout soon in the oncoming weeks. They’re my most anticipated now that the bell peppers have made their debut.
#not sure how the excercise in patience experiment is going#I do genuinely love taking care of the garden#but I’m starting to think it’s born out of a misplaced attachment to the plants#oh well#love often breeds patience I suppose
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A Breakthrough and a Chat With an Actual Garden Guru
My gardening activities this week mostly consisted of me playing catch up and scrambling to locate my garden supplies due to my apartment complex’s nonsensical delivery service. Thankfully, I eventually found the package and brought it home for (dis)assembly. I separated all of the seed packets and carefully placed them with their corresponding plastic labels, written on in borrowed sharpie with tiny hearts at the end of the script. I was sadly forced to forgo the cheerful little signs I had been making previously, in part because of all the rain we have had recently, and in part because my roommate kept asking me why the hell I was doing them that way in the first place. The sharpie loan was from the roomie, btw. They were horrified that I had carried on so long without one.
On the top are the onions. On the bottom are the pole bean, radish, zinnia, and sunflower seeds.
The actual planting proces was much less difficult than I had expected. Relaxing, even. The rain had been coming down hard for most of the day and effectively prepared the soil for me, and all I had to do was leave out the shallow remnants of the underside of my plant pots to expand the peat pellet. From there it was simply a matter of Google searching the approximate ratio between one’s finger and an inch, then shrugging and just going with what felt right. It was all a rather mundane outdoor gardening experience when the (semi-)unexpected happened.
My cherry tomato plant from ORH1030 gardening class sprouted!
Look at the little guy! I take back every bad thing I said about it! The herb mix (codename: Scarborough Fair) had already sprouted days ago and the bell pepper isn’t due for another week, but I was convinced the tomatoes just weren’t going to take. I was wrong! They still don’t look as good as lil’ Scarborough, though.
On the top is my updated germination station. On the bottom is one of the plant pot bottoms I use to water the peat pellets.
The birth of my nascent tomato plant wasn’t my only garden surprise this past week. One day while I was watering the peat pellets a lost instacart delivery driver wandered up my walkway and asked what I was planting, and then preceded to share with me her sage gardening wisdom. Apparently, she’s rather prolific and has quite a bit of experience with cultivating the various types of plants that I have in my garden. She clarified a few important things for me (mostly about degrees of sun exposure), and even gave me advice on how to grow the pink bananas I’ve been too scared to plant! As a farewell she gave me a list of plants I should add to my existing inventory, including an exotic tea called Moringa that grows well here. It wasn’t until she was walking away that we both realized that the apartment she had been looking for was mine. Must have been fate.
#also had to explain that the reason she was there delivering cat food and litter was also the reason I had to have an outdoor garden#she said she prefers them tho
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Germination
Considering that I have never gardened before in any capacity, it’s safe to say that I also have never germinated a plant before. In fact, prior to this week I was not even aware that the termination and planting processes could be different from one another.
Unfortunately, due to my own incompetence and hatred for my university’s convoluted emailing system, my “germination station” update is rather pitiful (in that my progress on what was assigned is nonexistent because I lack the necesssry supplies). Yet I do not come to this blog completely empty handed. In conjunction with the vegetable gardening course I also happen to be taking a general flower growing course, and the professor of that class was kind enough to share many seedlings from his own garden for us to enjoy.
Among the seeds he mailed us were an assortment of herbs, tomatoes, jade beans (?), and pink bananas. Thankfully the Scarborough Fair assortment included basil and I was able to procure bell pepper seeds all by my lonesome. So! That it was I present to you today, extracurricular gardening set-up from another course.
Here is the itty-bitty germination station/pre-planting box outside our apartment. The peat pots are leftovers from my roommate (who knows far more about gardening than I), as are the labeling sticks. I was a little surprise by the little amount of tomato seeds I received, but my roommate has spoken of the propagating nightmare that is allegedly tomato plants so I figured that might have something to with it. I was also confused about why the herb seeds were all mixed together and why there were so many - on that front I will just have to wait and see, I suppose. Patience in the process and all that.
Bonus pics!
I’m not quite sure what sort of onions are in our gardening supplies kit, but this is my roommate’s green onion plant to the right. It looks much better than the last one. On the left is the rather battered orchid they’re sister gifted to them.
As you may have noticed, all plants are located outside and this is by necessity because I have the misfortune of owning the only cat I’ve ever met that has pica. The little monster you see above will munch on anything he can put in his mouth. His name is Winston. Alternative titles are Goblin, Fiend, and Family Disappointment.
#i am also very excited about the pink bananas#very very excited#so much so now that i’m scared to plant them
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In the Beginning...
There was a row of plant pots labeled by their width and height and a history major who can’t do math and has never gardened a day in her life staring blankly at them, sure she would never find five 5 gallon pots. Nevertheless she prevailed (after going to two different home improvement stores and the gardening section of the world’s leading supermarket chain), and proudly made her way home with her haul. After turning on some Hozier and lining up her gardening supplies in the most visually appealing way, she prepared to begin her work.
And then threw the mother of all fits when she realized she had bought the wrong items and didn’t have enough potting mix.
So my first foray into gardening involved a lot more road rage, traipsing back and forth between Wal-Mart with leaky packages of dirt, staining my trunk bed, stabbing holes into the bottom of pots with a butter knife, and cursing as I raked away all of the hidden glass the previous tenants so kindly left behind in the tiny outdoor space of my apartment than I had originally anticipated. By the end, I was sweating, covered in dirt, had been rained on, but most importantly, had five (roughly, because it’s all the various stores I went to had) 5 gallon pots filled with potting mix. The one saving grace of the day was that I didn’t have to do any watering because of all the rain.
I think my frustration during the preparation process helped me realize what I want to get out of this experience. It’s not becoming an amazing gardener or the next big crunchy guru or anything like that. Green thumb or no, what I want is far more realistic - I want to develop more patience. Ideally I also want to become more mindful and a better planner as well, but most of all I want to create a well of patience from which to draw from if I can’t manage the first two. Patience for the process, patience for the inconviences. It doesn’t even have to be a very deep well, because I’d take a puddle at this point.
#a martha stewart type I will never be#but maybe I can manage the mien of the surly farmer never represented in post apocalypse stories#grimly tending his fields with all the patience and fatalism of a nightwatchman in a graveyard
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