Hey readers, hope everyone had positive and productive weekend. I worked all weekend so mine was definitely productive & beside a few bumps I. The road it was pretty positive.
Unfortunately it doesn’t look like I’m going to have any tomatoes this year. I still holding out hope. Today I transplanted my bigger tomato plant; one that was first to flower and generally more healthy than it’s counterpart that recieved basically the same treatment minus an additional repotting about a month ago.
This afternoon I finally broke down a purchased an actual, unfortunately it is plastic but I have every intention of using and reusing it. I also bought a bag of potting soil instead of the lighter more airy seedling mix I normal buy.
My compost isn’t exactly ready honestly it’s probably pretty far out from being useable. Nevertheless I took about 2 cups of the more decomposed matter and made a half inch layer of compost at the base of the pot. Under that layer is a inch of the potting soil. The reason behind this is the particular pot I purchased doesn’t have drainage holes that go all the way through the pot but rather one of those plastic trays on the inside that allows maybe an inch of access water to sit in the inside of the pot. I can be known to be a little heavy handed with my watering so hopefully the compost won’t come in direct contact with any could be standing water and cause mold that could lead to root rot.
Out of the original 4 beefsteak tomatoes I had I gave 2 away and kept 2 for myself. My plants are certainly bigger than those I gave to others(yes I keep up with the plants I adopted out to the best of my abilities) but for a reason that is still to be determined mine are the only one with no tomatoes. My hypothesis is because the lack of natural sunlight. I am guilty of being over protective of my plants I suppose. For that reason they haven’t spent a great deal outside or in direct sunlight. My arrogance led me to believe that because my plants were bigger, with fuller branches and leave and were the first to flower that they in turn were they healthiest and would produce fruit. Obviously I was bitterly mistaken.
Most likely because of my personal worried of the outside world I kept my plants very sheltered. I did bring them outside on numerous occasion but if I felt the wind was blowing to hard or their leaves started to wilt from the heat a quickly returned them to the safety of the apartment. Without my knowing I was doing a lot more harm than good for my green children. I even lent a hand in pollenation, using a qtip instead of allowing it to happen naturally. I failed to realize that energy from the sun allow the plant to photosynthesize is one of the key parts of a healthy productive plant.
Hopefully I am not to late to correct the errors of my ways and in good faith a gave the tomato plant which I gave the name of Charlie a bigger proper pot and fresh soil full of nutrients as well as an added layer of snack food and put it out on the balcony indefinitely (unless of course we get a major rain storm). I can still see tiny buds where it would flower so I will check daily to see if there are any signs of improvement.
To fully test my hypothesis that is indeed the lack of sunlight that caused the stunt in development I am keeping the other tomato basically in the same location, just slightly adjusted to a more prolonged sunny spot near my window. Other control factors are the amount and type of water I have been giving my plants. I’ve talked about banana & extra oxygenated water before in this category. For the past week or so I’ve only been using regular tap water. As another test I’m going to continue to water Charlie with tap water & my indoor plant(named Emily) with a variation of tap, banana and extra oxygenated water and also make a note of any changes.
After the repotting as much as I wanted to keep Charlie indoors to keep a close eye on it case the leaves started to wilt or if it seemed overly shocked from the transplanting but I digress it is still on the balcony(even though for the first 2 hours I probably went out just to check about 6 or 7 times). I am going to let nature mother it for a while since mother nature has been doing it for way long than our species has walked this planet. I gave it a thorough watering and set Charlie on its journey hoping for the best possible results.
GREEN THUMBS AND BLUE SKIES TO YOU ALL !
-K
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