Category: Garden

Tomato plants can be quite ungainly, amusing since once upon a time they were European garden ornamentals.  And the indeterminates I find especially difficult to corral, as they quickly overtake any type of cage or post to which they’re lashed.

Perhaps its their collective personality, much like a petulant child’s–they don’t know what they want, just that they know they don’t want what you gave them.  So I’m trying something different this year–a net.  Now they can grow free from linear vertical restriction, or at least they get two dimensions instead of one.

I wonder if it will be strong enough to hold up the vegetative mass.  Soon to find out, I suppose.

–Simon

To further beautify the house, we got some expensive edging.  I’m kind of ashamed to say how much the edging costed, so I won’t.

But we needed something, and as was evidenced by the fact that I pulled ancient plastic edging out to install the new–cheap plastic edging is ineffective (and ugly).

So after much digging, behold!

Fancy-ass edging.  That is all (I mean, I’d talk about it more, but it’s edging.  And I’m not paid by the word here).

–Simon

More on the indoor growing front.  Well, nothing really new, just more photos.

My attempts at growing basil inside have been technically successful, but basil really doesn’t appreciate the scanty light provided by fluorescents, lending me to believe, as I had suspected, that the photos of those green and busy basil plants on the boxes of grow kits to be bullshit.  Even so, they managed to flower (which means they’re not happily making lots of leaves as they should):

One of the plants that’s historically been really easy to grow inside is sage.  We have no need for more sage plants, but I started this one because it’s from the seed that my first sage plant produced–the one in the pot that I started from seed years ago that finally went to flower.  I’ll probably gift this one:

After the aphids ravaged my pepper plants, I had been struggling to get a new one to germinate.  Last year I learned that starting them around December/January gave them the time they needed to produce.  But pepper seeds are lazy, and I had been becoming dismayed.  Thankfully, I finally saw a sprout:

This is an attempt to grow an aloe plant from part of a leaf from a grocery store.  I’m curious, though not terribly hopeful:

And lastly, here’s an assortment of things.  There’s the rhubarb plant I’ve overwintering until I get it in the ground, as assortment of beans I was forced to plant as they were starting to mold, the poinsettia–awaiting next year’s festivities, an annual whose name I can never remember that we call “The Vegas Plant” (overwintering), and another potato–grown from salvaged kitchen scraps:

We’re fully in the winter slump now, but I still have my little patch of green.

–Simon