Thai Basil

Flowering thai basil which means its going to seed. I hope to save the seeds so I can plant them later. I'm going to clip the leaves off and do something special with them.

Crooked neck Squash

My squash plant has loads of females just waiting to mate with males. We can eat the male flower and most tempura it. The leaves are super soft and the stems are delicate.

First fruit!

The first fruit from my recently attacked plant.

Newest Garden Woe

I swear tomato plants are so special! So for a few weeks I've noticed a "dust" on the leaves. I know sometimes they tell you not to wet plant leaves so I was a bit hesitant. I also started noticing the leaves turning yellow and slumping. I began asking around and looking for interventions to save my plant.

I was talking to a colleague who had been telling me to watch out for hornworms, which I haven't seen yet. But she was telling me that if the leaves are moist yet drooping then I'm over watering and of course if they are crispy then not getting enough water. So, I noticed a bit of both on the plant which I I thought meant I wasn't being consistent with my watering (If I don't water daily then its every other day).

This weekend the leaves were looking pretty bad so I thought well maybe they need a bigger space to grow. I went out and purchased 2-5 gallon buckets and some tomato fertilizer and transplanted them into the buckets. I trimmed the branches and gave them a good watering and felt like I had fixed the problem.

I also decided to use a water bottle to slowly water one of my plants that is always slumping and just regularly water the other one. Today, I went out on the balcony and I hadn't watered the one plant yet because the soil was still wet BUT ALL the leaves were drooping and yellow. I moved in for a closer look and noticed them tiny red critters running across the leaves. I was mortified!!!!!

I've since researched it and found out that my poor tomato plant is being attacked my spider mites. The dust on the leaves was a sign because it was actually webs. So, I may have cause this with inconsistent watering and/or given the plant too much nitrogen (I was adding plant food weekly).

I'm gonna try to savage my plant and have since watered the leaves and sprayed it with some stuff I bought when the cabbage loopers were noticed. I've also quarantined it because I have all my tomato plants near each other.

My first garden pest mystery - SOLVED

My First Garden tour

Gardening Seed Inventory

I went out to find some seeds to help one of my colleagues start their garden and when I got home I pulled out all my seeds and realized I had A LOT and even duplicates of some. So today, I will list my inventory for my sake. Beet, Excaliber Brussels Sprouts, Catskill Carrot, Scarlet Nantes Cauliflower, Snowball X Chinese Cabbage, Michihli Cucumber, National Pickling Cucumber, Organic Sumter Lettuce, Buttercrunch Mustard Greens, Florida Broadleaf Onion, Evergreen Long White Bunching Onion, Southport White Globe Pea, Cascadia Pepper, California Wonder Pepper, Organic Cali Wonder 300TMR Red Bell Pepper, Organic Cal Wonder (2pks) Spinach, Bloomsdale Spinach Mustard, Tendergreen Squash, Organic Black Beauty (Zucchini) Squash, Fordhook Zucchini (Summer) Squash, Straightneck Early Yellow Squash, Winter Spaghetti Swiss Chard, Technicolor Mix Tomato, Red Cherry (Large Fruited) Tomato, Yellow Pear After going through the seeds, I came up with an idea. I will sell starter gardening kits. Let me know if you are interested.