Improving
I haven’t written anything lately since our little garden was in a pretty bad shape and I was just on the verge of giving-up. I went from checking nearly every single leaf every morning and evening to just giving the pots a quick look and watering them. Partly I had my mind on other thing, but mostly I was sick and tired of not seeing the army of pests being reduced. One night I went out and nearly emptied a small container of pepper after Michelle had read that we can water the plants and then sprinkle pepper on them (the water makes’em stick).
The next morning, I repeated the process.
And in the short term, I saw no real gain and I attributed this to the fact that the pepper bits were stuck on top of the leaves while the little buggers were eating from the bottom.
The past few days, however, I must admit I had not seen as much lil’buggers as I used to. I still see a few but not nearly as much as when I started checking leaf by leaf. So maybe the pepper treatment did work.
Here they are:
More room for everyone
As you can see, we’ve also bought a new pot and took out five lettuces and placed them in their own pot. I can’t imagine how crowded things would’ve gotten had we simply used the two original pots. I have to thank my girlfriend for moving them in her usual “kick the front door and shoot everyone” approach and getting them done in record time. Granted, seeing her carefully grab’n yank each plant before plunking them into the new pot nearly broke my heart, but at the same time, if I had done it then I’d have been out on the balcony for a good hour or so. A day or two after the move they looked pretty dead but I’m happy to say that nearly a week later they look good.
Here they are in close-up:
Lettuce
I think this is cos lettuce (romaine)? Maybe they’re a bit on the small side, but aside from that one scarred leaf, I’m tempted to eat it now. But given that we can only pick 1/3 of the leaves at a time, this won’t really give us much. Maybe for a small sandwhich?
and more lettuce
And here we have another one of the healthier plant … not quite sure what kind of lettuce this is though. But whatever it is, it looks good to me as well.
Parsley
And here’s a peek at the parsley. Looking healthy except for a few of the yellowing leaves. Supposedly parsley and mint shouldn’t be around each other, much less side by side. We’ll see I suppose. We’ve already taken advantage of the parsley by using it in one of my dishes. Though given its small size I really can’t wait to be able to eat some of the lettuce leaves so that I can actually say I’m eating (and substantially chewing) stuff we’ve grown ourselves!
Mint
The one stalk in the back looks a bit bare because I’ve pulled off quite a number of leaves as they were being attacked by the little green worms. Starting this morning though I tried to just take out the offending creature and squashing it on my balcony instead of plucking every leaf (then again, what leaves I’ve plucked were pretty sad looking).
And no, I have not forgotten about the tomato and basil plants. Just that they aren’t looking so great and I’m really trying hard to care about them at the moment. They don’t seem to be under attack anymore but the basil is starting to show signs of injuries again.
The unforgotten tomato and basil and stuff
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