Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Root Ball

I planted a few of the bigger tomato plants into larger containers but I had to clean out my larger self watering container before I could put my Gold Medal tomato plants in it. Last year this container was home to a pair of Brandywine Tomatoes. These plants were so big that the entire soil mass in the container was held together by the old roots and the roots extended well into the water reservoir at the bottom of the container.



The biggest annoyance I have with gardening on the balcony is finding space to clean up things like this. If I had a yard and a garden I'd just dump the container contents into the garden and break it up with a shovel. Maybe toss it into a composter. But on the balcony there's no place to dump it and I don't want to just dump it all into the dumpster. So normally I keep an empty tote handy for mixing soil and banging out old root balls. I like to reclaim as much potting soil as possible.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Tomatoes Ready to Plant

The tomatoes are hardening off on the balcony and some should be planted in their permanent homes this weekend. German Green, Black Cherry, Gold Medal, Opalka and Zapotec.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Cape Goosberry Seedlings

I'll need to plant these in bigger containers soon. They started out in the seed starting trays and a little over a week ago I transferred them to these little "juice box" containers.



From the last time I grew these I recall that they started out with really large leaves and the plants eventually grew quite tall with thick woody stems. I remember having a pair growing and one snapped off near the base of the "trunk". And it just happened to be the one with the heaviest fruit load.  This year I'm going to make sure they have proper support and protection from the wind.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Cucumbers and Watermelons

I seeded a few small pots with Talladega Cucumbers and Sugar Baby Watermelons. I usually start these way too early and have to deal with transplanting long skinny vines outside into bigger containers when it's still a little too cold for them thrive. I'll have to remember to do a better job of protecting these from the wind when I finally do get around to planting them out. It's been a while since I've had much luck with cucumbers.