sunflowers: week 8

I am pleased to see that the sunflower seedlings are doing well despite pests and mildew. All three surviving seedlings have started to show the starts of a bud. I don't know how big they will grow but their color will be a happy welcome.

garden tomato soup

It was a productive Sunday on the balcony garden. I was cleaning up dead and dried leaves from the tomato plants. Surprisingly, our plants are still producing tomatoes; flowering and pollinating themselves. This is also true for the jalapeño and cayenne pepper plants. One particular plant just keeps on producing though I must admit, it's not that spicy.

I gathered a bunch more tomatoes, basil, and jalapeños, and made tomato soup. I roasted all ingredients with olive oil, salt, and pepper for 30 minutes. I placed all ingredients in a pot on low heat and picked off the skins that peeked off from roasting it in the oven. Then blended it with a cup of water. I let it come to boil and added balsamic vinegar and salt to taste.

TH loved it.

jalapeños

Last week I wrote about the success of one of the other chili pepper plants, the jalapeños. Another jalapeño plant has also produced some fruit as well. It's not a great abundance but we certainly have more than we normally buy. I love how plentiful they look on a single plant, just dangling the way they are.

sunflowers: week 1

The sunflower seeds I planted last weekend have sprouted seedlings. They look pretty good so far. Hopefully, the others will pop our of the dirt too. I planted 7 to 8 seeds. I'll have to be diligent about thinning them out for healthy ones. Maybe I'll even try to transplant them to single pots. For now, I'm just happy they've come through the ground.

something's eating my basil

We were editing the balcony garden again this weekend, which meant cutting down and unproductive tomato plant. It revealed a partially devoured basil plant and at the base was the culprit playing dead. I've never seen a caterpillar before and it became a curiosity for me. It eventually returned to munching away on some fallen basil leaves. I was amused by the caterpillar devouring the basil leaf.

I then moved it to the remaining leaf of the basil plant so I could record a video of it chomping away.

Eventually, I got rid of it - over the balcony. I hope it doesn't find it's way back to our balcony garden.

thinning out

We edit the garden again and we're more pleased with the space we've taken back. Being a first time gardener, I was a bit overly zealous about growing things. We started off with seeds but I didn't realize I had to thin them out, and when I did, I felt bad about getting rid of the seedlings. Well, I eventually thinned out the herd! Any of the tomato plants that we have that were not producing were chucked. It sounds cruel but we've adopted a policy in the balcony garden. Each plant must earn their keep by producing fruit or flower. We got rid of 3 or 4 unproductive tomato plants. The balcony feels more spacious now and the surviving plants have room to grow bigger.

The marigolds seem to have sprouted all the flowers it could so I removed the whole plants. I noticed one of the basil plants was being eaten by something so I removed that plant. I removed a nasturtium plant too. I got rid of some other herbs too that were not replenshing.

Despite the sad news of having to get rid of some plants, there are some goods news to share. I noticed a couple of the cayenne peppers started to turn color. In fact, I used one in a chili I cooked this past weekend. One of the chili pepper plants has finally produced jalapeño peppers. I guess my manual pollination paid off. I foresee fresh salsa in the near future!

And a cluster of yellow pear-shaped tomatoes ripened this past weekend and I made a tiny tomato salad with some basil from the garden. These little guys were very juicy, sweet, and flavorful. There's more of these to come! We planted these from seeds and we have a few of them plants. And they're producing clusters left and right and continuing to grow taller!

And in fact, I noticed one of the red tomatoes have started to turn color. We were beginning to worry if they would ever ripen or if we would be eating green tomatoes, which we did as a few had fallen off as we were reorganizing the plants on the balcony. I eventually made fried green tomatoes with them, and they tasted great! I also tried green tomatoes with salt and fresh cracked green peppercorns and they also tasted great!

return of the roses

Just when I thought that the mini rose bushes were done with producing anymore flowers, one of them has produced more yellow roses! It's a welcomed sight to the balcony, which is currently mostly green.