I have decided to transplant my tomato plants into larger pots. Well, not so much pots as empty kitty litter containers. I’d wanted to get larger pots, but beggars can’t be choosers. The plastic bins the kitty litter comes in are the perfect size, and I already have them. Might as well make use of them. I wish now I hadn’t thrown all the ones away that I did, but they were stacking up, and at the time, I was not even thinking about starting a container garden.
I’ve also found the fertilizer I want to get. It’s made right here in Austin, and it’s all organic: Ladybug Brand. I have no idea how expensive it’s going to end up being, but they have a booth at the farmers market, so I’ll be able to check it out on Saturday. Maybe I’ll even be able to convince Lin I must have it. My plants need something. They are doing OK, but they aren’t exactly thriving. It’d be nice to have more than one tomato on a plant at a time. Maybe I’m just not being patient enough, but I’m sure they’d like some extra nutrients anyway. I think my soil might be a little too nitrogen rich. Something not right, that’s all I know.
In other plant news, there’s a damn blemish on my first bell pepper, the first jalapeño pepper is still growing, and there’s a weird mutant tomato on one of the Sugar Snack plants. Photos tomorrow, of course. ;)
They want to live as free-range tomato plants. Pots will never let them reach anywhere near their potential. The biggest problem with plants in the wild is that they’ll produce so much you’ll never be able to eat, can or give away all they will produce, even with the critters helping out.
I was warned about the Sugar Snack cherry tomatoes, that if I planted them in the ground and wasn’t careful about making sure none got too ripe and dropped I’d be over-run with them the next year … like weeds.
I’ve been thinking of transplanting them into the ground, but yes, keeping them in pots is kind of a limiting factor. I’m trying to find a balance though of getting what we need, with maybe a little extra, without having way, way too much. I hate to see stuff go to waste, and I don’t want to spend all my time in the kitchen putting away enough food for years and years. I remember one of the first years my mom and I had a garden, and we had way too much. Everyone we knew was sick to death of us giving it to them, we’d canned as much as we cared to, and we ended up having to just let stuff rot. The next year, we cut the garden in half, and we were still giving away bushels of stuff.
But they do need to be in slightly larger pots, or I need to start feeding them regularly. They seem a little wimpy right now, and it’s probably due to the extreme heat we already have … which I can’t do a damn thing about. Not giving up though! I enjoy the puttering, and even if we only get a few veggies, it’s been so much fun!