It’s a JUNGLE out there I tell you! You should see my greenhouse, ahem, I mean, my living room right now, ok, hang on while I get the camera out…..
There? crazy isn’t it? Normally I have only 3 plants on the floor, one is my Grapefruit Tree (thank you to my daughter as it was a birthday present a few yrs ago), another is a Peace Lily and the third is my Rosemary bush that is currently going crazy. But as you can plainly see, my living room is now crowded with over 40 pots in various sizes of wonderous green stuff! and I think I have found something better to watch than paint dry …watching plants grow is way more fun. Seriously, if you stick around long enough, you can literally watch them unfurl leaf after leaf and get taller by the millisecond. I have pinched back my tomatoes and tomatillos twice since my last post as I actually saw flower buds developing on the tomatillos and it is WAY too early for that to happen (as excited and incredulous as I was).
I have also gotten over my severe disappointment (well almost) of my chives that absolutely, unequivocably, REFUSED to sprout after almost 2 months and 2 separate seed plantings…meh, fine, I will buy some ready made plants from the garden centre next month, I shall not be refused my chives!
But we have more important things to discuss today than my failures at chive growing. Today we discuss fertilizing. At this stage of the game, the only plants you should consider giving fertilizer to at this time is your tomatoes. Due to their fast growing habit, they are naturally hard on the soil around them. Not just any fertilizer either, use a fish or kelp emulsion as they are low in nitrogen. You don’t want to give your new plants too much nitro, otherwise all you will get is spectacular foilage and no flowers/fruit (unless you want a showy display of leaves, personally, I prefer the fruit as tomato leaves smell bad enough, let alone try eating them). Fertilize your tomatoes every 3 weeks and soon you will be happily picking basketfuls of toms and preparing for La Tomatina (Spain’s Annual Tomato Throwing Festival). If you can’t get to Spain, toss a tom at your spouse just to see if he’s actually paying attention to you.
Stay tuned…