Finally - some news on the veggie garden

Ok ok - sorry I have been lagging here.  To sum up this post I'm going to say I've almost failed at growing plants from seeds.  It's hard! I really have a black thumb....is that the phrase?  The things that I have successfully (meaning they are still growing) grown from seeds are the following:  beefsteak tomato, basil, kale, spinach, nasturtium, cilantro, green onions, chives, catnip, oregano, thyme and California poppies.  The things I have failed (had to get starters for or are just not growing):  eggplants, red bell peppers, green onions, dill, and zucchini.

I guess that isn't too bad now that I write it down.  I of course went through some issues with pests early on and mostly they are gone - there are still some fungus gnats due to the excessive wetness but I don't think I can do much about those right now.

My excuse for a lot of things is the apparently greatly extended Spring we are having here in Portland.  Everyone says it should be Summer now and raining less but the rain just keeps on coming!  Some of my plants seem a bit stunted.  I have been told by some people at the local nursery (Shorty's Nursery in Vancouver for when I'm not planning to head to Portland) have told me that a lot of rain can cause stunted plants and some other things which you will see below.  I try to keep my containers a bit under the balcony so they don't get too much of the rain.  Initially my soil was too clay-like and not draining well enough so I've been adding some of my sandy seed starting soil to it to try and amend it a bit - it seems to be working.  Although - I can't add too much of that without adding some compost too because the seed starting soil has no nutrients in it whatsoever.

Anyway!- Here's my picture book post on my plants:

Everything!!! I'm very happy about how green my balcony :) As you can see my beefsteak tomato plant on the right is thriving :)

Bell peppers - this is still a very short short plants.  In fact it hasn't grown much since I've picked up the starter - but already it is starting to fruit.

Spinach - these are starting to flower as well it seems and I'm not sure yet if I need to pinch these off to encourage more leaf growth - I'm guessing that would be the case but I need to look it up.

Green onions and chives - on the very left you can see the scallion starter I got.  To the right of that there are some small green onions shooting up which are the ones I've grown from seedlings (which is why they were in both categories above).  Bottom right are my chives...growing slowly and surely.

Basil - my sweet basil has not been doing nearly as well as my genovese basil which you see here.  There are 2 small basil plants.  I should probably thin these out a bit more but I'm not sure.  They are a bit short but I've been harvesting leaves to encourage more growth and it seems to be doing the trick.

oooh look at that nice little container garden! So pretty :)  Counterclockwise from top left quadrant is zucchini, dill, cilantro, nasturtium.  Picture to the right is close up look at my zucchini - now this type is called Magda Middle Eastern which seems to have a fattier stem and produce fattier fruit as well.  I'd still like to grow this vertically more to give it more room but it will take a while to see the difference.  3 of the larger leaves are being held up currently.

Nasturtium (top) and cilantro (bottom) - my nasturtium almost died a while back when I was using insecticide to get rid of the mites, I didn't know that it was so sensitive to that but it's come back very very nicely.  And it's a really need plant to see grow - wherever the stem sits on the soil it seems to just sprout a ton of additional stems from there.  Cilantro is still small and growing - only about 2 or 3 inches now - but I'm hoping they keep coming.  This is the point where they died off before.

Kale - my 2 little plantlets growing very nicely in my little petunia planter from goodwill.  I might have to transplant this later. 

Eggplant - as you see the leaves are curling up.  I did some research on this and came to the conclusion that my soil was lacking calcium.  So off to the nursery I went to get some garden lime.  At the nursery however, I showed a couple people a similar plant there and I was told this was also from the extended cold and damp environment.

My thyme, oregano, and two catnips - all growing very nicely.  Maybe the thyme could use a bit more something.

However my lavender is a sad little puny plant - only one little stem.  I need to put a few more seeds in and see if I can fill this nook up with life!

And poppies.  Yes there is some yellowing in a couple leaves.  The problem here is I'm pretty sure I just planted too many seeds and didn't thin out early enough so now I have a big mess of quite a few plants.  I've been trying to pick out some dead-er ones to help the healthy ones but I'm sure in the end things will work it self out here.





The End