Plantdemic Update: There are Good Days and Bad Days

I haven't been able to tend to my garden for a few weeks now because I got sick at the end of August and it took awhile for me to recover. The doctor said not to do anything strenuous. Gardening to me is equivalent to a workout. So the last few weeks I've just been watching my plants through the glass door. I ended up getting a cute, new indoor plant because I missed my plants.

The good news is the tomato plants have been producing more fruits. The first few fruits were quite tiny so I added a bit of compost for it to get more nutrients. Our cleaner told us she picked one to taste the tomato. She said it was so sweet and would go well with a salad. We beamed with pride haha. I'm so lucky because Sweetie gets up early everyday just to water the plants. I take care of planting, adding nutrients, re-potting and making sure pests stay away from the plants.

The bad news is pesky insects invaded the cucumber plant. I think its leaf miners. I had 2 plants and I already pulled out one since it didn't look I could save it anymore. There's one more that's still fighting. I realized though that it would probably be better for me to just start from scratch because it hasn't produced anything in the last six months. The pests also jumped onto the tomato plants and I've had to actively prune it. The bell peppers were affected too and some have died.

Bad insects :'(

A few weeks ago there was a really bad infestation. One of my neighbors suggested to spray them with a mix of Thieves Household Cleaner with a few drops of Citrus Fresh in water. I did just that and sprayed the soil with baking powder mix. I think it helped and it also encouraged the tomato plants to bear more fruit. Unfortunately some of the tomato fruits shriveled up possibly because of the insects. The newer fruits though are looking good and growing big. 

I was supposed to re-pot last week, but I slipped in the bathroom. So I had to recover from that. Today I finally got to tend to my balcony garden. Pruned the tomato plants and re-potted some bell pepper plants. I discovered that one of the bell pepper plants is starting to bear fruit! I'm so glad my plants have stood the test of time and patiently waited for me to recover. Maybe Sweetie talked to them for me hehe.

How's your garden? 

CB//179 #StuckAtHomeDay/209 #StayHome #BeKind 

Plant Tuesdays: How Tomato Plants Develop from Flower to Fruit

I was so excited last week when I saw my tomato plant finally bear fruit! My heart jumped when I saw it. I've been watching the lone fruit like a hawk the past week. It's been very windy the past few days, good thing the tomato plants have been resilient.

So after seeing the tomato bear its first fruit I got curious. I wanted to find out how it looks like when it develops from flower to fruit. Like what happens when it gets pollinated? I looked for videos on YouTube to see if there was any timelapse anyone has posted. There were some, but they were not exactly clear. So I asked the tomato plants to show me.

That's the tiny bulge that surprised me yesterday.

I was hand pollinating the flowers yesterday when I saw a tiny bulge. It was a tiny fruit! I was so happy to see another fruit evolving. It means the effort I've been making to manually pollinate the flowers is working. I looked around to see if there was another fruit evolving and I found a flower transforming.

See that tiny, tiny fruit peeking?

Now I know how the flower looks like as it develops into fruit. I'm tracking a few more flowers so I can get a day to day perspective. I'm nerdy that way haha.

Here's how I've been manually pollinating the tomato plant flowers. It so far works!

CB//113 #StuckAtHomeDay/143 #WFH82  #StayHome #BeKind