Every day before I come to work I visit my rooftop garden to see how my plants are doing.
And honestly, even though I do this at 6am every day, I don’t think there is anything I would rather be doing at that time of day.
Spending time with these plants that I’ve nurtured into becoming food is so peaceful for me. It’s like a revelation almost. I get to just sit and be with nature in a very real, quiet way.
It also puts me in a better mood before I leave for work, even if it does mean I talk the Everyman’s ear off about all the happenings every day.
For instance, this morning, I woke up to 3 interesting things:
1 – My little hot pepper plant grew a flower overnight, and it’s so pretty! I can’t wait until it blooms more.
2 – One of my cherry tomatoes plants had another seedling in the pot that I hadn’t noticed. The pot was very obviously too small even for 2 cherry tomato plants, so i yanked it out. But, it came out in one piece, roots and all, so I decided to plant it into my carrot planter and see what happens.
3 – My Everbearing strawberry bushes are producing their first cute little berries. They may be white now, but soon they’ll be delicious!
On my lunch hour today I walked over to my community plot to check on the progress of my corn, beans, lettuce and beets. My corn is doing really well; I can’t believe how much it’s grown in just 11 days. And my potato mound is already sprouting some sort of bud or flower clump. It amazes me that something I only tend to a few days out of the week can still be so productive. Ah, the mysteries of life, how wondrous.
Lastly, I realized a few days ago that my collection of full size tomato plants was starting to get a bit cramped. I thought to myself that I should probably transplant them in order to give them space to get taller and sturdier. So, my brilliant idea was to get a kiddie pool. This evening I spent about an hour mounding dirt and separating root balls so as to give the tomatoes their much needed breathing room. I am scared that all the commotion will kill them, but there’s not much I can do at this point but hope, since it’s all done now. Since I was too scared to separate the root balls of my tomatoes when I bought them as seedlings, they’ve had about a month to get fully intertwined, and I couldn’t believe how close to being root-bound they were in their original pots. I ripped them apart as gently as possible, and have given them an extra large dose of compost and pellet fertilizer in the hopes that this will sedate them. All we can do now is wait a few days and see. If nothing else, I just hope I didn’t kill my first perfect tomato.
These are the things that make me happy (and crazy) these days.
Until next time…
Tags: Gardening
