gardening update, Friday 5/19/17

[edenfalling]

As you have doubtless noticed, I failed to post about my plants on Monday the 15th. This is because depression occasionally whacks me in the brain with a bag of sand for a while, whereupon I let stuff unrelated to immediate survival (or my job) slide until such time as I have the spoons to deal with it. Yes, even fun stuff like gardening. *sigh*

Anyway, I did scrape together a decent bunch of spoons today so here we are with the grand pepper repotting and squash thinning post. Better late than never, yeah? *wry*


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1. peppers A2, A4, A6, and B1 (Friday, 19 May 2017)
2. peppers B3 and B5


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3. peppers C2, C4, C6, and D1
4. peppers D3, D5, E2, E4, E6, F1, F3, and F5


I decided that this year I wanted to keep better track of my peppers, which is why I 'named' them on a grid system back when they were still in their little black plastic tray. I therefore painted those IDs onto the planters and pots and made sure to transfer each plant to the correct final home.

You may note that several of the seedlings have lost a cotyledon. This is because I was kind of a dumbass and left them out too long one afternoon last week, and then overwatered them in a slightly panicked reaction to their desperately wilted state. :( But they seem to be recovering (I think the fertilizer I gave them last weekend perked them up a bit) and I figure proper soil can only help in that process.


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5. Yan and Tan (Thursday, 18 May 2017)
6. Tethera


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7. Pip and Sethera
8. Tan (Friday, 19 May 2017)


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9. Tethera
10. Sethera


Meanwhile, all the second-round squash seedlings were doing fairly well, but I had to murder two of them or the only eventual survivor would have been Tethera -- these tubs are not big enough to support two full-grown squash plants. So Yan and Pip got snipped, since Tan and Sethera, their pot-mates, were flourishing just that vital bit more. I hate this part of gardening, which is why I vastly prefer to plant single seeds and transplant the survivors. Alas, that is not practical for squash!

I should mention, at this point, that Meeny (my one surviving first-round squash seedling) died last Friday. I am not sure what went wrong. Perhaps I overwatered there as well? Perhaps Meeny did not cope well with being confined to my kitchen after several afternoons outdoors in proper sun? (I had to bring all the plants inside last week for temperature reasons.) It is a tragic mystery. But I have planted two new seeds in that tub -- henceforth to be known as Azer and Hovera -- and hopefully they will have better luck than their predecessor.

Lastly, I moved the Lazarus pepper outside for good and for keeps a couple days ago... except I think I'll bring it indoors one last time tonight, since the temperature will drop down to about 45F and I would prefer not to test its ability to withstand quite that much of a shock. *wry*

(Oh, PS: the onion was not able to recover from its mold infestation. So it goes.)


[[original Tumblr post, for when the embedded images inevitably break]]

Comments

[mme_hardy]

I have the same problem with depression/anxiety/spoons, and of course once you've skipped a couple of days you get more anxious which makes you even unhappier to think about it which makes you avoid, lather rinse repeat.

Today I got back up on the horse. I transplanted six different hot peppers, as well as a lemon thyme, a Thai basil, and seeding year-old packets of chervil and slow-bolt cilantro. Then I watered everything on the porch, which is where boughten plants live until planted out.

The hardest one was the Thai basil. A scented flower I transplanted last week promptly withered and is looking 99% dead. I couldn't bear to kill it -- you will understand -- so I put in the Thai basil on the other side of the pot, just in case it survived.

[edenfalling]

Yeah, that spiral effect is a killer. I am better at kicking myself out of that pattern these days, but it's still all kinds of unfun. :/

Yay for all your herbs! And I hope both the flower and the Thai basil end up thriving.