gardening update, Tuesday 7/11/17

I am just going to skip last week entirely. Please forgive me.

I am also not going to crosspost the photos tonight, because I am very tired. Please follow the links to view the pictures on Tumblr. (I may edit the photos in tomorrow. Or maybe not. We'll see how I feel.)

ETA, 7/12/17: Pictures are now embedded. :)

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1. peppers A2, A4, A6, B1, B3, and B5 - Monday, 10 July 2017
2. peppers C2, C4, C6, D1, D3, and D5


( four more images under the cut )

Anyway, all the peppers are doing fine! B5 continues to recover nicely from its brutal munching, and while E6 remains much smaller than its compatriots, I think the thorough application of fungicide got rid of whatever was stunting its growth. (Hint: I am pretty sure it was fusarium wilt, which is what nearly did in the Lazarus pepper last year.) C6 and D1 are likewise recovering from their near brush with drowning while I was on vacation in the last week of June, and I have added a bunch of extra soil to their planter to help shore them up.

Meanwhile the Lazarus pepper's tiny fruit has become slightly less tiny! As of yesterday, it was about the size of my distal thumb joint rather than just my thumbnail. Progress!

I applied some MiracleGro to all the plants last week, and on Monday I added a new batch of crushed eggshells to their soil, which should hopefully break down and supply calcium over the next couple months.

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7. Tan - Monday, 10 July 2017


( six more images under the cut )

Three of my squash have now started blooming -- I guess Tan's general age has trumped its somewhat precarious history, and it has therefore bloomed before Covera even though the latter plant has a much more stable foundation.

And speaking of stable foundations... Sethera became dangerously top-heavy last week and started flopping over, so I have propped it up with three small plastic lattices (plus several handfuls of additional potting soil packed around its base). So far this rather makeshift solution seems to be working, since last night's heavy rains did not tip the plant over again.

On the less bright side, Azer appeared to be developing an actual squash... but as of Tuesday evening (July 11), the tiny growth has started to rot/wilt. I believe this is known as blossom end rot, and the main treatments are to water evenly, to make sure the soil pH is between 6.0 and 6.5 (I guess I need to acquire a method to check that?), and most importantly to add calcium.

Eggshells will help on the calcium front, but they are a slow-release form of calcium and I think something a bit faster-acting may be called for. So I guess I need to acquire either gypsum or some kind of calcium spray. *sigh*


[[original Tumblr post (peppers) for when the embedded images inevitably break ; original Tumblr post (squash) for when the embedded images inevitably break]]

another dispatch from the kinda-sorta writing project

I did not finish 'and then'ing the space battle today, but I made some good progress and actually it turns out the space battle really needed to be broken into two scenes because reasons, so. I finished the first one? And got a couple paragraphs into the second one so as to leave myself in a place where my reaction is 'OMG what next?!' rather than 'yeah, that's a good stopping point' because I would like to have some residual momentum on my side when I hit the keyboard again tomorrow.

I am really going to have to revise the earlier sections of this story to properly foreshadow all this stuff, or this is going to come off as a really weird and unbalanced fic that switches plots halfway through. Which. Uh. It kind of does? But also kind of not, and my job will be to make the latter assessment feel more convincing than the former.