9 October 2010
56 days into the project and my plants are not looking very harvestable. The time to harvest on most of the vegetables is around 80 days, but looking at them now, I really doubt I will have plump, ripe jalapenos and bell peppers from my 4 inch tall plants in 25 days :/
I guessed that they would take longer than usual, but I'm wondering now if they have enough light to produce fruit. Regardless, the greens and herbs won't have a problem except slow growing.
I'm also having a problem with many of the plants getting slightly yellow leaves on the bottom and the cilantro is totally dying. I did some reading on it in Edward Smith's book The Vegetable Gardener's Bible (really great resource) and it sounds like cilantro has trouble transplanting and needs very well drained soil. Being that it is in a plastic tub with no bottom holes, that could be part of the problem :) also, they got transplanted as seedlings and were one of the only plants I tried and saving each seedling instead of cutting the ones growing out of one one down. I'm going to start another batch of them directly sowing them into the planters and see if they do better. I also drilled holes in all of my tubs and elevated them on bricks above a few seed flats to give them better drainage. I placed the potted plants on stones so they weren't sitting in any excess water that drains into the catchment trays. Hopefully this will save them! Trial and error woooo!
|
vegetables |
|
greens |
|
herbs and arugula |
|
pots on stones for drainage |
|
tubs on bricks/flats for drainage |
|
dying cilantro |