Friday, August 14, 2009

Pruned, Groomed and Pollinated

I've been busy baking cupcakes for the RSPCA Cupcake Day. Not much to do with gardening besides being the reason for the lack there of. I've baked 75 cupcakes in the last 2 days with the report from my sellers being a sellout success! I'm very happy for the animals and love being involved. Just between you and me though, I'm exhausted!


I did drag my tired self out to the garden today. I've pruned, groomed and watered and the balcony is look quite spiff. I even hacked at the overgrown lettuce- in slow preparation for pulling them out in the near future. May as well encourage some more baby leaves before they go.


Told you I had a lot of rocket!
Some of the lettuce are beginning to go to seed. Below is the first to seed if you can think back to an earlier post. Its flowering now and quite pretty.


I spent some time pollinating my tomatoes this morning for which I use my hubby's electric shaver. He's slowly come to terms with its dual use and now knows where to find it if its not where its supposed to be (oops! my bad). I think he gets a kick out of it now and tells everyone I've been 'sexorising' the plants (his word, not mine). I'm not even sure if the tomatoes need the help but its been working so far so I figure why stop a good thing.

Here's some baby pearly pinks from this morning. You will notice I have lost a couple of buds (pollinated ones too :/). This has happened a couple of times, I think it may be a lack of consistent watering (I try but during the week it can be difficult) and turning the tiered pot they get disturbed. I'm aware of it now so I try and take extra care.



And here is one of my stars- my first and biggest of the tomatoes. They have been getting lighter and its hard to tell from the photo but the colour now is almost white. I'm hoping they'll turn red real soon ;) I can't get enough of looking at these beauties.



Speaking of beauties, my cactus is flowering. It opens flowers from random points and has been doing so for weeks. I absolutely love the colour.


Remember my concern for my broccoli and cauliflower to hurry up? Well they listened. All my broccoli now have heads (Yay!) and the side shoots on the harvested plant are beginning to grow.


I don't often venture to the back of my tiered pot (due to the risk of disturbing my tomatoes) but I did turn it a little today. I probably squealled a little too loudly (God only knows what the neighbours opposite me think sometimes) when I discovered my first 'visible' cauliflower! I know we went through this last week... but this one is actually big enough so I don't have to dig through leaves to find it. Who knew the (slightly more neglected) plant at the back was doing so well. So this week my tally is four out of six plants with cauliflower heads (yes, even the miniscule ones count ;)).


Two of my cauliflowers are also sporting appendages. Is this baby cauliflower? I don't see what else is could be. I certainly never planted anything near it and its growing from either the bottom of the stem or right next to the roots. It looks like cauliflower.



My beetroot has been growing a lot more leaves recently and for some reason they're all dark. The previous leaves have all been varying shades of green. I hope this recent spate of leaves means the roots are growing well. Or growing at all!

4 comments:

  1. Wow, you have an amazing little garden! It's so impressive that you're growing so many different kinds of veggies - and successfully too! Your photos are very beautiful and that big old planter is really cool. I can see how that would be a real asset to balcony/container gardeners. Great job!!!

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  2. ...and reeealllly delicious looking cupcakes too!

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  3. I'm also in Sydney, and my rocket just bolted too! I thought that I'd given let it dry out then watered it just a few too many times... maybe its just the changing of the seasons if your lettuce is doing the same though.. Looks like your garden will be great!

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