I was looking over some old blog posts and noticed an old post of my first hydro setup after moving into this apartment, and noticed also that I still had a pot of crazy mint then. It's a shame it is no longer with me, because that stuff could go three feet tall in the right condition.
Three feet tall, straight up, no falling over.
Thus I realized once again the importance of being earnest... I mean, the importance of posting garden pictures for all eternity. Here's a picture of the garden this year. Since I'm traveling sometimes for a whole week, the water expenditures need to be taken into account. Therefore I have just one container-full of sorrel (two bountiful plants), and one tomato plant, sungold again. It wasn't making it for a while, until I realized that what was causing the pH to drop drastically was the concentration of the fertilizer. Which is weird. Anyway I have not touched it for two weeks and it's alive and fruiting.
The other plants are fed by a drip irrigation system (the black tubing), which drips for ten minutes each day, fed by a surprisingly adequate pump in the blue bucket at the far end. Capacity is more than sufficient and the mints are growing really well. There's a newly-planted basil plant and an eggplant that's being kept if (or when) the tomato dies. If (when) that happens, the eggplant will be planted into soil and an extra bucket for water capacity placed next to it. Eggplant tends to be overcome by aphids when in water, so there'll be a spurt of growth and fruiting, then the fresh growth will die back or need to be pruned. Plus, soil has a pH buffer that water doesn't.
Above is a picture of the catastrophe I discovered after a trip to Pittsburgh and the first two days of Pesach. That's the pH of the water the tomato plant was in. Yet it survived. Amazing.
To finish off, a picture of Bush Intercontinental Airport from above:
Three feet tall, straight up, no falling over.
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| Garden a weak ago |
The other plants are fed by a drip irrigation system (the black tubing), which drips for ten minutes each day, fed by a surprisingly adequate pump in the blue bucket at the far end. Capacity is more than sufficient and the mints are growing really well. There's a newly-planted basil plant and an eggplant that's being kept if (or when) the tomato dies. If (when) that happens, the eggplant will be planted into soil and an extra bucket for water capacity placed next to it. Eggplant tends to be overcome by aphids when in water, so there'll be a spurt of growth and fruiting, then the fresh growth will die back or need to be pruned. Plus, soil has a pH buffer that water doesn't.
Above is a picture of the catastrophe I discovered after a trip to Pittsburgh and the first two days of Pesach. That's the pH of the water the tomato plant was in. Yet it survived. Amazing.
To finish off, a picture of Bush Intercontinental Airport from above:
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