Thursday, May 30, 2013

How is the Garden Doing?

Currently I am battling something akin to cut worms on every single tomato plant.  They are making the leaves of all my plants look like swiss cheese.  It's very frustrating.  I tried some "organic" safe spray and they just ate right through that.  I tried two applications.  I tried searching for hours at night with the flashlight to catch them by hand, mistakenly thinking they would be as big as horn worms.  They are not.  This morning at 5:30am I resorted to Neem Oil.  I sprayed under pretty much every leaf, meticulously.  We shall see what happens.  A gardening friend of mine reminded me that a healthy plant is better at fighting off disease and pests better than a weak plant and that if you are gardening in containers you must fertilize every 2 - 3 weeks.  I had not done that, but I have now.  Makes sense, just like the human body.  Here's a picture of the current state of a few plants.  As you can see the one under the window is almost 7' tall.  That plant is the cherry tomato plant.  Not sure if I should start pinching it or let it go crazy!  The little thing to the left is the spinach.  To the right in the horizontal container is the Michael Pollard variety of tomato.  This is the first year it is in gardens so it's an heirloom.  The leaves on the Michael Pollard are HUGE.  Some of the longest leave branches are 18" long.  How in the hell am I supposed to train that thing?