Thursday 29 July 2010

Many plants were harmed in the making of this post

I've tried to expand my sowing/growing repertoire this year. To supplement our random assortment of green, non-flowering plants, we brought back some chili seeds (habanero and something called ping - which I think should be referred to as ping! - a la stereolab) from australia.

It all started off very well. Seeds were germinated. Sprouts were transplanted into small pots. Then bigger pots. 10 ml plastic pipettes were appropriated from lab to stake up the rapidly growing stalks. Even Kate, who normally has zero interest in house plants, began to talk about harvesting home-grown chilis. The only hurdle was that no matter how big the plants became, there were no flowers. Thus, no chilis. Internet research revealed that something called "fertilizer" might induce this much-anticipated transition. As such, a large bottle of mysterious green liquid was obtained from the local garden shop.

At this point everything came crashing down. Rather than carefully reading the instructions (which smart people would normally do) I haphazardly mixed a big dollop of the green stuff with some water and started dousing the plants. With the following results:

The plant on the left avoided the first pass of the fertilizer=death express, and represents one of the few surviving chili plants we have left. The heap of rotting vegetable matter on the right now serves only as a cautionary tale against over-fertilization. Here's another view, which more accurately captures the swath of destruction brought about by my idiocy.

Ouch.

Next post: Tomatoes in peril!

5 comments:

Douglas said...

I've got some tiny jalapeno plants sprouting on the terrace. I'm not really expecting flowers/peppers until next year... prove me wrong, plants! prove me wrong!

Douglas said...

By the way, lots of fun cooking and plant-growing tips here:

http://oilchanges.blogspot.com/

Alex said...

Somebody once told me, after seeing my reaction to their statement that people who blog were lame, "well, at least you don't blog about your cats or your garden". And since then I have been reluctant to post anything about my plants. Even though I take lots of pictures.
I've grown a habanero plant from seed this year and it doesn't have flowers yet, but it looks like they are about there, there are buds. Same with my cayenne peppers. I'll bet your habaneros will flower. but will the bees find them way up there?

Douglas said...

It's a Darwinian thing... only the BEST BEES will find them!

one of us said...

The darwinian bee theory is fairly good. I have a tomato plant on my balcony - and it actually has some tomatos. So the bees can make it that high.

If I had gotten any chili flowers (still waiting on that one) I was fully prepared to go the "manual" pollination route. While the bees can clearly make it, I'm not sure I was willing to risk my harvest on some beat-down, panting-ass bee getting busy with my pistils and stamens.