June 19, 2015

Me And My Brown Thumb

I'm famous for having a brown thumb. Plants die when they're in my care. Mostly because I eventually forget that they exist, which means the watering stops, which in turn means the plants turn to dust. Good, eh? In my defence, it's mostly because they're outside and I just don't do outside. It doesn't occur to me to go outside, to look outside, do anything outside. Indoors is my jam. It's where I keep my things clean. 

The hubs and I went to the nursery and bought a bunch of plants... and then I left them in the garage for a couple of days without watering them. Oops. Then I moved them to the back deck for sunshine... and forgot to water them. For a week. Bottom line is, they looked like death by the time I actually got around to planting the sorry things. So the fact that these petunias look like that now is nothing short of a damn miracle. 

I've been good about watering them since. These ridiculously beautiful petunias are bright and gorgeous, and whenever I walk by the front door, I see them (there's another pot on the other side of the front porch). Which means they get watered and fed yummy fertiliser and they don't die. 

So the key is to get brightly coloured plants if I want them to live. Got it. 

And because I remember the petunias exist, I also remember that I've got four tomato plants out the back. AND THERE ARE TWO TOMATO BABIES ALREADY!!! I squee'd a lot. Like a giant idiot but who's going to see while I'm dancing around on my back deck? There's actually a couple more itty bitty ones popping out... so excited!

These tomato plants were withered and slumped over by the time they actually made it into their pots. I truly thought I was going to have to dump them and get new ones. But by the next day they popped right back up and forgave me. I think. I hope. I love you tomato plants.

We've got the stakes in there but I'm going to have to get cages because soon they'll be heavy with fruit, and the last time I left it too late and had to wrangle the branches in the cages trying very hard not to break any. I did not succeed. Sigh. Bad plant mummy.

So this is my 2015 attempt at gardening. I took a couple of years off from growing tomatoes but I really missed picking cherry tomatoes for salads. So sweet and fresh, absolutely nothing like it!

What are you growing this summer?

2 comments:

Laura said...

We don't grow veggies in our central Calif. yard, but our apricot tree yielded several dozen apricots a couple of weeks ago. So yummy! We also have peach, orange and lemon trees, but they seem to be having an "off" year despite looking quite healthy. I have a chocolate mint plant in the courtyard that I love using as a garnish in iced tea. We also have rosemary plants, but my husband hates rosemary so they're mostly for decoration.

mascanlon said...

Herbs and lemons, hundreds of lemons this summer season. It's been a busy spring. DH has neem switching out a lot of our potted plants to succulents. In so cal we can only water twice a week and we are trying to be more water conscious. I do miss the bright happy colors like your petunias!

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