Thursday, July 14, 2011

Frustration and A Lack of Tomatoes

I confess, I'm getting a little disheartened. While the pepper plant is beginning to flower, and that shows a lot of promise, I am continually thwarted by pea plants that will not flower. The squirrels ate the carrots, and while the tomatoes are growing tall and very green, there are no signs of flowers on them. In contrast, a good friend has tomato plants that she has already gotten fruit off of. I'm sure the difference is the amount of sun. We get hardly any.
So I've been wrestling a lot lately with the question, do I bother trying veggies at all after these are gone? Or do I continue to scour Cambridge for another grow light and try lettuce, peas and carrots inside? Should I get another bag of soil and try sweet potatoes? (I know I can bring those inside once they're started in a bucket)
I want so badly to make this work, but it's hard not to get frustrated. Thing is, there's nothing I can do about the light we get. I think I just need to give myself a slap in the back of the head, a Gibbs-smack as it were and carry on.
More tomorrow, when I have soil and manure. If nothing else, I'll give you an update on the urban bucket compost situation.

1 comment:

Knittedhome said...

I know it's not "vegetables" but have you tried salad greens? Lettuce, spinach, kale, collard greens have all worked well for me when I had only an hour of direct sunlight a day. I would also suggest green beans. They have always worked for me. You may not get very many because they won't get a lot of light, but you might get enough for a side at dinner.
I also had the same lack of tomatoes problem, too. They finally flowered in September but were never pollinated. So I found out that Comfrey is a great bee/pollinator-attractor so I planted two plants of these next to and in my tomato row (in my new apt's patio). So last year I finally had tomatoes! A whole bowl or two full!
Since you are living in an apt, could you look for a new one with more direct sunlight? Best of luck to you!