The balcony garden suffers from so many woes -
1. the inept gardener (myself) that it is left with
2. overcrowding from the start
3. an inability to balance out the days of too much love (seasol overkill, too much watering in an inebriated state) with the days of no love (i'm not home, or uni work takes hold and i am more interested in the western front advance of a memoir writing German soldier than i am in tending to the greenery)
4. a ridiculous extreme of weather patterns thanks to global warming, and a lovely and sunny (if not too sunny in summer) position
5. no effective bug control method, rather a mish mash of techniques, which forms a mouse, cat, dog, elephant Dr Seussian scenario of escalation.
Still it is there, and boy is it green. My latest problem project were the larger heirloom and non-heirloom tomatoes. They were bushy and green and growing and flowering prolifically but suffering one doozy of a case of blossom drop. Their smaller cherry cousins were fruiting adequately and i thought the windy position was enough to ensure pollination.
And someone, actually a few someones, suggested i try my hand a manual pollination via an electric toothbrush. To this point a friend and i giggled - jokes about hand jobs and plants ensued, and we both pondered just who thought of putting this vibrating bathroom implement to work in the outdoors arena. Jokes aside - i tried it. And viola - blossom drop curbed in its tracks.
The cherry are fruiting even more
the random K-mart tomoato trusses are filling
the yellow tomato which was the main culprit was beginning to show signs of fruiting
the Tommy Toes continue to grow
and the black russian, which i had almost lost all hope of ever tasting a home grown benefit of, has begun to fruit!
viva la electric revolution
now what other ingenious ideas do i need to try out ... and will it work on the strawberries which have all of a sudden decided they do not like me
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