Tomatoes revisited

Remember my tomatoes? Well, they have already outgrown their pots and needles, so I had to build them a bigger home. Since we are here only temporarily, I did not want to buy too many pots, as we all have to take them home with us. Bigger food buckets would have been a very cheap and convenient replacement, but none of us are big eaters...

In the end I bought some buckets at the 1-euroshop and bamboo canes at a hardware store. I planted the roots relatively deep; they grow upwards and need extra soil every week. 

The tricky thing this time was that the plants were already in bloom (yes!), and I was not sure if the flowers would suffer from the replanting session. But after just a few hours, they seemed happier than ever and they are still growing as crazy! The only thing that keeps puzzling me is that the plant on the left has real yellow tomato flowers (see below, on the right), while the other two plants have little green bells that seem quite empty (see below). I mean, I cannot see any flowery stuff in there. It seems that these are 'sterile plants' that apparently do not need pollinating(?). Maybe I should investigate a bit more on that subject...

Seed bombs

My son recently received mail from OERRR, an initiative by Natuurmonumenten (Nature Preservation) to get children to explore nature. In the envelope were some new outdoor discovery cards and a package containing zaadbommetjes (seed bombs). He got really excited at the word 'bombs' but was disappointed when I told him the package would not explode when opened. The idea of making his own seed bombs became much more appealing when he realized that sand, clay and water would be involved. Since we did not have clay and the bombs now had to be made immediately, we just put some sand and water in a small bucket and mixed in the seeds. He then wanted to just throw the seed bombs off the balcony, 

but I managed to convince him that the seeds would probably be scooped away by the construction workers. So we went down into the 'garden' to look for a suitable place to drop our bombs...

In the end, we settled for a space next to the old electricity house, which is not likely to be torn down in the next months and which also had plenty of sun and most important: it is not an active construction site. As you can see, he did not want to get his hands dirty and carefully shook out the seed mixture in several places. He then faithfully went to watch the seeds grow for the first few days, but then decided that they were probably dead. Patience is not his strongest asset. Yesterday he suddenly remembered the seeds and went down to the seed spot to see if anything happened. 

Yes! Tiny little plants had come up at most of the seed spots and we could already discern several different leafs, although he was disappointed that I could not name the flowers. But hey, do I look like a flower expert to you? Anyway, he now checks up on the tiny fellows every morning before going to school and he puts a thumb to me when they grown again.

Lemon balm

About three months ago, I bought a tiny package of Zitronenmelisse (lemon balm) seed in the supermarket, for the one and only reason that the info on the back said: 'mosquito repellent'. Good! I thought, for if there is one thing I hate in summer... I sowed the seed in an empty milk carton, they are ideal for planting all sorts of stuff. The package also informed me that the seeds would germinate unevenly over a longer period of time. And indeed, it took over three weeks before the first tiny green sprouts became visible. The tiny sprouts remained tiny for another three weeks, but then suddenly started to grow really fast. I had to replant them and again used empty milk cartons, for I had a strong suspicion that they would need replanting within a couple of weeks.

And still, more tiny little sprouts keep popping up in the seed box, but I am in doubt now if I should still plant them on in bigger pots - in two months time, we will be moving back to Leiden and my husband is now cautiously starting to ask whether all this greenery is supposed to move back home with us...