Garden Thoughts

My first real look at gardening in the balcony. Some things I wish I'd known:

• tomato plants grow big
• they require even watering, eventually it gets harder to reach down into the pot to water properly, at least in a crowded setup
• consider SIP (sub irrigated planters) next summer
• Soft fabric containers are nice, but a simple home depot style bucket might do the job just as well
• cages need to be set up early, and not be cone-like in shape. Less this more this
• gardening is healing
• gardening scratches, like cooking, an itch that I also get from programming; trying out new methods, figuring things out through experimentation, and then finally seeing (and tasting) measurable results
• aphids present ethical dilemmas, a resurgence of universal love for seemingly insignificant creatures, and an eventual depression once you get back to "population control" after an ineffective "catch and release" campaign. This makes you regret the whole thing, but you have some sort of understanding on how we all operate, biasing human interest, with what might be called "good will". Good for who? The plants largely, but then with a little more thought, its more like the yield, which goes towards your caloric intake and some general human satisfaction of cultivating your own food (stick it big farma!). Then you begin to wonder if that single point, the preservation of some fruits that won't actually go on to propagate new plants (not unless our plumbing systems have underground hills of *ahem* shit with seeds growing out of them), is not even in the "interest" of the plant. A comparison of costs, weighing the extinction of the local aphid population who efficiently (and without making a fuss about it) survive on plant juices, and you, someone with the faculty to think about all this, ensues.
• Jute twine is awesome

The project started with some young pepper and tomato plants, after some more pots, suckers turned, well, tomato plants in their own right, green beans, and a very bad run of radishes, the balcony went from:

to (as of July 19, 2020):

I'll try to expand this, or make new posts, about things I've learned (and I've barely learned anything). Mainly record keeping and personal diary.