WEGO Health: Day 24
Did you observe Earth Day this past Sunday? Hopefully, we all do something every day to help our beautiful earth and not just once a year. My daily contributions are going for walks, using public transportation, recycling, gardening, using eco-friendly or homemade household products, etc.
We did get out and enjoy the warm, beautiful weather this weekend, including walks/bike rides. However, on Sunday, we got stuck in traffic (appropriate for earth day dontcha think?) trying to go to the Tulip Festival. Everyone else seemed to have the same idea so we bagged it for another day (or year -- ends Monday).
Sam and I did some transplanting of the many pepper plants. Unfortunately, we didn’t go the eco-friendly route like we did with the tomatoes. I know, horrors. But the eco-pots he made turned into an interesting experiment that will require further tweaking. So the pepper plants were transferred to picnic party cups.
Here’s what we discovered:
The brown paper pots are very organic we learned. This is good! Unfortunately, due to lack of space and their need for breathing room all the way around (not just the exposed leaves), white powdery mildew developed. There was constant spraying of neem oil to combat that problem. There are other organic, homemade solutions, too. So unless you have lots of space indoors or a greenhouse, this may not be the best option to start seedlings.
The newspaper pots have toxic ink, however, since we already had some seedlings in some of them we left them there. Figured since it’s a temporary home it’d be okay this time but going forward we wouldn’t use them for edibles. They, too, were a bit crowded but they showed zero signs of white powdery mildew so maybe the toxic ink was enough to keep mold at bay?? Weird.
Like the newspaper pots, we had some plastic cups in use and wouldn’t you know? They did the best. These look like they’d be the least eco-friendly here but the thought is they might actually be better than the newspaper pots. Anyone’s guess really. Didn’t have to worry about crowding with the cups. The plants grew healthy and strong.
I still want to go more eco next year but we have to figure out space issues so enough air gets to all the plants/pots (we had a fan, which helped, but not enough) or find another alternative that’s not too expensive.
We had so many tomato plants that Sam took a lot of them to the garden to give away, which were gladly accepted. We’ll have a bunch of pepper plants to give away in due time.
Our spring weather has actually been awesome (for the most part) that we’re very hopeful for the summer. In fact, we’re more than a month ahead than last year. Our garden is just about ready for planting.
So that’s our garden update. We’re not as eco-friendly as we wanted but there’s still potential to work it all out.
And a side note or an update of the other 5K I wanted to enter. It was sold out but they were opening up registration again (marketing ploy?) on Monday at 9 AM! Well, at 9:24 when I went to register (I know, 24 mins late!) it was sold out again. Grr…so I give up. Yeah, I could wait for them to tease me again about spots opening up or show up day of the race but now the fee is up to $55 and for a 5K that’s ridickio.
Well, my friends. Thanks for reading.
xo
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