tropicalhomestead – Kihaku-Gato's Garden Blog (tumblr import)

tropicalhomestead:

tropicalhomestead:

Uh, are you okay?

Update: She’s fine

So very, very fine

I love you, you funky little pineapple.

tropicalhomestead:

2manyplants:

5.23.18 – on two separate occasions I found peppers growing in my peppers ??

tropicalhomestead:

Me, snapping yellow leaves off tomato plants: There you go, sweetie. You don’t need that kind of negativity in your life.

tropicalhomestead:

Tiny flower on prickly pear 5.11.2018

tropicalhomestead:

Cacao blossoms are just. so. fragile.

tropicalhomestead:

I did it! I managed to pick this dwarf pomegrante just when it cracked open and before bugs got in.

It was tart and sweet and yum.

tropicalhomestead:

The pink lemon is finally blooming!

For over a year it grew like a weed – and its variegated leaves are stunning – but this little purple blossom is what I was waiting to see. 🌼🍋💞

tropicalhomestead:

Today I weeded 1000 plants. Not just any plants, but 1000 tomato plants.

To be clear, I didn’t weed around 1000 tomato plants, but rather the tomato plants were the weeds, and I pulled out over a thousand of them.

Impossible, you say. Try me, I reply.

How could this happen? Well, I have tiny tomatoes growing in the aquaponic grow beds. This particular tomato is hardy, prolific and opportunistic. Every time a tomato drops, this is what happens:

One dropped tomato equals a dozen tomato seedlings. Neat, right?

Unfortunately, if not managed, the bed will look like this:

So thus a modern homesteader dilemma; Nothing is supposed to got to waste. Everything should be used to it’s utmost potential. Taken to extreme, each tomato plant should find a home. And really, little tomatoes shouldn’t have been forgotten to drop into the bed in the first place.

I know I can’t be the only one that frets about this. My extreme weeding event allowed me to meditate on this dilemma for the good of gardeners everywhere. Weeding, thinning and forgotten fruit are unavoidable. I am choosing to look at this as a reminder of life’s abundance. Nature is full of redundancies, and it’s my job to make the most of it.

Sometimes that means I’m going to have too many tomato plants, and sometimes that means tomatoes are going to be my afternoon snack for three weeks straight. And sometimes that means I’m going to have to pull out 1000 tomato plants before they have a chance to flourish, just so basil can flourish instead.

It’s not just about nothing going to waste, it’s about balance. 🙂