Playing in the potting soil

My triumphant homecoming from Home Depot left me with three tomato plants that I planned to put in individual pots, but I had only purchased two. Great math skills. But it was Saturday night, I was home alone - I decided to go large and at least repot what I had. I ended up with two tomato plants, each in their own large-ish pot, and a rectangular planter with all four of my strawberry plants.  Upon the repotting, I was disappointed to find that I had accidentally picked up only two varieties of strawberries, so I had three Quinaults and one All-Star. Oh well.

In a few short weeks, all of these will be mine! Because my plants are magic.

It seems there's a lot of guesswork that goes into starting a garden. Or at least there is when one is too eager (read: lazy) to take the time to look things up online. I was concerned when I only used about half the bag of potting soil after repotting the tomatoes - according to the bag, it was enough for two 12-inch pots, but I had used significantly less. Then again, the bag also said to fill each pot up only 1/3 of the way before adding the plant, and I had done at least half - otherwise the poor plants would have been completely covered in dirt. The tomato plants did have instructions to bury them 2/3 into soil. I probably did about half, as I was concerned about suffocating them - don't they need their leaves exposed for photosynthesis? But really, one man's half is another man's two-thirds. Fractions are tricky entities. Aside from the number of seeds per cell covered earlier, the other guesswork was how close to put the strawberry plants. The label claimed to put them 18 inches apart. Sounds nice, but when I only have approximately a five by two foot area to play with on the not-really-a-fire-escape, I couldn't afford to put two plants per rectangular planter. Or I could have, but I would've had to return a lot of my seeds and plantlings. I thought they looked nice about six to eight inches apart. This may be another decision that comes back to haunt me later this summer.

Plants on the balcony the morning after. Heirloom tomato on the far left, strawberry plants in the back on the right. Grow, little plants, grow!

By the end of the process, I felt like a real gardener. I had potting soil all over my apartment floor and under my nails that no amount of scrubbing could erase. The first real sign of spring! Before putting the plants out on the balcony, I saturated the soil of all of them, as there had been no instructions. I was grateful that I splurged on the soil that wards against over/underwatering. My husband, knowing my ability to kill houseplants via drowning, had already warned me against the dangers of overwatering. It's an unfortunate illogical cycle that never gives the plants a chance. I fuss over the plants and sometimes see a brown leaf, which could be due to a multitude of reasons. I resolve to water the plant more often. As more brown leaves pop up, I add more and more water, concerned that the plant is drying out when most likely I am rotting the roots. Then the bugs set in and I end up throwing the whole mess in the trash. I plan to set a strict schedule for the garden to avoid this exact end.

The fate I hope to avoid handing my plants this summer.