Brown Thumb: Kitchen Garden Updates

It has been 2 months since I planted my baby bok choy seeds. And my babies have grown quite a bit. The morning after I add a fresh layer of compost they are beaming and have visibly grown taller and bigger!

The leaves have grown so big!

But unfortunately they have been getting attacked by leaf miners, which are the larve of various insects. Leaf miners burrow through the leaves to eat the tissue. And since it’s the leaves of the bok choy I want to eat, this is a big problem. Protected within the leaf, pesticides (organic or otherwise) don't work on the miners either. The only solution is to prune off the affected leaves. Which sometimes leaves my plants looking rather bald…

Leaf miners have burrowed through the leaf tissue

Good compost, they say, helps prevent such attacks because it builds the plant’s immunity. I have been adding a fresh layer of compost every ten days or so, and after the first top up of fresh compost I didn’t see any new leaves being attacked by miners. Until this morning, when I noticed the white sinuous lesions on the leaves again! And now that the leaves have grown quite large, it breaks my heart to have to prune them off.

In other news, it has been two weeks since I sowed the seeds of a naati tomato but my tomato planter seems to have had a miscarriage… I have been diligently watering the soil-enclosed seeds everyday but not even a spot of green has emerged. I'm so disappointed!

The planter doesn't look any different from the day I sowed the seeds

Any ideas or explanations as to why this may have happened? Please help me paint my brown thumb green!