Posted by Pedalcub on October 06, 2013 at 16:37

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A week or so ago, I came home to discover that my landlord's maintenance guy had pressure-washed the stoop where most of my seedlings were, damaging a number of my plants. Things are recovering slowly.

  • Of the sunflowers I planted, only one is still alive. When I set out most of them in pots, I didn't expect the pressure washer, nor rain damage from the eaves of the house. The only one left is in the root pouch saddlebag on my porch railing. It's doing okay but not great because there's not a lot of sun there.

  • The scarlet runner beans are doing okay but not great. One of the plants is in a root pouch pot tucked into the crook of a multi-trunk palm, and it's getting enough sun I think. Two are in a tray on the top of my porch staircase, and they got worked over pretty badly by the pressure washer and are just now starting to put out new growth. (I suspect that they may have also gotten some soap from the pressure washer, because the foliage has turned yellow on at least one of them in a way that seems weird.) The last one is in the shady side of my saddlebag planter, and it seems actually to be doing well, having started to climb over the railing and grow mildly upwards. I'm hoping that once the rainy season ends, I can transplant it out onto something with more support.

  • The Cherokee Purple tomatoes are still tiny little seedlings, and I'm not sure quite why they aren't growing at the rate I expect of tomatoes.

  • The Chinese leeks got wiped out by the pressure washer. I need to plant some new seeds, I guess.

  • the sage was in the same pot with the ginger, and it took a beating from the pressure washer but mostly survived. I've transplanted out some of those seedlings into the shady side of the saddlebag pot, and they're okay but not great, probably because of low light.

  • In non-food-garden news, I've had to bring in a number of my plants because they were getting too much rain and were starting to be unhappy about that. I'll set them out again once the soil has dried out a bit and the rainy season is closer to done.

In short, beware high-pressure streams of water, whether from machines or falling from the skies. The rainy season here really does a number on gardens.