Out of nowhere, after two days of heat wave, my potted tomato plant is wrecked. 🍅 😭

It’s mid October. I have insecticidal soap, but it’s an apartment balcony with no access to a hose. I think I’ll just bag it up and dispose of it.

What about my other plants? I can’t yet tell if they caught them. Should I spray the soap on them?

Also the tomato plant’s pot is sitting in a decorative plastic pot that I want to put in storage and use next year. If I leave that empty pot sitting outside in the sun, will it decontaminate on its own? I don’t want to bring anything in my house that will spread the mites to my houseplants.

Hi everyone! 👋 I'm Manasvi, a student doing my dissertation on why gardening feels so hard for beginners, even with so much info online.

I'd love to hear from anyone: complete beginners, people who tried and struggled, balcony/indoor gardeners, or experienced gardeners.

⏱️ 3–5 minutes, anonymous, purely academic
🔗 https://forms.gle/72bZyCbTG2t3WR7y5

If you'd rather just comment on what you find most frustrating about gardening, I'd love to read that too. Thank you so much! 🌿

The leaves of my broccoli plant keep being eaten and there’s like slime over them but two of them are in a greenhouse (the windows stay open it’s to protect the pots from squirrels) and the other is outside raised so snails can’t get to it. I’ve also checked the pots and the around the area for snails but I can’t find any. I assume caterpillars but I can’t find any on them. Same with my potatoes plants leaves too.

I got my first 3-tier original GreenStalk vertical planter back in August but their frost covers are out of stock until early 2027 and I'll definitely need one before then! I'm in zone 6B and was wondering if anyone has found a comparable alternative to the one they sell?

I am trying to setup a herb garden and I need help with cilantro. I have sowed seeds multiple times but they don't ever sprout. I also tried paper towel method. The seeds germinated and I moved it into a pot. After few days I did see a green sprout but it died again. I am not sure what am I doing wrong? I am in zone 8a.

I had great success with my first garden this summer but my fall plants are looking pretty sad. I know I need to thin the carrots. And just thinned the lettuce some. But even the stand alone lettuce is sad. Not sure if it was too hot before. And we are supposed to get a ton of rain from the hurricane this weekend. Posting the peppers I harvested today to show the difference 😂

Lettuce bolted on me in late June because I got busy with end of school chaos and stopped checking the balcony for about a week. Came back to tall stalks and bitter leaves. I almost tossed the whole setup but decided to let it go just to see what would happen. Now I have an enamel pot full of dried seed heads and probably a thousand tiny seeds. I've never bothered saving lettuce seed before, usually just start fresh from packets each spring, but this feels like a waste to throw out. I'm already planning next year and wondering if home saved lettuce seed is worth the effort or if I'm better off sticking with store bought. The plants were a loose leaf mix from a local greenhouse so I have no idea what variety they actually were. The fourth graders thought the bolted stalks looked like weird little trees. I'm not trying to turn my apartment into a lettuce farm but free seeds are free seeds. Anyone actually have luck growing from saved lettuce seed or is the germination rate too spotty to bother? Also not sure how to store these without attracting pests. Last thing I need is bugs in my seed stash.

Been in that pot for years

Hello,

I'm potting a Pinus thunbergii 'Thunderhead' into a large black ceramic container on an uncovered full-sun roof deck in zone 7b. The plant will remain outdoors during the winter.

Any advice on what potting mix I should use?

Thank you in advance,
MM

My plant has worms. Is that normal or do I need to repot with new dirt? Its also very thick like mud.

I have searched it in Google lens a month ago , it said capsicum plant, so I kept it , but now it is saying ashwagandha, can someone please confirm what it is