Okay, I just realized that it's been a while since I updated the tomato situation. Turns out that the nutrition situation was indeed the problem with the tomato plants. They'd greened up considerably even before I transplanted them into the beds, and now they're not only back to a vibrant dark green, but they're growing again, tentatively beginning to flower, and one even has a tomato forming. Between the frequent rain storms lately and the watering system for when the weather is dry, they're getting plenty of water. My main concern now is that they're still more spindly than I'd prefer, and I'm a little worried about how those thinner stems will hold up when the plant has to bear fruit. They're in cages, but...the problem is, the plants are still too small for the cages to help them. I have stakes on each one, but they may need some additional help if their tomatoes come on before their stalks and vines are thick enough to support fruit.
The apple tree is covered with tiny little fruits; I'll have to get on a ladder and trim some of those off soon, or as the apples develop, their weight will pull the young tree apart. This may sound silly, but as long as we had freezing temps at night, I kept talking to the apple tree during the too-warm days, telling it to hold off on popping those blossoms until after the last frost. Last year it went too early, and we lost most of the blossoms to that, and the rest to codling moths. This year it waited; literally the day after the last frost, it popped most of the blossoms it had barely been holding in check. Now it's covered in tiny little apples, and in jeopardy not from an outside problem like frost, but from its own fruit. Who knew the life of an apple tree could be so fraught with risk?
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