Just a bit of fertilizer, huge difference

Last summer, I couldn't find organic fertilizer anywhere. I found it a little ridiculous, because there was MiracleGro everywhere, but nothing organic. Well, I managed to find some this year and have started using it once each week in watering my work plants. (I've only used it once at home so far.) It has made a huge, huge difference in how well my plants are doing, just in the few weeks since I started using it.
Last summer, since my only option was chemical fertilizer, I did my best not to use it unless a plant was really doing poorly. Freed from that constraint, I'm realizing just how poorly they were all doing as a result. My one cherry tomato that's flowered so far at work already has five seven tomatoes started on it. Seven, all at once! And more flowers coming, too. That would have been unheard of last year. (I think the most tomatoes one plant put out was four at once, but one died on the vine and it didn't have any other flowers at the time.) I have at least eight peas growing, and two beans. Almost a salad! :) All of my plants are flowering, and some are putting out tons of leaves even with the fruiting and flowering. (One of my peas is going to be a monster, I can tell.) It's wonderful.
I would love to get to a point where I don't have to depend on outside fertilizer for help (such as making and using my own compost tea instead) but for now I'm just happy that I could find something organic. I'll use up the old chemical fertilizer on non-edible plants, or give it away. Anyone want some fertilizer?
Now that I've started planting in the garden, I'll have to figure out the best way to get fertilizer to those plants too. I think I'll need to buy a better, bigger watering can. That way I can also keep the chemical and organic fertilizers in separate cans. We need to take a load of stuff to Value Village, anyway, so I'll look around there to see if they have any watering cans.
On Friday night I ended up reading until I fell asleep. (I'm into the 5th "Game of Thrones" book--so good!) Which also meant that I accidentally left all of my plants outside overnight. They all survived. I was worried, but not too worried. Memorial Day is usually the time the farmers I've spoken to around here say it's safe to plant even warm weather plants outdoors in the lowlands. I haven't actually put any of them in the ground yet, but I will do that this week or weekend. They still look so small, and I keep reminding myself that it's just the beginning of summer and they've got plenty of time to grow huge.
We did buy the baby gate and baby locks to keep the dog's destruction to a minimum. So far, so good, but we've only had it for two nights. We left the kennel in our room (making a wonderful obstacle course to the closet which is lovely to maneuver around when I'm bleary-eyed and sleepy in the mornings) and she's been voluntarily gone in there the past few nights to sleep. She might be upset with Shane for being gone and sort of boycotting him, or it might just be that she feels comfortable in there. I'm just glad it doesn't feel like doggy prison to her.