The Unexpected and Subtle Beauty of the Vegetable Garden

Potato Blossoms

Purple Cabbage

Sugar Snap Pea Blossom

Tomato Blossom

Savoy Cabbage

Bead of Water Hiding in the Cabbage

Tomato Surprise!

It might seem like I'm a little slow getting my garden in this year, but it's just recently that our temperatures have managed to climb out of the 40s on a consistent basis. Consequently, I'm just getting my tomatoes going, even in The Tomato House.

As you can see, I finally got some tomatoes potted up and settled in their new home...four down and four to go in the greenhouse. I had problems in last year's cool, wet summer with fungus and mildew problems in the greenhouse, so I'm spacing my pots farther apart this year. Hopefully, even with less-that-perfect weather, this will help avoid that nastiness.

I also have a flat of tomatoes about 4 inches tall that my husband acquired from a co-worker's son. He did a great job with the starts...they're sturdy and healthy looking but, unfortunately, he didn't do such a good job labeling thems. Meaning that I have about 20 mystery tomatoes! These will be going out in the garden beds but I'm not sure what kind of provisions to make for staking them. I know that "some" of the starts are Romas, which would be okay in standard tomato cages. Which, of course, would be entirely inadequate for a big, rambling indeterminate variety.

So however difficult it may be, I'm just going to have to plant them, hope for the best and see what happens. Stay tuned.

And So We Begin Again

Yikes! I see it's been nearly a  year since my last post. I'm going to blame it on the weather. Last summer was so cool and wet my garden can best be described as a disaster. We did have good success with salad greens, as well as onions and potatoes but everything else was, well, a disaster.

Even so, things are underway in the garden now, even though the weather has given us no reason to hope that this summer will be any warmer or drier than last...but what are gardeners if not optimists?

One of the additions we made to the garden last year was to add two supports for hanging baskets on the north side of the garden. Each support holds two, 12 inch baskets and I'm pretty excited about my plant choices this year.

I selected New Guinea Impatiens "Celebrette" to provide height. For my trailers, I selected Lobelia "Sapphire, white Bacopa and Helichrysum Petiolatum "Aureum." If the last has a common name, I don't know what it is but the lime green foliage looks amazing with the dark green of the Impatiens.

I planted the baskets last weekend and kept them in the greenhouse until today, when I hung them out. I think they look pretty good now; I can hardly wait to see what they'll look like when they fill out.