Garden Update 14

Well, pour one out for our friend Experimental Pepper.

Last weekend it was fine. A week later its done for. I went through its soil and looked at its admittedly tiny root ball and could find nothing that seemed to have done it in. The soil was moist and  very loosely packed. I didn't find any tale tail signs of infestation. It just died. One down, many, many to go.

Speaking of experiments, the experimental Tomato is still producing, it is in fact the only tomato plant producing. It's leaves are looking a little worse for wear but the fruits are healthy and I see no signs of illness or infestation.

The in-ground tomatoes are growing but not growing more tomatoes. When I was touring the garden earlier I did find a couple of fetal fruits but nothing like what the ET is doing.

Those belong to the 4th of July plant. I noticed another very young fruit on what I remember to be the Big Pink plant. One of the sause varieties has flowers now and the plant that was supposed to produce big, giant sandwich sized fruits has yet to even flower, it is however eight feet tall.

On the shorter end of the spectrum

Those are just for show, it produces all these cute little beans that never actually mature.

The volunteer pumpkins just keep doing their thing. No flowers as yet and they are shorter and the leaves less broad than Alphagals on-purpose pumpkins. I am hopeing this is a varietal difference and not that this vine is fated to be just pretty. I'm hopeing that since I bought the donor at the farmers market and not a grocery store that maybe I can beat the sterile pumpkin seed odds.

Back to the tall plants. The peppers are actual out performing the tomatoes. With all but one plant having lovely peppers waiting on stand by for me.

 My only issue is that they are supposed to be bell peppers but they aren't at all like the bells see at the farmers market. They aren't as large and they don't have tidy flat bottoms to rest on in the oven. My peppers are all foldy and elastic. I discovered that they taste really, really good and have a great texture, they aren't really suitable for stuffing. Wah.

A family picture.


Back to the front, we all ready spoke about the sad ending of the EP. Sigh. On the upside, I finally am no longer a member of the Shrub Liberation Front. Thanks to my Dad and my hedge trimmer we went from

 Do notice in the lower right hand corner the still thriving EP, that was a week a go. Post  trimming to this

It actually looks like someone lives here now. My Dad trimmed all the hedges across the front of the house and it looks so much better than it did. Much more tucked in and for the first time in a long time I'm not thinking of ripping them all out just to spite them. I don't mind them near as much now that they aren't trying to eat my house.

As long as we're talking about the front of my house, lets chat about my flowers shall we?

Aren't they lovely? And speaking of the flowers, look more

I can't say much about the seed flowers. They did well early on but they petered out very soon. They were fin while they lasted though.