Garden Update 7 2012

Between  periods of  violent thunder and lightening storms and pouring rain, I did some work outside.  The tomatoes I planted were not the variety I wanted, I complained and they corrected the error. The correct plants arrived and they needed to be re-homed. It is much easier to plant a plant than to un-plant a plant, but I got good at it and only lost a single plant.

From the start

That is four separate plants.

The orginal plants went in on April 21 and they looked even worse than these do. The experence with them gives me a lot more faith than I had in the first plants at the start, but the newbies still look puny and weak. This time around I hit them with some fertilizer and their sad, tippy selves are proped up with popsicle sticks.

Things do get better. The above look like the plants I would buy from the store or get from Burpee. I kept a couple of these and the others have been adopted out, there were five more but those have all ready been re-homed. I was very proud of me that I was able to pluck these out of the garden with so little lose of life. It was not fun though. It was slightly more fun to plant the newbies but it isn't easy to do when you are trying to not step on anyone - its a little crowded in the garden. While I was planting the new babies I added a couple of Borage seeds, these are supposed to fight off invaders. Also, their pretty flowers are edible as are their leaves but I don't see me looking for recipes using Borage. Okay, I lied.

It also seems that I might need to keep my eye on it too as it re-seeds it self quite  aggressively, but I used weed barrier so it won't be able to access the soil quite so easily and if it does, well, I'll just cover it up. Other than that, it seems like a good plant to have around and oddly, useful. My super- crunchy- granola- all-homeopathy-all-the-time friend on Facebook would probably be very pleased. I would tell her but, you know, see above.

After I planted this weekend, I harvested. It was a little early but two of the plants were looking  a little peaky and hadn't flowered so I did a little exploratory surgery and discovered that they were doing what they were supposed to and I could limit my exploration to the single bin. The next day I pulled up the puds in the front because I they were making trimming the shrub difficult - as well as the spuds were ready for harvest.

I'm leaving them to toughen up a little before I start with them, the yellow spuds are Yukon Golds and they are good for storing, the reds are the Reds and they do need to be used sooner rather than later. Not a problem.