Blossoms and Edibles

I bought all these pots with the idea that I would grow food in them. But I just keep finding flowers that I like. Also, it occurred to me that it's important to have some attractive things among the utilitarian things in the garden (not that edibles are unattractive, but blooms are different). The latest is the salvia:

The Gerbera daisies are doing well.


Plus, my African violet inside has gone crazy with the blooming. I think it likes the direct morning sunlight in the window.


On to edibles. We did lose the cucumber, for reasons that are unclear (at least to me). The plant bible says that cucumber seedlings are susceptible to cold temperatures, even those above frost. So perhaps the cool weather got to them--although they seemed to just up and die after we got three days of rain, when it wasn't too cold at all. Hmmm. So anyway, since Kathy is a cucumber fiend, we went ahead and bought new seedlings over the weekend. There are two lemon cucumber seedlings ("lemon" apparently refers to their yellow color--they don't have a weird lemon taste or anything) and one normal bush cucumber, all in the same pot. I hope they get along.


The monstrosity below is a broken plastic planter that came with the apartment. It's all cracked on one side, but being too cheap to throw it out, I fixed it all up with duct tape so that it doesn't leak too badly. Now it is home to sage (back) and spinach (front) seedlings, as well as a whole mess of lettuce seeds that I just planted today.


I also planted a sage seedling indoors, to see which one does better. Hooray scientific method!


Speaking of indoors, I now have three rosemary seedlings going. You thought I was kidding when I said that rosemary was slow-growing. No, my friends. This is six weeks of growth.

Maybe I'll have rosemary in October. (This, I think, is why they sometimes sell rosemary in little Christmas-tree shapes for the holidays. Everyone plants them in the spring and has to wait until December to get anything out of them.)

Tomatoes, on the other hand, grow about an inch per day. Here is the beefsteak, with his accompanying basil:

And a nice close-up of the happy basil:


Both tomatoes are getting this weird dry-looking brown spot thing on some of their older leaves. I hope this is normal (transplant shock, perhaps) and not some perilous bug or disease. Anybody know?


We also bought, at the farmer's market, a few supplementals. A red bell pepper, complete with first blossom [there are also new lettuce seeds planted in there with him]...

...some mint, which I assume will soon bully the surviving pansy to death...


...and a ridiculous amount of dill. If you can believe it, I gave away at least half the dill that came in the original farmer's market pot.


The strongest spinach got his very own pot. In another experiment, three of the spindlier cousin spinaches got dumped in a pot together.


The cilantro is also doing well. I learned that cilantro will quickly go to seed, so I'll have to use this soon. In preparation, I planted four more seeds in this same pot, and also transplanted another seedling to another pot. Of course, cilantro seed is just coriander, so if some does go to seed, I'm not going to be too upset about it. I'll just have to learn what to do with fresh coriander (dry it?).


The combo lettuce-green onion pot is looking very promising. Lettuce loves this cool, wet weather.


But I am, of course, proudest of the poblano pepper. Look at how big and strong he is. If only I had planted him a month earlier, he might be as big as the bell pepper. I also planted a bunch more green onion seeds around this pot. I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me to do this earlier. Oh well.


Someday I'll write more about my archival life. I've got a whole diary about it just for myself, so maybe that's why it's been absent from the blog lately.