This Week in the Garden: Tomato Surprise

Above you can see our large Common Thyme plant.  What?  You couldn't tell it was large?  I feel proud of how many branches it has growing off its main stem.  This is the one we pruned when it was truly a baby, and even though I know it's still only little one, well, it moved a lot as a baby.

 

This is our small Common Thyme Plant.  It's the one we didn't prune.  It's also the one that got left in its cardboard tube when I planted it.  I don't remember why--some of the plants just seemed more stable that way at the time, I guess.  My husband believes that's the reason it's still so much smaller than the other one.  He might be right.

 

Here is the Japanese White Egg.  If you've been reading the weekly garden posts for a while, you know it's a lot bigger than it was to begin with.

 

 Here are my carrot re-plants, which I slipped under some dirt two weeks ago today.  The first ones didn't come up at all, and we never did figure out why, exactly.  The garden changed hands a few times back then, so nobody blamed anybody and we started over.  The second time, I chose the seed packets that were a) still left in the store and b) harvestable in fifty-two days.  That was the shortest time available.  I'm sorry to say they're not heirlooms, but a girl does what a girl has to do when it's July 17 and none of her (also non-heirloom) carrots have come up.

 

George Washington's Love Lies Bleeding plants seem to like it where I put them.  Believe it or not, I've already thinned out about a million.  Maybe I should remove a few more?  It just seems so barbaric, this ripping plants out of the ground just to arbitrarily make space for another one.  Ok.  So I'm not THAT emotional about it.

 

One of the mystery peppers, looking more like a real plant every day.

 

For a few weeks, I had this nagging feeling I was forgetting to plant something.  When the peas I planted didn't come up, I realized I still had okra to put in the ground, and I put the okra in the peas' place.  I know it may be way too late in the season to do this, but I had never grown okra before.  The seeds were a gift to my dad, and without asking I threw them in, watered them, and waited.  So far, so good.  I hope they at least bloom before first frost.

 

Some respectable leaves beginning to show on the Wild Zaatar Oregano.

A good view of the pruning process, shortly after pruning the original main stem.  Now two stems are branching off where there would have been only one before.  Once they get a little higher, we'll prune them, and have four stems instead of two.  Then eight, then sixteen....exponential growth in the garden seems like a great idea.

The tomatillo patch = the largest thing in the garden.  Isn't it lovely?  I keep worrying that none of the flowers will come to full fruit.  Is that a weird thing to worry about?  Sure seems like that would be one thing I would let go of for the bigger things in life.

Tomatillo blossoms.

Did I tell you this particular tomato patch (I have three, which I'm hoping are planted according to variety) is planted in a hole where a little evergreen tree used to grow?  My brother dug it out for my mom, who was overjoyed at the chance to get rid of it.  The tomatoes have seemed happy to be in its hole, and have grown a little faster than the tomatoes in the other patches.

 

Aren't they a beautiful work of art?  Today my husband found blossoms beginning on some of the tomato plants, and upon further inspection we found them on just about every plant.  Isn't that a nice surprise?

Thanks again for tagging along as I wander through our little garden, and document the progress (and maybe a few things we learn as we go).  I hope it's fun for you like it is for me.  :)

How are things in your garden?