Garden update!

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting up with my old friend Matthew who was in Philly for a conference. We ended up going to the Reading Terminal Market and I found this great little gnome to hang off of my basil pot. Isn't he cute?

The herbs on the front porch have been going like gangbusters. There was a little moment of distress after a strong pop-up thunderstorm that beat everything down pretty good, but after some nice weather, everyone seemed to recover nicely. You can see from the labeled photo below that I've added some herbs to the original collection and I'm looking forward to using them. I've already clipped some of the basil to go with some (store-bought) tomatoes and I'm looking forward to making basil aioli and some herb butter later this week.

The community garden has also had its ups and downs. One of the big ups is that I got my hands on a Sungold tomato plant and it's doing great! It already has some little fruits on it. I had a Sungold last year and was so happy with how sweet and plentiful the crops were that I went out of my way to track one down and get it in my garden. I can't wait for these little guys to ripen.

One of the downs is that the green beans only came up here and there. I'm trying to make this a "glass half full" moment by re-planting the parts of the row that didn't come up and therefore extending my green bean picking season. I planted my beans fairly late last year and still got quite a good crop. Here are some of the healthy beans that you saw sprouting in the last blog post about the garden:

Another "up" is that the husk cherries seem to be doing well. They have these neat little flowers and you can see the little lantern shaped husks that the fruits will grow in to. This is a new plant for me, so I'm excited to see how it progresses.

The bell peppers and cucumbers seem to be doing well, as you can see in the photo below (cucumbers on the top and right, peppers on the bottom and left). You can also see in this photo that the weeds are quite strong and abundant this year. I've been picking around the plants as much as possible, but I really need to get in to the open spaces with a hoe and knock some of that back. It's tricky when I don't get to the garden every day and sometimes I go before work just to get everyone watered, which doesn't really leave time for weeding. Maybe this weekend...

I also planted a different kind of lettuce than what I've grown before. This also came up here and there, so I might re-plant the open spaces in the row with some arugula.

I also planted some carrots that seem to be doing OK, but I'll have to wait a little longer to see how many of them come up. Thankfully you get TONS of carrot seeds in each packet and it shouldn't be a problem to re-plant some of those as needed, too. So far I would give my garden plot a B-, with plenty of room for improvement. Hopefully the new beans will take, sunflowers will straighten up and grow tall, and the weeds won't quite take over the whole place. I'll post more photos as the season progresses.