Holy Heatwave!!!!!

Starting on Saturday it has been 90+ degrees!!! This from on Thursday being 50-60 - what a crazy climb in temperature. My tomatoes and cukes are loving it - but not so much for the lettuce. You know it is hot when the Rhodies start to droop! My roses started to bloom and MUCH better than any other year. Here is a picture of the two that are on my side yard. The one on the left was a spindly little thing last year and look at her now - almost the same size as her neighbor! I guess a little love and some "roses alive" from Garden's Alive really does the trick!


Even the rose bush out back that came up with only one bloom last year is doing well.


I wanted to capture my garden now while it is still in the infant stage. I did have to trash the sugar snap peas - they just didn't cut it. Only one survived and instead I plated a number of different bush and pole beans.



The first photo captures my cukes, lettuce (both romaine and buttercrunch) edamame, and beans. Keep in mind that I just plants the bean seeds yesterday so there really is nothing to see yet.



The second photo is of my Thai hot peppers (to deter the critters), yellow and green zucchini and tomato plants. I added some marigold seeds throughout the garden as well as in pots to hopefully help with the critters. I also planted some Nasturtium plants that will hang along the fence again in the hopes to keep the thieves at bay.

Yup, I grow Herbs too

So I have been focusing a lot on my garden here but wanted to share the success I am having with my basil plants. Originally I planned on growing them in the garden but it seemed cramped at the time so I chose not to. What a great choice - because now everything is growing out of control (and that is SUCH a good thing) I am glad I planted them in containers on my porch. I have two types growing - sweet basil and purple basil. Both shown here


I have only picked the sweet basil so far and made a great tomato, basil, mozzarella salad (unfortunately not my tomatoes yet - but still organically grown).
Not too much labor intensive news to report - just the typical weeding and watering. But I do have to say that I now have four tomatoes on the small plant and only two on the large one and many, many flowers so I am hoping for a "bumper crop".
The cucumbers have started to grow the vines and are attaching nicely to the lattice in the back - and a little to the tomato plant so I had to unwind it and guide it back to the lattice - hopefully it stays there. I have also gotten cuke flowers already. They seem a little to small to be forming flowers at this point, but if it is ready then so am I!
The buds have formed on all the red pepper plants and on one or two of the green pepper plants. The green ones just aren't taking as well as the red so I have given them a little extra "Veggies Alive" fertilizer to help them along.
I just harvested my first crop of buttercrunch tonight. We are having a family cookout this weekend so I wanted time to rinse cut and mix it all before then. Not too mention they were getting huge and I was afraid it would be too bitter if I waited any longer. And for the fact that it has been 90 degrees the past three days I didn't want them to bolt to fast.
I still need to show my watermelon experiment to you - but the pictures keep coming out so crappy you can't really see the results that well. Stay tuned for more.....