Rouge Tomato

As many of you know I have been pretty sick since coming back from Mexico, only leaving my couch to heat up some tea or refill my water cup. Today, however, I was finally able to return to work. As I made my first weary steps out the front door toward my car, some weeds in the herb garden caught my eye. Being unable to help myself I stopped to pull a few of them, only to find this little guy hiding amongst them.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the plant above, it is a tomato. Now before you call me silly for planting a tomato in the midst of my herb garden (which would totally destroy the herb garden theme) you should know, this was never meant to happen. I racked my brain trying to figure out how this ridiculously healthy looking tomato plant (it puts my intentional seedlings to shame) popped up in this location. I envisioned trixy little hobbitses running around my garden at night scattering seeds, or an equally trixy little Jeffry planting a single seed on purpose because it broke his heart to see it go to waste.

After much speculation, this is what I think happened. When I was putting the herb garden together, I stole some dirt out of my raised beds because it needed just a touch more in the elevated areas. A tomato must have fallen in the raised bed last year and decomposed, leaving its seeds behind in the soil. This seed was then transferred to my herb garden along with the soil, where it has been carefully watered and pampered along with the herbs. I have no idea what kind of tomato it will be. I think I shall try to transplant it to the tomato section of our yard and wait to be surprised!

Garden in Bloom

I've been meaning to post some pictures up all week, but getting ready for our Mexico trip has left me running out the door late in the morning and not finishing with stuff I need to get done until well after dark! Then last night of all things it was hailing when I got home! Luckily everything seems to have come through pretty unscathed so enjoy some lovely photos of Asbury Farms in bloom.

One seedling tray sprouting away.





Strawberry blossoms waiting to transform into plump red fruits.

Green strawberries ready to ripen.

Tomatillo flowers.

I love how tomatillos look like little paper lanterns hanging from the plant.





I can't believe our citrus is already blooming again!

Sweet apple blossoms outside our bedroom window. The bees
are in heaven.

English lavender.

Our wild tangled mess of jasmine. The sent that greets my nose each
morning when I go out to water.

The first set of blooms on our double delights are especially red.
By far my favorite flower in our garden.

This ground cover has endured  a winter's worth of
 attacks from Baby Chick and somehow still lives.

Potting Shed Revisited

I must admit, I didn't really button up my potting shed before winter came. In fact, I kind of ignored it, piled more stuff in it and apparently threw some dirt around for good measure. The result of my behavior was that a few days ago when I went out to start some seeds, I was greeted by this...

and a little of this...

and a very good reason why you shouldn't leave your pots all a jumble and ignored for extended periods of time is that they'll be full of this...

So an hour and a half after I went outside to start some seeds I had swept, organized and generally restored my potting shed to it's former, pre-winter, glory. I threw away or recycled about half of the random plastic pots I had so they are now a more realistic and manageable pile.

The seed sewing itself only took about ten minutes, and I now have a nice little smattering of potential plants to enjoy this summer. I should have: 6 Love Lies Bleeding, 3 Golden Jubilee tomatoes, 3 Purple Russian paste tomatoes, 18 Rutgers tomatoes, 9 Mortgage Lifter tomatoes, 9 Amish Paste tomatoes, 9 Romain lettuce, 3 Pak Choi, 3 Cozella di Napoli (like a zucchini), 3 yellow peppers, 3 lemon balms and 3 butter crunch lettuces. I'm sure there will be many more seeds started over the coming month, but this is a nice smattering to get me started.

Oh and how early is too early to listen to christmas music? I'm not saying I was listening to it while I cleaned my shed, but if I was, would that be wrong? What if it was raining and felt christmas weatherish?

Recent Sproutings

I can only assume that Blanket was sleeping too soundly one day when a pea thief snuck into the house and plucked the seeds I'd planted before they even had the chance to sprout. The only other possibility is that many of my pea seeds were no longer viable. I think the former seems more likely. Aside from my rather dismal pea sproutage, many of our other planties are growing quite well. I took a few snapshots of their progress.

(so many empty pea spots)

(Borage upfront, with Rutger Tomatoes behind it) (Okra)

I will be trying another round of peas shortly along with several other kinds of tomatoes such as Amish Paste, Golden Jubilee, Purple Russian (sounds like a drink), German Lunch box and Tomatillo (mmm green salsa). Yes my friends I think this summer will be the Summer of the Tomato at our house. I expect several long canning days are ahead of us as we make our own salsas, pasta sauces and soups. If you have any good recipes I'd love to hear them!

We also need to start a round of pepper seedlings such as the traditional Bell Pepper, Jalapenos and Anaheim. In the bean department we are going to try to grow some of our own for drying this year with Scarlet Emperor and Rattlesnake Pole (honestly I picked it for its name) as our two options. Mom will be growing most of our squash seedlings, but we'll be starting some Cocozella di Napoli and the prehistoric looking Australian Butter Squash which grows up to 15 lbs!