baby tomatoes!

While replacing the tomato stakes last weekend, I discovered I had baby tomatoes! There are baby Roma’s, and Black Cherry tomatoes. Still no fruit on any of the pepper plants or Big Boy and Mr. Stripey, but all have flowers. I think I’m still on track to be harvesting the first tomatoes at the end of the month.

The status of the herb ‘garden’ is virtually unchanged. I did have an opportunity to use some mint in a recipe I tried last week, Jamie Oliver’s ‘mini shell pasta with a creamy smoked bacon and pea sauce’ from his book, Food Revolution. It turned out quite well, click here for a link the recipe.

The Hollyhocks are still blooming (all white) and while I get annoyed with the mint most of the time, it is nice to have something covering up the Hollyhock’s unsightly legs. Also in the driveway planting bed, there are many flower buds forming on the Rose of Sharons, and the butterfly bush and black eyed susan’s that I relocated to the driveway bed are also doing well.

Out front, the Hellebores still have flowers, and the Oakleaf Hydrangeas are doing so well. This seems to be a particularly good year for hydrangeas in our area. ‘Not of this World’ is the first of my Daylilies to bloom, and the tiger lilies are still going strong. In the west side planting bed, the sedum is also about to bloom.

I’ve only had to water a few times all season, thankfully; that has saved time and money. I’m still fertilizing the veggies and herbs once or twice a week with a liquid fertilizer, but that’s really the only maintenance I’ve had time for lately.