Basil Harvest

While Robin sat quietly in her stroller, I took out all the basil.  Robin is pretty grabby these days, and couldn't resist trying to stuff some basil leaves in her mouth. After letting her do a little taste testing, I made a big batch of pesto.   I froze most of it in ice cube trays to use later. 
I also took out a tomato plant, harvested a fig, and planted 10 cloves of garlic. 

First Figs

The first two figs ripened and I picked them  Delicious!  Funny thing is, there were four there all summer.  These two ripened, the other two are almost ready to go, then BLAMMO!  Now there are about 12 new ones suddenly.  I wonder what will happen to them?  Will it get too cold for them?  will they ever ripen?? 

Summer Vegetable Recap

I thought I'd recap what went wrong and right this summer with the veggies:
Yellow straightneck squash: planted 2 plants from Home Depot.  Yielded 2 lovely little straightneck squash.  I definitely did not have enough room for these since the tomato plants just took over EVERYTHING.

Red Bell Sweet Pepper: planted 2 plants from Home Depot. These totally got overshadowed (literally) by the tomato plants.  We got one pepper.  Unfortunately I picked it too early - I forgot they were supposed to be red peppers.  Next year, I'd like to so a separate bed with sweet and hot peppers.

Black Prince Heirloom Tomato: I guess these are heirloom for a reason.  They tasted awesome, but we had trouble with these tomatoes being deformed, split, or hole-ridden.  We didn't get many perfect ones, the rest I just incorporated into sauces.  Not going to do this one next year.

Sweet 100 Cherry Tomato: This plant went crazy.  Good yield, good taste.  Would definitely plant these again. Next year I need some better and taller supports.

Orange cherry tomatoes - GREAT SUCCESS.  June loved picking these and eating them.  Huge yield!  There are still lots of green tomatoes ripening on the vine now in mid-september.  Again, next year I need better supports - the plants grew to about 7 feet tall before slumping over and shadowing all the herbs.

Rutgers Heirloom Tomato: Tasty, but unfortunately the deer and rabbits took a lot of these.  Next year - fencing!  These grew pretty big and we didn't have too many problems with splitting or disease.  I might stay away from the heirloom varieties next year and stick to the hardier types.

Sweet Basil - total success!  No deer or rabbit trouble.  but gone now :(
Oregano - success - gone now
Parsley - success - gone now
Rosemary - success- still going strong
Mint - in pot, could use a sunnier location next year

Bed B7 Vegetable Garden!

Mid June

A green pepper grows in mid June

This Bed excites me the most.  We are blessed with a small house on a .42 acre lot (in a great neighborhood too!).  Most of the lot lies between the house's front door and the street.  With a sunny location and nothing but some weedy lawn, I thought this would be the perfect place for a small veggie and herb garden.  The bed is only 4 foot wide by about 10 feet long. I pulled out the first couple inches of weed and dirt and added a few bags of miracle grow garden soil. I put in 4 tomato plants, a green bell pepper, carnival carrots, yellow straightneck squash, basil, rosemary, dill, oregano, parsley.  Some marigolds brighten up the edges, and I plan to stick in some sunflower seeds to please my toddler daughter. Unfortunately, when I tried to expand the bed to the east, I found that there was only about 3 inches of soil over old crumbling asphalt!  Who would do that??  Anyway, I can only go west now, but that's alright.  I'm starting small, next year we'll try some lettuce, broccoli, hot peppers.  I'm excited!