Last week Patricia mentioned her foray into tomato growing. Since she’d previously asked about my “candy tomatoes” — a reference to the fact everyone was eating them like candy at the open garden last August — I thought I’d share what I’m growing this year.
I think of this area as my veggie garden, but that’s not a good description anymore — since there are several fruiting plants mixed in with the veggies.
Climbing the odd trellis is Passiflora incarnata, next to it is a Raspberry Shortcake™ BrazelBerry I bought last year.
Compact, thorn-less and producing abundant fruit (unripe fruit shown mid-May) it’s a winner. I hesitated to make the purchase (for months) because of the price (around $30 for what I think was a 2-gallon) I’m glad I splurged — it’s that good!
This year the fine folks at Fall Creek (breeders of the BrazelBerry Collection) contacted me to ask if I’d be interested in trialing a few of their other plants, of course I said yes! They sent another Raspberry Shortcake™ in the mix. Yay — one is not enough! It’s small, but has already put on a lot of growth from when I received it mid-May.
To be honest the condition the plants arrived in (poor packing, these folks are wholesalers and thus not versed in shipping small quantities) had me concerned they’d even make it, but plants are tough! In the box with the raspberry were a Baby Cakes™ Blackberry (a thorn-less blackberry), Pink Icing™ Blueberry (lovely pink foliage) and Perpetua™ (a double-cropping blueberry).
Like a good gardener, I rotate my tomatoes (because I learned the hard way how important it is) so in this year’s non-tomato stock tank there’s a crop of zinnia and kale duking it out for supremacy. Why the odd mix? Well I had the zinnia seeds and no where to plant them. I figured this was a great place for them to get the care they’d need to thrive. Plus I hear you can eat the flower petals!
Red Russian kale
And Zinnia ‘Benary’s Giant Lime’ — what we don’t eat (ha!) will look great in a Monday vase.
In another container — Chocolate mint, which is super added to sparkling water.
And keeping the Agave weberi company is ginger mint, great for mojitos!
Now let’s talk about the tomatoes! This year they’re growing on tomato spirals from Lee Valley. Lee Valley kindly sponsored the Garden Bloggers Fling last year and gave us each a gift certificate, I knew exactly what I was going spend mine on. I love these things!
The tomatoes (two Sungold and two Black Cherry) are joined by purple basil (Red Rosie and Amethyst Improved) and my old standby Italian large leaf basil. Sungold is the one Patricia asked about, if you’re curious. They are so tasty!
The tomatoes and basil were loving life up until a couple weeks ago when our temperatures cooled. Since then they’ve been sulking, although there are two small Black Cherry fruit and one tiny Sungold. Come on summer!!
The blueberry plants were so small when I unpacked them I stuffed ’em both into a single container. It looks like it’s time to break them up and give ’em a little room to stretch.
There’s also a tree in the “veggie garden” just for fun (and to allow it a great micro climate), Acacia baileyana ‘Purpurea’.
In the corner…(look ma, no veggies!)…
So that’s what’s worth eating around here, what fruit/veggies are you growing?
But wait…there’s more! I just realized I’ve also got three other fruits forming (or possibly forming) in the garden…