Quilts, Tomatoes, Pepper buds!

Ready for some garden pictures? Here's my banana pepper plant, with lots of buds all tucked in the center there. I bet I'll have blooms soon!

Again with the cherry tomato plant, from the top this time, with four easy to spot little green tomatoes, and a few more hiding in the leaves if you really hunt for them.

And last, the current quilt I'm working on. I can't share the whole thing with you, because it's a yet-unpublished pattern from Quiltmaker magazine that the Scrap Squad is doing. But here's a photoshopped picture that gives you a teaser of the colors of batiks that I'm using:

More Spring Planting

Went and spent some hard-earned cash at Home Depot last night on the way home from work. Then had to haul the two big bags of dirt, a new plant pot, one more tomato cage, some seeds, and three more plants around to the back patio. Here's what I ended up with. First, that banana pepper plant I said I still wanted:

I was also tempted to try yellow pear tomatoes this year. I think it was Tazzie that mentioned them in response to my problem with birds—because these tomatoes don't get red, birds're less attracted to them. They're about the size of cherry tomatoes, but longer, with an added pear shaped blob. Supposed to taste great too!

I also got some Vidalia onions, a whole little round blob of them. I think you call them starters? Then on my way to the front of the store, I passed a rack with more plants and I couldn't resist some early cauliflowers. These are supposed to be done in 50 days, so if that's true, I'll get a harvest at the beginning of June, before it gets too hot for them. I put those in the wading pool, onions toward the back:

I had so many onions that I put a few in some of the tomato containers, around the edges. It seems like my tomatoes always grow pretty tall, and the roots never extend out to the top edge of the containers, (I plant them deep) so maybe the pairing will work.

So here's the state of my containers now, and I think this'll do me for the summer. I'm not at all sure about the cowpeas in the windowbox—the snow peas do wonderfully there, so maybe these will too? And the cantaloupe in containers is new for me. I may need to get tomato cages for them, and suspend the cantaloupes from the wire with little net bags? I'll have to do some research. All suggestions welcome! How does YOUR garden grow?

July Garden Sow and Tell

Been picking a lot, but not posting much! Here's the state of the stuff on my kitchen counter a couple of days ago. I took about 6 of the bigger ones to Mom because they really enjoyed the ones I took over on Father's Day.


I have banana peppers and MORE banana peppers.


I guess two pepper plants are too much for me! I've bought some vinegar, kosher salt, and a little jar of something called 'Pickle Crisp' and I plan to pick some of these on July 4th and attempt a refrigerator pickle, with banana pepper rings plus some rings of the Vidalia onions I bought. I plan on making one jar with some red onion rings or wedges, just to see what happens. Think the red onions will turn the yellow pepper rings orange?

It's snowpeas and squash!

I was so surprised to go out and look at my garden and discover that I don't just have foliage, I have veggies! First, here's my snowpeas - I picked the one in the middle and I'm going to eat it right now:

*crunching noises*

Yup, mighty good! The other two I plan on leaving until tomorrow night's salad, let them get just a bit longer.


And squash! Cute little ones, but still, more than I got last summer:


These are doubly precious to me since there's so many of them - I guess it's the difference between regular dirt and planting in Miracle Gro potting soil.


Here's the biggest. Still smaller than my little finger, but bigger than the others:


The grape tomato bush is full of blooms and little tomatoes too - want to play dot-to-dot with teeny tomatoes? Click on the picture to enlarge, lol


And there's peppers on both plants now. I'll put this last so you can easily compare it to the picture taken a week ago ... look how my pepper is growing!

Squash, Peppers and Windchimes

Ohhh, lookie what I saw when I looked under the leaves of my squash plant today! Surely with all those buds, I'll get at least ONE squash worth eating, don't you think?


And a little pepper - I can't wait for these to start growing. Does anyone know if the dark streaks up the stem there 'mean' something? Like over or under watering or... ?


And finally, got a shepherd's crook at Home Depot today. A friend of mine from Georgia gave me this last winter, and I've been wanting to put it out ever since! What's neat, it's also a birdfeeder, you fill the globe with seeds. I think I'll wait till late fall for that, because I don't want to attract birds to the area where my ripe tomatoes will be. :D