Tomatoes!

Tomatoes! I finally have ripe tomatoes! My early efforts in the garden have also turned up garlic and some very poorly weeded, but not too small onions. They tasted great, we had some last night! Also, the raspberries are starting to ripen - yum! Tom served me some last night with homemade whipped cream I had made and frozen earlier this year. A little bit of garden happiness!



Oh, I forgot to mention what kind of tomatoes they are! The big ones are "Sioux" from Pemberton Farms. The pear-shaped ones are "Beam's Yellow Pear", the tiny gold ones are "Gold Rush Currant", the red cherries are either "Tommy Toe" or "Peacevine", I can't find the tag, and the purple cherries are actually volunteers from last year that turned up in my asparagus bed, but I can't remember the name right now. Apparently my compost bin does NOT get hot enough to kill seeds! They sure are good, though.

Community Garden

I'm so excited about my community garden plot! I spent about an hour today trying to get it cleaned up. Here's a picture before I started:

What, you say? It looks like a giant field of weeds, you say? Totally overgrown? Nah..... it's nothing a whole ton of paper mulch and compost won't fix! Oh, and a few raised beds.... I guess I have my work cut out for me.

On the plus side, it's a nice large garden! With very fertile soil! And cute baby bunnies that I scared the bejeesus out of. Of course, they also scared the bejeesus out of me, too! But I got better once I realized they weren't giant furry spiders coming to kill me. I swear, I have become such a city girl!

It will be an adventure to have a garden in the almost-wilderness like this. I've been living in densely populated areas for so long, I've gotten quite paranoid about bugs and things in the brush! Time to get back to nature!!!

On the home front, the onions are all planted out, as well as the rest of the leeks and scallions. The first batch of leeks did not fare so well. I had a hard time today getting the onions out of the celpacks. I hate those stupid plastic things. Next year I'm buying a soil blocker! I think part of the problem was the coir peat. It doesn't stick together on its own at all.

My garlic is up, and apparently I planted it EVERYWHERE. I shall have much garlic this year. Also up is my rudbeckia, rhubarb, asters, columbines, phlox, monarda, astillbe, scilla, just about all the perennials! I even have one clump of tulips blooming! The rest are up but not yet in bloom.

Also, I think my mason bees have started to come out! I think I saw them today - small and black with a cute little white patch on the face. They were soooo interested in my mason bee house from last year, which gets more sun in the afternoon than the new one. Although, on closer inspection of the photograph, it looks more like the leaf-cutter bees. It's hard to tell because they move so fast! I guess I'll find out when the nests are built. I did notice the tubes that didn't get in the deep freeze had been opened. I hope all the bees make it out!

I hope there are more days like this! I enjoyed it so much!