Backyard Developments

In news of the World's Tiniest (and Most Half-Assed) Garden, I would first like to announce that the green pepper plant is doing splendidly.
The tomato plants—not so much. They outgrew their tomato cages and kept collapsing whenever there was a gust of wind. Now they're leaning against the back fence and producing feeble little green tomatoes. You don't want to see the carnage. Oh, you do? OK, fine.
Next year I'll train them up the fence to start with. I still don't know if I can make tomatoes work with so little sun, but we'll see.

In other yard news, I stopped by Nagel Lumber and noticed this cute little garden shed on sale. It was just what I had envisioned for this spot by the house.
Now I can store my garden tools and they won't get rusty in the rain.

A-Growin'

The world's tiniest garden is growing despite the odds. Being about an inch over a bed of rocks doesn't seem to be harming it any. In fact, it's doing much better than last year's garden, maybe because it's in a slightly sunnier location.

The other thing the poor garden has going against it is that about a week after I planted it, I came down with a poison-ivy-like rash after an afternoon of vigorous yard work. Since then I've been afraid to step into the yard. Luckily the garden doesn't seem to mind having an absentee gardener. That it's been raining like crazy can't hurt.

Tiniest Garden

I vowed not to bother with a garden this year—my yard gets about three seconds of sun a day—and plus, who needs it with all the CSA bounty? But when the weather got nice, I couldn't resist planting this little postage stamp of two tomatoes, one green pepper, an Italian parsley, six marigolds (from Veg), and assorted leek and onion sproutlings (from Stud McMuffin). Growth is questionable because the hillock I chose for the site was apparently constructed with rocks. I tried to till, but ended up just heaping on compost.

Now I've decided I need a planter, because Neighbor Jim just gave me heaps more beautiful compost—filtered and everything! Maybe I'll transfer the herbs currently scattered around the yard to a planter.

Mutant Eggplants

I have no interesting home projects in store for this weekend, just long dreary stretches of time working at the library on my dissertation. (Meeting with the advisor on Wednesday.) But I did go out to look at the eggplants. They're all long and skinny. I wonder if they're ripe now, or if they'll get fatter like the eggplants in the supermarket?

Itty Bitty Eggplants!

The tomato plants all shriveled, as I said before ("Bad year for tomatoes"--that's what I keep telling myself, even though neighbors seem to have done OK with tomatoes. Hmmm.). But the eggplants are hanging in there.

Garden Report: Muck

It's been so torrentially rainy this summer that I've barely had to water the garden at all. Sadly, I've also barely weeded. The mosquito population out there is insane.

The tomatoes are really tall—except for the roma—but they now all seem to be afflicted with some kind of rot that is creeping up their stems from the ground. I don't know if there will be tomatoes this year.

However, the basil plants are loving this climate. Pesto, anyone?

Sunday Garden Report

• All the tomato plants in the garden are doing well except for the red-and-yellow striped roma plant, which has failed to thrive. The brownberry is winning the growth race and even has little tomatoes forming, which is very exciting because I don't even know what brownberry tomatoes look like or taste like.
• Those several-year-old Queen Anne's Pocket melon seeds sprouted! Well, three of them did.
• There are raspberries on the back fence. I had nothing to do with this.