The vegetable garden's grown so much in the past month or so! It's gone from this:
...to this:
(Both this photo and the next have notes on Flickr. If you're interested in each specific plant's identity, click over to Flickr and hover over the photo to see the notes.)
Vegetable Gardening Lessons (from this year, to date):
-- Don't plant tomatoes and squash in pots. You don't want to go out there and water them every day, and they'll get very droopy even with watering. Go ahead and plant them directly into the ground. PLEASE.
-- Don't plant so many radishes at one time. I don't eat them, and Donald doesn't eat that many, either.
-- Harvest and eat the lettuce faster. What were you saving it for? It doesn't get better with age. (g)
-- Chives are very yummy and extremely easy to grow. They taste like a mild onion and are nice as a sandwich topping-- or anywhere else you'd ordinarily use raw onion.
-- The dill was easy, too. (We should have seeds left over from some of these packets, btw...)
Annual Gardening Lessons:
-- The best performers this year (so far) have been petunias, marigolds, dusty miller, and begonias. The impatiens don't look as happy, for some reason, and the vincas just don't grow as fast...
-- Morning glory seeds were pretty easy. They took a while to get any size on them, though... Maybe start them earlier? On the other hand, they're not really any slower than the self-sowed seeds of the cypress vine-- and those get huge by the end of the season. (Patience!)
-- The portulaca (moss rose) grew readily from seed. Plant more of it next year. (I think they reseed, but the little 20-cent packets are cheap enough.) Maybe plant more containers of them. I think they're pretty drought tolerant. (We'll see...)
-- The cleome from seed have done much better than anticipated! I hope they make it long enough to flower! (If so, I think they'll reseed...)
-- On the other hand, larkspur was a dud. I think they like cool summers. Ha! Not going to happen...
-- Next year, maybe try some other seeds with good reputations. Cosmos? Sunflowers? Something not too fussy, because I'm not that devoted to gardening once the heat and humidity arrive.
