green tomato garden party / WHAT JEN DOES

green tomato garden party

7.27.2017

I feel like I'm constantly comparing this year's garden progress to last year. Are the sunflowers taller? Were the tomatoes a brighter shade of red? Was the dinosaur kale more crinkly? Pretty much the only thing that I'm confident of is that the marigolds are equally crushing it.

I'm very much ready for the tomatoes to ripen. I procured some burrata this week and all I want to do is have a fresh tomato with some burrata, basil and maybe even some farro? Farro has been kind of my jam recently.

So while the vegetable / fruit side of the garden is chugging along, the flower side is blooming away. In the last week the sunflowers have really begun to pop and the white dahlias showed up to the party. The best part about having a cutting garden is being able to bring flowers to people's house instead of wine. I never have wine on hand - but now I always have flowers. Just a bunch of soft, fuzzy dusty miller and a few dahlias? Win.

Here's the update:

Dahlias // doing really well. The arabian night variety is still the most productive - but the two white ones are coming in. While I love the romantic look of the Snowbound variety, I think I'm more partial to the more structured Bridezilla variety. I will plant one million dahlias next year.
Cosmos // blooming pretty well. I read yesterday that you can use cosmos petals to dye fabric so might look into that. I'm not totally sure how you use these as cut flowers since some of the stems would be so short? It doesn't feel as straight forward as the dahlias.
Love-in-a-Mist // Great filler - and super easy to grow but not much more to say about it. Love the varieties in blue shades.
Sunflowers // Some of these suckers are so big. I had to cut one last week because it was so big and heavy that it was significantly bending the stock. Seeing the bees on these babies is one of my favorite things. Also, I really need the bees to visit the zucchini plant.

From the veggie perspective:

Tomatoes // All the plants have fruit on them - but you can see which ones are slated to be more productive than other varieties. So far, Black Krim is going pretty strong while Red Lightening is the opposite of lightening. But! Not even a hint of red in there - or yellow in the case of the Orange Juice variety.
Carrots // The normal variety is getting real bushy. Not seeing as much success with the purplesnax so I might try and plant another row somewhere else in the garden. Totally a month or so off before a harvest here it feels like.
Radish // Love how quick these babes grow!
Cucumber // I'm feeling moderately confident about the mexican gherkin. I would say "pretty confident" but I don't want to jinx myself. Please keep growing.
Zucchini // This is getting so big. Also all of the articles I read about being able to train this for a trellis feel like a massive lie. I have no idea how that would happen from what I'm seeing.
Peppers // Real mixed bag here. I have no idea why some of these plants are so small and others are bigger. Only a few peppers showing up but still very petite. There was so much growth between week 1 and 2 on the pepper I was watching... and now, less so. I've pretty much given up hope on the "Good as Gold" peppers. I'm still going to water and fertilize it, but I'm putting my eggs in the mexican gherkin basket at this point.
Eggplant // The purple flowers have showed up so I'm optimistic for some patio baby eggplants in the next few weeks? But, only time will tell.
Beans // Harvest city!
Peas // Gorgeous subtle purple flowers popped up this week - so hopefully some snow peas in the next week!