On a trip to the garden center, my wife and I stocked up on the seedlings—we're not yet at the stage where we grow our vegetables and herbs from seed and transfer them outside—for our garden. We purchased:
We had no intention of getting so many tomatoes—nine plants!—but I accidentally grabbed a container that had four seedlings in it instead of just one. We could have just thrown away or composted the extra three plants. But what fun would that be?
So on Sunday we went back to the hardware store for more three more plastic containers and three more tomato cages. Here you can see the containers lined up in front of the raised beds.
When we bought it, the green pepper plant already had flowers on it, and even a baby pepper growing. And, yes, I realized this is cheating.
Here is good view of (from left to right) the two sweet basil plants, the green pepper, the banana pepper, and, in foreground, the row of radishes.
Does this radish look ripe to you?
The zucchini is starting to sprout. It won't be long before we have to thin them to just two plants.
I find that decision a little nerve-wracking. You're placing a lot of trust in a fast-starting plant to deliver on promise when it's just a few days old. What if you could have had an awesome late-blooming zucchini, if only you'd had the patience or foresight?
The latest update on alpine strawberries. I don't know if you can see it here, but there's a tiny flower!
Here's the arugula. Pretty much the day after this photo was taken, it started bolting. I think the weather just got to be too hot and sunny too fast for this spring-loving leafy green. It's now been harvested, and has a date to be a pizza topping on Tuesday night.
Four cherry tomato plants in a hanging basket.
This is a cucumber seedling.
Here's our mint. It's actually already spreading.
Here's our garden with our every-five-minutes companion—the Chicago El train. The train can be very loud, but fortunately for us, it is at street level behind our house and quieter (not quiet, but
quieter).
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