I've been released from icloud jail for some reason, so picture time!
The WHOLE garden is in!
And I feel like
.
But I am very happy that everything is FINALLY tucked in. I had WAY TOO MANY pepper starts in the end, so a few will probably get tossed. Because of my excellent luck last year with the peppers that I stuck in odd, and seemingly unideal, places around the garden
that's where I put all of them this year!
I remain open minded to relationship causalities, as illogical as they seem.
The perennial poppies I planted 2 years ago bloomed for the first time this week (they're in part shade) and they are lovely. I'd describe the color as 'fluorescent red'.
A new delphinium I purchased for putting some color splashes in my 'edible forest' front yard. It's an unusual coral color and I was very eager to see it bloom for the first time. I got it a few weeks ago; I seldom buy well established perennials because they're too pricey, but this one seemed special and worth it. And then yesterday, to my utter horror, I accidentally whacked off 3/4 of the burgeoning bloom with a shovel while working in that vicinity.
So these blooms are all I get for now. Maybe it will send out side shoots, I'm not sure if delphs do that? My heart hopes they do.
The only shrub I got for the re-design - a mock orange. Never grew one before, but I liked the blooms and the tag said they smell nice.....so that was that. Hope it doesn't get too big and I hope it really does smell fragrant. I don't detect anything yet! Apparently it fills with foliage right to the ground in a natural globe form and doesn't leave bare bottom stems, a quality I like in a shrub.
A new tomato I'm trying,, a hanging basket type, 'Shimofuri'. I get a kick out of tomatoes with variegated foliage.
I've had this periwinkle for 15 years in my front yard behind the, now gone, cedar tree. It never bloomed once. It never really grew at all. Too much shade I'm guessing. Last year, knowing that we'd cut the tree down, I dug it up and thought maybe putting the few existing vines elsewhere might be worth the effort. I think
@ducks4you mentioned periwinkle and sort of motivated me to try and save them. I'm shocked that it bloomed so much this spring. I've never grown this plant before now with success, I like how it covers the ground (weed suppressant!) and the leaves are nice and glossy. I hope it blooms again later in the season. It lays at the feet of the new Oriental poppy.
I planted seeds for these in early spring, and nothing happened for over 30 days. It's an odd species, and I can't find much info about it (
Solanum villosum ssp. alatum)). So, thinking it
mightbe perennial I put the pot in the sunroom ( in late April) with a baggie strapped on top to expose it to nights slightly below freezing and high heat in the day in the window. Nothing. So I put it outside to dump the soil into my used soil barrel, dud seeds. And then I forgot about it completely until we were doing some cleanup in late May. I hadn't watered it in I don't know how long. And low and behold it was full of sprouts! Dry-ification motivated sprouting? I'm curious what this edible red berry will be like, supposedly has a grape/kiwi flavor, I read the plants get very large (2 m) so I sunk it into a very large pot. Heaven knows I don't need a plant that big in the garden.
The cedar planter. So far so good! All the Russian tomatoes went into this bed. I'm amazed that 2 of them are already flowering - 'Premus' and 'Betta'. That's shockingly early and I was a little late planting the seeds AND I had mega problems with my transplants this year, so much bad dirt. Seedlings were WAY small when they went in. So, flowering already is wild. They went out on the May long weekend. I'm VERY tempted to surround the bed with woodchips as it would keep the boggy type weeds that grow here down, and tidy things up. But I'm afraid voles will find that inviting. I had none last year and I'd like to keep it that way!
This little devil tomato gave me such trouble, not the least of which being it took SO long to sprout; my seed source had indicated that these were very old seeds indeed. So in the end I'm quite grateful that I got 2 seeds to germinate. But it's the smallest plant out there for now.
Top tomato in pic is Cherokee Tiger Black, which I'm growing for it's chartreuse foliage. I've got a couple wierdlies out there this year along with the 'normie' reds - Wagner Blue Green, Shimofuri, Scheherazade Woolly (thank you
@Artorius!
) and a whole bunch of long keeper tomatoes. I didn't plant all the long keeper seeds I got, but close to half. It's a start, we'll see what these are made of. One variety I planted one plant in part shade, to see if slowing down it's maturity will help with storage, and one plant in full sun.
mice too only seem to eat certain seeds of some beans and don't go much for others.
. I'm uncomfortable watching determinate tomatoes ripen a crop and then sicken and die. Kimberley is supposed to be a semi-determinate and doesn't quite rush to produce and conk out. It sort of, moves on to a late-season retirement. Hah. I grew it quite a few years so as to have some nice red tomatoes, early. 
