tomatillo plant

Hooray for summer vacation! I can still vividly remember as a young student teacher how shocked I was when a veteran teacher said to me, “The three best things about teaching are June, July, and August!” That’s rather a jaded view, but there’s no doubt having nearly three months off each summer is a wonderful way to recharge your batteries, and when it’s finally summer I love having time to putter in the garden. Lots of plants are starting to make flowers, (like the tomatillo pictured above) which has me anticipating the vegetables soon to come.

Some of the leaves on my pepper plants are showing the effects of recent storms, but the plant is still happily producing flowers in spite of the bruises!

My favorite 8-ball zucchini (round shaped zucchini) has a few flowers peeking out. I love using this shape to make Grilled Zucchini. Something is eating the leaves on this, and also on my eggplants.

A new herb I’m really enjoying is this Italian Oregano. It has smaller leaves and a bit milder flavor than either Greek or Mexican oregano.

I need to start using parsley like crazy. (Too much parsley is what my mother used to call “a good problem to have.”)

The herb I’ve snipped the most so far would definitely be tarragon. I couldn’t resist planting several plants, even though by the end of the summer this will be growing over the edge of the box.

I’ve never grown fennel before, but I’m pretty sure that new dark-green growth you can see in the center must be a good sign!

I have two recipes already already that I’m planning to try with fresh dill, which was something I forgot to plant last year. I think dill drops the seeds, so this spot by the fence will probably be a good place to keep it coming back.

The basil I planted from seeds is up and I’ve even moved a few clumps around to make a patch of maybe 40 basil plants if they all survive.

I was starting to wonder whether the green onions would ever come up, especially since I planted old seeds that had been left from a few years ago, but a few onions shoots are starting to appear.

I’m enjoying my first experience growing lots of things from seed, and everything is coming along. Thanks to Farmgirl Susan for the thinning consultation by e-mail!

You can tell that within a few weeks I’ll be eating French Breakfast Radishes. I also planted Watermelon Radishes, but they’re not this far along.

After the big frost killed lots of my first batch of tomatoes, I ended up with two of these heirloom tomato plants called Mr. Stripey. Anyone have experience growing these, and how did you like them?

The Roma tomatoes all survived the frost and they’ve produced a lot of new green leaves since the last update a few weeks ago.

Finally, this is my all-time favorite Celebrity tomato, which has the most flowers of any of the 11 tomato plants I have growing along my fence. This is a medium-sized tomato which grows really well in Utah.

Next Sunday I’ll be out of town, so by the time I post another garden update in two weeks, there may be a few baby tomatoes or veggies starting to appear. You can see the progress of my garden by clicking the label 2008 Garden Updates.

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