Cherokee Purple Heirloom Tomato

I only planted one heirloom tomato plant this year: Cherokee Purple Heirloom Tomato
 
Visually, they are so beautiful. 

Extending the Summer Garden at 32 Degrees

Skin removed, diced and ready to simmer for 30 minutes.

Ready to cool and freeze.  During the winter, this effort pays off by adding a taste of summer to cooking long after the season's end.

Watermelon From the Garden

First ever watermelon...  Sweet with a chance of seeds.

All From the Garden

All from the garden:  Ratatouille.

Onion, green peppers, zucchini, eggplant, thyme, cherry tomatoes.  Final product was topped with finely chopped basil.

Oh, and a few lima beans on the back burner.

#gardentotable  #spiritofthelimabean

Spiralized Zoodles

Spiralized my zucchini tonight to make "Zoodles."  Topped it with freshly made sauce from the tomatoes from the garden.  YUMMY!

A Trio of Containers with Welcoming Plants

Adding curb appeal through great container plants.

Sunflowers Galore

Enjoying the multiple sunflower heads on this plant.  Some critter is binging on the leaves...but that hasn't stopped the robustness of the blooms.

Roma Tomatoes

First harvest of Roma tomatoes.  Planning to freeze these for now.

Lima Bean: Part Deux

Dainty now...these pods will become thick and tough.

The lima bean flowers cluster on the vine.

Pod of the lima bean.

Cosmos Is A Star Plant

This bee found a great place to hang out.

Cosmos are so dainty and colorful.

The white cosmos looks so delicate in the sun.

Seedlings sprouting from flowers which went to seed...already!

I had cosmos in my garden years ago.  They volunteer so readily.  I don't know why I stopped growing...but added them back this year.  Good decision.

The Spirit of the Lima Bean

First year to grow lima beans in the garden.  I am surprised by the toughness of the pod.

Sunny Sunflower

Tiny pollinator approaching on the right.

The sunflower is such a happy flower.  I haven't grown any in the garden for years so I am appreciating that the one I planted is sprouting flowers at each stalk/leaf junction.  I am going to have sunflower blooms for a long time!

Let's See What Is In The Seed Drawer

The seed drawer hold purchased seed as well as seeds harvested from the garden.

At the end of last season, I found some of the beans had dried on the vine.

Wow!  An impressive number of bean seeds.

Last year I had some beans which dried on the vine.  As I was cleaning up the garden, I broke away the dried pod and harvested the seeds.  When I decided to grow three sisters (beans, zucchini and corn) in my garden this year, I found the container with the yellow bean seeds and planted them about two weeks ago.

Stop back to this post tomorrow to see what happens when you mix dirt, water, seeds and sun!

Pollinators at Work

The garden was buzzing this morning with three open zucchini flowers.  Two were female and one male. 

Time for Thyme

Delicate flowers of the thyme plant

Spreading thyme in the garden

My drip irrigation is really making a difference in the garden this year.  This thyme plant has a circular soaker drip at the center of the plant.  It really is giving it vigor to spread beautifully.

Sunflower Ready to Show its Stuff

New Sunflower Head Growing on the Stalk

Sunflower is about ready to explode open. 

Petalless Flowers of the Member of the Grass Family

Corn Silks Exposed and Waiting for Pollen to Fertilize the Ear of Corn

Tassels Heavy with Pollen

Delicate and silky but when magnified, the silks look anything but silky

 I have a total of six stalks of corn growing in the garden this year.  I know that hand-pollinating is a must for a crop this small because there's just not enough pollen floating down from the tassels to find the silks which lead to the corn kernels.

In searching for instructions to hand-pollinate, I learned a few facts about corn which I did not know.

First, corn is a member of the plant family Gramineae which has petalless flowers borne in spikelets, and fruit in the form of seedlike grain.  

Second, corn is a graass as is rice, wheat, barley, millet, oats, sugar cane, sorghum, rye and bamboo.

Throwback Thursday to the Tomato Hornworm

When you see these near your tomato plants...beware

Droppings like the ones in the first photo, usually mean this monster is noshing his way through your favorite tomato plants

As the summer kitchen garden is starting to take shape, be vigilant about looking for droppings on the leaves and ground around your tomato plants.  This cleverly camouflaged guys can look like a rolled up leaf on the tomato plant and you'll miss spotting them.  If they are left unattended, you will come back to your garden to find entire leaves and stalks missing from your plant.  They even can take a few good whacks out of the tomatoes, too.

Knee High By the Fourth of July

Despite the record breaking temperatures this past weekend, the corn is one of the vegetables in the garden which did not get any scorched leaves.

And for the record, this corn is shoulder height and it is only June 22.

Keeping Cool with Cucumbers

Oh, we're having a heat wave.  But you can possibly keep cool with these photos of cucumbers from my garden!

This cucumber looks ready to harvest.

Baby cucumber ready to grow.

Too hot.  Baked in the sun and heat.

I had to include this final cucumber.  Yesterday was so hot, some of the veggies were baked.  Sad face.

Stairway Succulents

Aeoniums,
Portulacaria afra,  Graptosedum

 

This use of succulents cool down the hot, sun-soaked stairway. Repeating the same succulents in each pot ties the whole design together.

Interestingly, the elephant food plant or portulacaria afra is an excellent carbon sponge.