Veggies!

The vegetable garden is doing really well. The peppers have been giving me a steady crop... not too many to overwhelm me. I'm patiently waiting for my second tomato and i did notice that my pear tomatoes are starting to yellow-up. I'll be harvesting beets in a day or two... special golden ones. I have been thrilled with my columnar basil... it's more like a shrub and it's compact growth is a really nice feature. The cabbage are growing nicely and my Mom's comment about placing mint near them seems to have helped deter any pests... i had to thin out my pineapple mint, so i placed it to dry around the cabbage. I noticed one pumpkin so far, a bunch of butternut squash and a couple melon.

Picked my first tomato today...

it is going to be so good with fresh basil and mozzarella cheese... and a little red onion.

It's the 4th of July... must be time to prune...

Time to prune the wild asters. I have found that if i trim them to "half as high on the 4th of july"... they get full and bushy rather than tall and leggy. So most of the asters have been pruned. The one exception is the asters behind the weeping atlas cedar. I haven't been able to get back to it (need to dig out some of the violas that are taking over the paths).

Perfect weather day today... so I spent the day doing shrub cutting... managed to cut down to stump level, seven shrubs that were about 5 feet tall. Five of the shrubs were on the front of the house, one on the back in my main flower garden and one down near the garden room. They were getting totally out of hand. And there is so much lush foliage that you barely realize that i had cut out so much.

Now that they have been cut, i need to prune the remaining foliage on the other plants. It's a never-ending process. But i managed to prune the shrubs when they were in the shade. My folks stopped by and took a load of shrub remains and i'll take the rest out to them tomorrow... Dad has a pile that he is gathering for bonfire purposes and i'm happy to make contributions.

Top-down view- June 27, 201

Top-down view- June 27, 201
Originally uploaded by pjslomer

Here's a view of my main garden taken from the 2nd floor window.