The first green tomato appeared this week, but the excitement was cancelled out by the horrible aphid/white fly problem that I let get out of control.  I tried to keep their numbers down by blasting the tomatoes with the hose every couple of days, but there are so many now that I need to take more serious action.  I ordered ladybugs.

The peas, even though they have been looking dry and yellow, sprouted really nice pink and purple pea flowers.  The flowers only lasted a day or two before they wilted into the beginnings of baby pea pods.  I think the peas are too crowded be really happy, there are four or five plants in each gallon pot, and they’re just becoming a tangled mess.

While it looks like I got a giant amount of greens for a really good salad, this was actually just an attempt to help my leafy greens grow a little before it gets too hot for them.  They were all very crowded in tight containers, and not growing any taller than a few inches.  I thought thinning them might help just start some growth.  I finally pulled up the rabe, which didn’t need any help growing, and had gone to seed a few weeks ago.  The flowers were pretty, but we only got to eat the tiniest amount before it got too bitter.

I was thinning the radishes today, and a couple of them turned out to be pretty big!   They didn’t have quite enough crunch for me, but they sure were peppery.  The smallest ones were almost hot.  I should have sliced them up and thrown them in with the kale I picked today, but I just couldn’t wait.  Once I washed them, everyone took a radish and munched away.

I strung up the peas,  I thought they would just climb up the railing posts that border the roof, but today I was reading about the difference between twining vines and climbing vines.  Climbing vines, like common ivy, either secrete a gluey sap, or use micro-fiber shoots to grip tiny cracks.  As a result, they can climb almost any rough surface.  Twining plants, like my peas and pole beans, simply wrap a tendril around a stake or a piece of string, anything they can’t get a shoot around, they can’t climb.

Beans are the strangest looking sprouts.  When you plant them, they just look like dried beans from a store, a funny reminder that everything I’m planting now will actually be food in a few months.  However, once the tap root appears and the bean sheath slides off, they look more like green tiny organs than sprouts.  They’re really thick and fleshy, and incredible smooth except for the presence of a few small hairs.

Broccoli Rabe is so good. Well, its a little bitter, but I haven’t had the patience to cook any yet. It’s the biggest plant in my garden right now (yes, kind of pathetically) and whenever I’m working on the roof, I’ll just pull off a couple of leaves and munch on them. It looks like I let the florets grow to long, because now they’re all flowering, but they still taste good. I’ve been clipping the big leaves off of the base of the plants, and I’m reluctant to cut off the flowers. I have a fear that I’ll kill them all, and I really like Broccoli Rabe.

Okay, this picture is pretty cheesy.

It finally rained.  Half the day and all night.  I filled up all of my buckets, my watering can, and all the old milk containers in our recycling.  I got soaked, I kept running up to the roof to switch buckets out from under the gutters, and fill up any container I could get my hands on.

Sunflowers

The first of the beans that Zoe and I planted last week started to sprout. Just barely peeking through the soil.

The squash.

Chamomile! I’ve never seen a chamomile plant before. I think the tea comes from the blossoms. These guys are still tiny, but they’re really cute. I’ve read that some varieties can be really sticky and sappy, almost poisonous(In the Foxfire book). However, I’m not sure if that refers to the tea plants I have, or a wild weed that goes by the dame name.

There it is. Bright red rainbow chard. It’s still little, but tastes great.

Isn’t basil supposed to be really easy to grow? I have killed more basil plants than I can count. These are the last survivors of the first sprouts I had this year. I have since planted more around a couple of the tomatoes, but I really am good at killing them.