It's been awhile since I've shared any garden photos. I was, to be honest, a little embarrassed, as I'm such an amateur and I've never tried to grow anything in a wet, cool climate before. I hadn't realized how much I counted on the hot Chicago summers to plump up the tomatoes and spread the basil leaves wide. It's been a cold and rainy summer so far and therefore my plants are progressing slowly, but they are still growing.
However, the 80 or so tomato and herb seeds I sowed in early April have made steady progress. The only flat failures were the melons and sweet marjoram (both started out well but died within the first few weeks of being repotted). I was able to give away dozens of herb and tomato seedlings, and as my parsley and coriander continue to flourish I've been dividing those up and sharing them, as well. The mint suddenly developed some sort of leaf disease, but I repotted it, cut off the sickly leaves and it seems to be making a recovery.
The sweet marjoram died, but at least one of my other herb plants have survived and are doing well. Here we have two sage plants (front left), a parsley plant (under shelf), coriander (top of shelf) and a mint plant (large pot). The tall plant in the front and center is a verbena variety that a friend gave me in exchange for some tomato and basil plants I shared with her.
Then there are my beloved tomato plants. I planted 40 tomato seeds in a seed tray (of four different varieties) ... or so I thought. I somehow ended up with 41 tomato seedlings, 17 of which are now in this back garden corner. The others are being grown in gardens throughout Nottingham, as I gave many away.
"English dad" Pete gave me this corner plot of land to till and hoe up for my tomato plants, since it had once been the site of a compost pile. However, it's also where the burnt-out remains of rubbish gets thrown after massive Bonfire Night bonfires, and after three thorough attempts at digging up the garden to remove the trash from the soil, I was still unearthing pieces of insulation, bits of broken glass and even concrete blocks. However, in between all of the junk is rich, black soil liberally inhabited by earthworms, so I put the 17 plants into the ground. Initially they were chewed up by slugs (one down to the stem though it has, surprisingly, regrown) and finally, in desperation, I used some slug poison. I know, I know, I wanted to do this organically but I just didn't have any good, natural methods for getting rid of hundreds of slugs. And, let me tell you, after 13 weeks of babying these plants from little seeds, I did not want slugs to eat up my hard work. Now, six weeks after I planted them, the tomato plants are getting huge and bushy. Slugs still chew on some of the bottom leaves but it doesn't see to be hurting the plants now that they're so established.
The Sungold cherry tomato variety has flowered, but the other three have yet to produce any blossoms. However, I figure it'll be very late before we get a frost here in Nottingham (last year it was about November, as I recall) so I hope we'll still see a fine tomato harvest.
My basil plants just couldn't seem to get going, a far cry from the luscious containers of basil my former roommate Kim easily grows on her Evanston balcony. I finally concluded that it was just too cold and dark in the greenhouse at the far end of the garden for these sun-loving herbs, so I put them on one of my sunny window ledges last week. They've really begun to grow now, though the red basil is much trickier to maintain than the green basil. In fact, one red basil plant inexplicably croaked two days ago. It looked like some kind of gnat had chewed it to pieces.
Though my harvest is a bit scanty thus far, I've been able to use plenty of homegrown mint, parsley, coriander and sage in cooking, and even the occasional basil leaf. The red basil, by the way, has a lovely spicy flavor that's more delicate than the common sweet green basil. The pea seeds that I sowed in the garden, by the way, have also come up into four small plants that are now producing several pea pods. On Saturday I made myself an omelette filled with bought brie, ham, tomato and homegrown basil, parsley and peas. It was simply delicious, and reminded me that all of this hard work is more than worth it.
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