Garden Update

One month in, and nothing died.

The tomato plant is going to town.  So are the bugs in the neighborhood. I had hoped to raise organic veggies, but I'm not a fan of bugs when they eat more than they pollinate.  Out comes the spray.  I triple-checked that it's safe to use on vegetable plants.  I have many, many flowers, and about a dozen little, green, wanna-be tomatoes.  A week-long heat wave helped things along immensely.  The two largest tomatoes are bigger than my thumb nail.  No idea how big they're going to get or how long they take to ripen once they reach that size.  I'm hoping for gazpacho by Memorial Day.

The eggplant is equally happy, and one of the flower buds is about to open.  It seems less tasty to local pests.  Little FYI, eggplant buds have thorns.  So do lemon branches, and those hurt a lot more.

As a reminder, here's how they started:

I'm not as sure about the artichoke.  First of all, a quick trip to wikipedia would have told me not to expect anything edible for a year.  This one is a long-term project.  Second, the pot it was in did not have adequate drainage, and it was choking to death.  Third, bugs seem to love the leaves.  It's trying, it really is, so I transplanted it into the ground.  If this is a slow-growing plant, it needs a proper home.  It almost died the first day after the transplant, but is fighting to hang on.  At least the gardener didn't think it was a weed and rip it out.

Meanwhile, since things were going so well, I decided to sink in another $6 for some corn seedlings.  That's 12-18 ears of corn, for those keeping track.  There was a patch of ground next to the lemon tree not doing anything.  After I got the seedlings home, I found out why.  Hard, sandy soil.  I found some better dirt in a corner behind the lemon tree for half of them, and a less-than-ideal patch of somewhat sandy soil on the other side of the yard for the rest.  Both sets seem to like their environments, but the lemon tree neighbors are taking off faster.  Could have to do with the quality of sun exposure.