Friday, June 12, 2009

What a Difference a Month Makes

You all remember that dreadful morning when I woke up to a frozen garden and lost most of my tomatoes which had been planted out less than a week?

Here is how the White Beauty tomato looked that day. I left it in the ground, because it had one leaf that was not dead.


Can you believe that this is the same plant 4 weeks later. No sign of flower buds yet, but I'm not complaining.


Same with this Bolivian Rainbow pepper, it was the only seedling of this type I had, turned to total goo.
It looked very dead for quite awhile, but it is now leafing out! It's only 3 inches tall but I am overjoyed. Peppers are tropical perennials, you know. Come October, this plant will be overwintering in my finest pot, front and center in the dining room window.

Mr. Casper with frozen bud...


...now looks lush and healthy.







New developments in the garden:
Little Wonder peas planted way too late are slowly coming along.
These below are an unnamed blue-podded variety with brown-skinned peas:


And these below were planted from a bag of yellow split peas from the supermarket. I separated out a handful of pea halves that seemed to have enough of the germ still attached, and planted out the ones that germinated. Cool, free seeds. Compared to the two garden varieties above, the leaves on these are much smaller.

Also, get a load of those wacky tendrils! They should market this and call it "Medusa".


Love the diversity in garden peas. While we're at it, note the diversity in tomato blossoms:

Matt's Wild Cherry tomato above, and a Black Sea Man below.

By the way, we ate the first tomato yesterday for dinner. Boy it was good.












2 comments:

Mr. H. said...

Thanks so much for this post. A friend of mine just had the same thing (frost) happen to all of her tomatoes. I sent her a link to your site so she could see how amazing these plants can really be.

I love Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes, ours never split in the fall when it rains as almost all the other cherries we grow do, and the plants can get so big. Those peas look just like the Afila peas I am growing for the first time this year... they are so neat. Medusa would be a great name for them, I swear they almost reach out and grab you when going down the pea isle.

Your garden is looking really good.

Mike

mostlypurple said...

Mike, glad to be of service. Nobody was more surprised than me that these frost victims recovered. As the Jeff Goldblum character in Jurassic Park warned, "Life finds a way".