Of Vegetables and Men (Part II)

I recently made a fairly long, rambling post that was purportedly about vegetables, but was really more of a sentimental reflection on childhood and loss of a sense of place.

I am sometimes annoyed when things are not what their title purports to be¹.[1] Therefore, I promise you. This post is about vegetables. Well, except for that last paragraph or two. And this sentence explaining them. As I mentioned previously, I am attempting to approach my garden guided by the firm hand of Science(tm). I sent a half an hour today, measuring the height and width of my plants, hopefully as a precursor for measuring growth. Though, given my gardening skills, it is far more likely that for many, this preliminary measurement is more suited as epitaph. Fennel, we hardly knew ye.

So with out further ado, I present to you the 2010 Bower Garden line-up. (Collect 'em all.)

The Peppers

Jalapeno

“Super Chili” pepper

“Red Beauty” (Bell pepper)

“Super” Banana Pepper

“Golden” Bell pepper

Habanero

The Tomatoes

“Old German” heirloom tomato

“Brandywine” heirloom tomato

“Patio” tomato (hybrid designed for containers. Ironically, not doing as well as the other non-container tomatoes)

“Orange Oxheart” heirloom tomato

The Miscellaneous Fruits/Vegetables

Strawberries (windowbox of three plants, none of which is doing fantastically well, already)

Strawberries (single plant, doing much better than the windowbox)

Sugar Snap peas (staked, so they can climb, but so far they just seem to want to wrap their tendrils around each other.)

“Ambassador” Zuchini (which is going nuts.)

The Herbs

Sweet Basil

Rosemary (Prostrate)

Rosemary (Santa Barbera)

Carolina Jasmine (not technically an herb, but meh. I am amazed at it's blooming. Every day there are blooms all over the ground, but already new ones on the plant.)

Lavender (a rookie in my garden, but is known to do well in the hot Texas climate)

Lemon Balm (great for making teas, very tempermental in my experience...I tend to lose these pretty easily. They're supposed to be good in sun or shade, but shade seems to work better so far)

Tarragon (x2). (No, you're not missing anything. This was my “from seed” experiment. So far, no sprouts, and it has been two weeks.)

Sweet Basil (seed) – (nothing yet. Got the idea for the dual egg crate seed starter design from a website.²[2])

Spearmint (I prefer peppermint, but couldn't find it. Mint was a big winner³ [3] for last year's garden)

Chocolate Mint (I thought it was just a varietal, but it actually does smell/taste like chocolate mint)

Cilantro

Decorative Plants and Miscellany

Marigolds (7 pots worth, several varities..planted as a companion plant among my other containers to hopefully repel some pests)

Yucca (The tall one to the left is several years old, and is the sort that should reall be in the ground. Oh well. The small one, just visible to the right, is an offshoot of the original that was transplanted)

Aloe (my poor aloe plant...it started as a sickly $1.99 bargain bin save at the local supermarket. I nursed it back to pretty prestigious health..douhble the current size. Then we had a pretty bad hard freeze and it lost a LOT of growth. It's coming back though)

Spider Plants. (The tiny sprout of a plant in the back of the first pic is the original plant I bought in 1995 from my friend Amy Kessler. It gave birth to a legion of other plants. Unfortunately, they were all out during the hard freeze, and we lost about 75%. I cut back the original to the surface, and to my great surprise, it has started to bounce back.They're all pretty scraggly right now, coming back from the frost)

Mystery Plant! (We had gotten a hanging basket plant that I killed with neglect, even though it made several valiant combeacks. Very fleshy, tubular leaves. I have no idea what it is. Some piece of it managed to fall off and take root in a pot of dirt underneath the hanging basket, and is now doing really well. Go figure. If anyone knows what this is, let me know!)

So that's the lot of them, about 46-47 plants total. I'll post updates every couple weeks/month to show growth/death. (I wish I had measured dimensions when I first planted about 2 weeks ago....to tomatoes,etc have already grown decently. So be it.)

1My friend is a fan of the band, Minus the Bear. When he suggested some songs to listen to, I was pretty excited. However, upon listening, I was less so. If you're going to have a song called “Lemurs, man, Lemurs”, it really should have something about lemurs in it.

2http://www.instructables.com/

3i.e., it survived and bore a “harvest”.