Fruits of Thy Labor

Here it is, the very first harvest of the new garden. I mistakenly forgot to put something next to this strawberry for scale, but lets just say that if there was a dime on the table next to this strawberry, it would be bigger : ) However, it did not stop us from each taking a little bite out of it to get a small taste of whats to come. Guess what? It tasted like a strawberry.


A little surprise when I went to the garden last night. There was a pretty sizable bell pepper hiding in the middle of this pepper plant. It seems as thought the bell pepper plants have turned the corner in the last two weeks as things have warmed up. Most of the plants in the main garden have doubled in size in that time. Whats more interesting is finding the way the fruit grows out of the flowers. You can see above that the bell pepper seems to somewhat "absorb" the flower that it grows out of. This is contrasted against the tomato where the flower seems to stay at the bottom of the growing fruit until it dies and falls off......


See that, thats a ripening strawberry without a bit out of it!! That's because of the lovely bird netting that I put over the plants to protect the. You can see the netting in the picture above. This netting is designed to be draped over fruit trees to keep birds from getting to apples, oranges, etc. It is working very well for the strawberries so far. I plan to try and pick this strawberry today or tomorrow.


My sister found this tomato the other day. It was hiding under the mass of tomato plant where this Czech heirloom has intertwined with the Juliet that is right next to it. The original spacing requirements on this were 18" apart; I think I could have put them 36" apart and they would still be growing together. There are three or four tomatoes on the bottom of this plant that are ripening quickly, and I anticipate we will be eating this one by the weekend.


This is just a pretty picture. This is the same Czech Heirloom as pictured above, but I was trying to get some of the "viney-ness" of this plant compared to the very tall Juliet and Burpee plants. This plant seems to be spidering out all over the edge of the garden. I am very glad this was in the corner, or I would be in a lot of trouble with it growing into every other plant I have.