The veggie garden today

Again, I apologize for being such an infrequent blogger.  Perhaps with practice, and less to do in the garden, I will become better.

Yesterday I planted two tiny tomatillo plants so therefore my garden is now completely full.  Here are some recent pictures.

This is the left half of the garden facing North.  You can easily see the flush of self-seeded cilantro that I will allow to remain for now.  Eventually it will have to come up once in goes to seed, becomes coriander, and is no longer of any use to me.  In the front beds from the left are: 1st bed, spinach; second bed, onions and radishes and carrots; third bed, zucchini and nasturtiums and fourth bed, peppers and tomatillos.

In the background you can see the self-seeded dill which I will also allow to remain.  I expect to have black swallowtail caterpillars on it at some point as I did last year.  The beans are just beginning to show their heads, as are the cucumbers and lettuce.  To the right in the back is the asparagus bed.  Behind all that is the self-seeded borage and sunflowers which will stay.  I love the borage for the simple fact that the honey bees love the borage.  The more honey bees I can get in there, the better everything grows.  The sunflowers are just really pretty.

This is the right side of the garden that is dedicated to the tomatoes.  Originally I planted 59 plants but one succumbed to the foot of the child who was helping me put on the straw mulch.  I also have a few basil plants stuck in there among the tomatoes.  The patch of red is the plastic red mulch that the Master Gardeners were asked to trial.  Supposedly red plastic helps the tomatoes grow better.

A close-up of one of the tomato plants; I believe this is a Rose heirloom.


And here is the new herb garden which is looking pretty good considering everything was moved this spring. Seems I made it quite a bit too small.