Goodbye weeds, hello vegetables

Finally, last week, I took a small hand-held rake to the entire garden. The weeds were helpless against the rake, and I laughed somewhat manically as I churned up the rich, black dirt beneath. After about 20 minutes of this nonsense, I piled the refuse into several "extermination piles" about the garden to show any future weeds I meant business.



A week later I've returned, finding only a small amount of weeds who dare test my sanity. I managed to hand-pick these in short order while checking out the finer details of the garden. I'm also finally getting a handle on the super-macro function of my camera, three years into it's purchase.




The romaine lettuce, as phenomenal as it was in both size and taste, is finished. Meanwhile the dill & cilantro has grown up to my chin and have started to flower. The hot pepper plants are small, but one has already produced an immature but 3' long pepper! The African basil is alot like the Thai basil, as it has dwarfed the Italian basil in size and beauty. The cucumbers, which have a stranglehold on the fence & twine, are just starting to produce some small flowers and inch-long fruit. They threated to take over the tomato area, but I foiled their plan & beat them back into submission. I'll have to keep an eye on those guys...next time I'll give them a little more room to grow.



Speaking of tomatoes, I decided to to get the twine out and set up a trellis system, stringing the twine between the stakes and boxing in the tomatoes. This should help hold up the tomatoes as they grow, just like tomato cages. All the tomato plants are flowering, some have produced small, pale green fruit, though I've noticed some yellowing of the bottom leaves, which is not happening with the porch tomato. (The basil on the porch is doing great, as are the nastursiums - though no flowers yet).



The onions are coming along, though I expect at least another month of waiting before I can harvest.



Stringed tomatoes


Garden path


Cucumber vines


Baby tomato


Dill


Basils


Basils


Cilantro flowers


Baby Cucumber


Pepper flower