The First Tomatoes!

I harvested our first tomatoes last night! We have five different varieties growing in containers in our back yard. From the upper left: beefsteaks, romas, an heirloom tomato called a 'Zebra', cherry tomatoes, and yellow grape tomatoes. Yummy!

Fig Tree Container

This fig tree was the first fruiting tree I purchased after we moved into our house. It is a 'Brown Turkey' fig which produces medium-large maroon fruit. Yum! I don't think we can expect any figs this year, but hopefully next year this tree will produce it's first crop. This is supposedly a good variety to grow in our area -- so we'll keep our fingers crossed! There are also a few other plants we have in this container with the tree - scroll down to see them in detail.

Delosperma 'Mesa Verde' - cold hardy Ice Plant. Masses of apricot-peachy flowers. 2" tall and spreading quickly to 2' wide (no joke! this plant is growing FAST)

Penstemmon. I am not sure what variety as it was a plant that was here in a different container when we moved in.

Black Mondo Grass

Yucca Container

This large yucca was one of the plants left behind by the former owner of our house. I thought it was an otherwise empty container, but this spring about 5 lilies started growing out of the dirt. Odd. Lilies & a yucca. My mom thought this was a strange combo as well so on one of her visits to Portland this spring she transplanted all the lilies for me and chose some succulents at the Portland Nursery to fill in the pot.


Mom chose this Sedum to add a little height to the pot. It is a Sedum alboroseum 'Mediovariegatum' and it is very closely related to Autumn Joy. Later on in the summer these should have blooms of little white flowers all over them and attract a bunch of butterflies. At the end of the summer this will die back and can be cut to the ground - then it will re-sprout next spring.


This little red guy is a Sedum spurium 'Dragons Blood'. This spreading, evergreen ground cover is covered with starry red flowers from late June into the fall (you can see them here in this picture). I have a lot of this plant out front in our rock wall, but it is doing great in this container too!


I am not sure what these fleshy little succulents are. I have been collecting them from around the neighborhood where they have self-seeded into the parking strip. They are a wonderful bright green all winter and are just now producing these delicate white blooms.


I scavenged these hens & chicks from a neighbors rock wall down the street. Shhh. They have about a million of these covering their front bank and earlier this summer a couple had fallen off and were sitting on the side walk. So I took them home with me and planted them and they re-rooted and look to be doing quite well at this point. I am hoping they spread!

The Maple Container in the Back - Take 2!

Remember when I thought this pot was too yellow? (Click here for original post) Well, I added a little reddish-purple plant to the maple container.



It is a Sedum cauticola that produces little purple flowers in the fall. In retrospect I am wondering if I should have picked a plant with more height to it...

The Front Porch Container

There was a large container on the front porch when we moved in - I kept waiting for something to pop up...but nothing ever did - so we finally decided to plant it. It's sitting to the right of our front door:

• Heuchera 'Peach Flambe' Coral Bells. This is the plant in the lower right hand part of the container in the picture.
• Sedum 'Ogon' Sedum makinoi. This is the plant in the lower left hand part of the container. It is a Zone 7 plant with yellowing flowers in the summer that attract butterflies.
• Gold Fountains Sedge Carex dolichostachya 'Kaga Nishiki' Great green sedge in the back of the container. It does well in dry conditions - at least better than most sedges do.
  

The Maple Container in the Back

When we moved into this house there were a lot of containers left behind by the previous owner. Most of these had dead annuals in them or bulbs like lilies or dahlias - anyways - I've removed most of these and have been replanting the containers with perennials, succulents and some edibles. I'll post a series of snapshots of the containers and descriptions of what I have planted in them in the next few weeks. Right now I think the overall color tone of this container might be too yellow -- so I may divide it at some point.

• Coral-bark Maple Acer Palmatum 'Sango Kaku' Mine is little, little, little right now. He was very sunburnt when I picked him up in the 50% off section of the Portland Nursery. I cut back all the sun burned leaves & branches and now it's starting to re-bud and grow again. I think it will be a great container plant!
  
• Evergold Japanese Sedge Carex morrowii 'Evergold' This grass has variegated green and yellow 1/2" wide leaves that forms a clump 12" tall x 18" wide. It works well in containers, rock gardens & water features and does well in full sun to part shade. It is hardy down to -10 to 0 degrees F.
• This container is partially planted with a creeping golden ground cover that my mom says spreads terribly and is awful. I kept it in the container - and I won't be moving it from there!
  

veggies in the garden this year

So this is what the garden looks like now in early June:

These are the following little plants that I have planted in the raised bed:

1. Carrots: Danvers 126 Daucus carota var sativus. These little guys are supposed to be a good variety for cool weather and dense, heavy soils - perfect for our clay like raised bed at this time! I just thinned them out to one plant every 3" -- it was sad to yank all the other little plants out.
2. Peppers: Miniature Red Bell, Sweet Peppers Capsicum annum. I started these inside and they didn't sprout for ages. Just as I was about to give up on them they poked their little heads out of the soil! I have three of these plants in my raised bed now. I'm crossing my fingers that they produce some peppers this year!
3. Beets: Early Wonder Beta vulgaris. Planted these directly outside. Seem to be doing fine so far....Stacy has had trouble with hers 'bolting.' I think this means they are flowering early. So far no problems with mine that I can see.
4. Tomato Cherry: Rainbow Mix Lycopersicon lycopersicum (Hybrid). I started these in pots indoors and I think they are doing really well. The reason that I only can think this is that my tomatoes got mixed up when I moved them into larger pots....so I can't figure out which are my rainbow tomatoes and which are my jelly bean tomatoes. I have these planted in containers on these SE side of my house.
5. Tomato Grape: Jelly Bean Red & Yellow Lycopersicon lycopersicum (hybrid). I started these inside as well -- same as above. Looks like they're doing well so far, but hard to tell as I don't know which are which and it's possible that all I have right now are cherry tomatoes!
6. Tomato Bush: Italian Roma Lycopersicon lycopersicum. Once again - I started these inside, but these I was successfully able to keep separated - so I know where theses are planted. I have four plants right now planted in my raised bed in front of the Himalayan poppies that I put in. So far they are looking okay...although there are some holes missing out of the leaves.
7. Lettuce Leaf: Red Sails Lactuca sativa. I started this outside back in April - it's starting to look harvestable!
8. Spinach: Bloomsdale Spinacia oleracea. Started this outside as well - these plants are looking slighly larger than my lettuce right now.
   
9. Basil. I originally planted about 30 starts of Aroma 1 Ocimum basilicum. These were looking great for awhile -- then I moved them outside. My guess is that I moved these outside too early during the cool spring that we're having. They are pretty stunted and yellow looking right now (about 1.5" tall). My mom came to visit this past weekend and noted that her starts were about 6" tall. So I broke down and bought four basil starts at the Portland Nursery this past weekend. This kind is 'Genovese' Ociumum basilicum - they are supposed to be nice & spicy and good for making pesto. Yum! All my basil is in containers on the SE side of my house - I'm thinking that gets the best sun right now (see above picture).
   
10. Onions: Borrettana (Storage Onions) Allium cepa. Planted these in the raised bed -- of course I didn't mark them -- so I have them mixed up with the other onions I planted. Hmph. Note to self: next year make better notes when planting!
11. Onions: Candy Hybrid (Sweet Spanish Onion) Allium cepa. Once again - don't know where these are planted. Sigh....
12. Peas Snap: Cascadia Pisum sativaum. I planted these earlier this spring and built a trellis on the advice of Stacy who said that even if the package said they were self supporting I would wish I had a trellis. So far these guys are going like gang busters! One third of my trellis didn't sprout -- so I replanted the seeds today - we'll see what they do.
13. Bush Beans: Nugget Phaseolus spp. I just planted these today. Supposedly birds will LOVE them....so hopefully they won't all get eaten before they mature.
14. Squash Summer: Scallop (Patty Pan) Blend Cucurbita pepo. I just planted these today - I am excited for them to sprout! I think they will be great on skewers on the bbq!
15. Rhubarb: Hmmm. Somewhere around the house I have the tag for the variety of Rhubarb that I planted this year. I LOVE rhubarb custard pie. So of course I had to add this little delicacy!
16. Asparagus: Once again. Can't remember the exact variety I planted. The closest I have is Asparagus officinalis. This little veggie takes some work! It takes a year or two for this to produce a crop - you dig a deep trough to plant your asparagus crowns in -- and then carefully fill in around them with soil during the first summer. You don't want to harvest too heavily the next year, but watch out for disease in the fall or the crowns will rot over the winter!
17. Artichoke: 'Green Globe' Cynara scolymus. This isn't actually in our raised bed - when I bought the plant I thought I could put it in a container - but apparently I didn't read the tag very carefully! This guy grows to 4'-6' and needs full sun! So I moved a bunch of plants in our front yard so I could put this in on the NE side of our house - I think it should get quite a bit of sun there. I am not sure how long it will take for this to get full grown - but it should be a nice mixture of evergreen and large, lavendar-blue flowers in the meantime.
18. Mache: Valerianella locusta. This was a gift from Stacy - she brought over 5 plants for me to put in our raised bed and so far it's doing really well. Mache is a variety of salad green - you hear it called by a bunch of different names including Lamb's Lettuce (because the leafs are the shape of a lamb's tongue.