The Last Things that Need to Be Planted in the Garden

There's still six packs of Asian greens that need to be planted, pak choi to the left, gailan behind the pak choi, mibuna to the right with choy sum behind it. The choi sum flowered after that string of 95 degree days, I'm planning on adding it to some ramen soup soon.

There's Simpson lettuce to the left which is a wonderfully tender loose leaf type, and tatsoi to the right with its spoon shaped leaves.

I think that's a late flowering type of choy sum on the left and of course the frizzy leaved mizuna on the right.

With greens and herbs I generally pot up the big plants giving them time to grow stronger in a controlled environment, while the tiny plants immediately get set out in the garden. This is supposed to be a classic Italian basil, and it smells really good.

Siam Queen Asian basil with it's intense licorice aroma. It's more affected by drought conditions with leaves dying off from lack of water, but it's hardy enough to come back and produce well. I've had plants last all summer, just keep pinching off the flowers and the plant will branch out and produce more leaves.

These are the extra basil I've been setting out in the garden. See that odd puffy wrinkly basil to the back left and to the right? That's Bolloso Napoletano, it's supposed to grow leaves the size of your hand and have a wonderfully intense flavor that most giant basil lacks. I have a couple dozen potted up but forgot to take a close up picture of it.

An enormous planter with more gailan surrounding a sweet potato.

There's also pak choi growing in styrofoam containers.

This container of pak choi keeps getting dug out by critters. There's a couple other styrofoam containers  that are currently planted with garlic. Once the garlic is pulled they'll be filled with Asian greens.

The broccoli is tiny compared to last year, they're being invaded by leaf miners and other insects that keep nibbling on their leaves. I fertilized them a bit yesterday and I'll be looking for Bt at local stores, my friend mentioned that Bacillus thuringiensis is sold as mosquito dunks that you can add to a big barrel of water and then wet your plants with it. Ah, never mind, that Bt is specific to mosquitoes.

The shelly pole beans are doing fantastic, they're filling out their trellises really well but something is eating the snap pole beans. I find holes all the time where the plants are completely pulled up, so weird. Birds still hang out in that part of the garden because there's no soaker hoses set up there, so... Are they to blame?

The rain is thwarting us. There's no way we can start on the fence this weekend. But next week promises to be sunny and dry. Hopefully the mason who's working on our foundation will be able to come out then, too.

I missed taking a picture of our lawn after the dump truck debacle. My husband ended up rototilling and reshaping the whole non-garden area, we'll be adding a couple yards of soil to fill in low spots and then reseed the grass. It's better this way, you always end up with patches of different colored grass when you don't know the variety.