Hello sunshine!

This week may have been the most exciting one in the brief history of this garden... the past two weeks have been hot hot hot, but last week it was 95-100F almost every day, plus humidity. This weather is bad news for people, but the plants love it. They are going "gangbusters" as my aunt says, which means they are growing like crazy. I thought it would be fun to take a mid-summer walk down memory lane, so you can all see how much everything has grown...

The plant that has been the most fun to watch is my first sunflower, which has been growing faster than any other plant in my garden:

My first sunflower!


It's been growing so ridiculously fast that I decided to measure its progress:

Saturday July 3rd: 59 inches tall
Tuesday July 6th: 63"
Wednesday July 7th: 66.5"
Sunday July 10th: 73"

So as you can see, it grew about 14 inches in ONE WEEK! It's hard to believe that this is what it looked like on June 13th... not even a month ago! It has more than doubled in size! And this is what it looked like on May 3rd... a little over two months ago!

Anyway the first flower bloomed, and like a proud mama I posted a picture immediately on Facebook... I know it's dorky but I am really excited about it! Almost every time I'm out in the garden and anyone walks by, they say "nice sunflower!" I love that others are enjoying the garden too.

The other thing that's neat about this sunflower is that it's really just starting to bloom. It has at least five or six other little flower buds, and more pop up every day. Check out all the little leaves blooming everywhere along the stalk:




California poppies

I planted a bunch of California poppy seeds and they all sprouted and are growing - but no flowers yet. I'm wondering if this is a type of plant that flowers the second year? In theory they're supposed to bloom this year, but I think the seed packets always tell you what you want to hear, whether or not it's true :P


Volunteer plant.... getting big now!

Remember all of those little volunteer sprouts that came up? Well the one I decided to let grow is growing quickly in the heat. It looks exactly like the eggplants I planted, but an old friend who is a prolific gardener (hi Genevieve!) said that eggplants, melon, and cucumbers all look exactly alike while they're growing. The only thing is, I don't remember composting any eggplants... so who knows what will come up. It's kind of fun watching it grow and waiting to see what happens!


Eggplant plants

They haven't grown that much, but they're really taking off in the heat. You can see what they looked like when I planted them here.


Bell pepper plants

I have noticed that the bell peppers have grown, but didn't realize how much until I looked at the picture from when I first planted them. WOW! I am hoping for lots and lots of peppers. There have been a lot of white flowers on one of the plants, but so far no little peppers. I was wondering what might be wrong, but after some research (thanks Google!) I learned that apparently if it's above 90 degrees the peppers won't "set" and the flowers just die. Sad! It's supposed to be in the high 80s this week, so maybe it will be cool enough to get some little peppers growing.


Basil plants

The basil has grown the most out of all the herbs I planted. We are going to have so much basil we won't know what to do with it! I'm not used to cooking with fresh herbs, and to be honest I feel kind of guilty cutting pieces off the plants... but I mean hellooooo that's what I planted them for! This is what the basil looked like when I first planted it (it's the plant on the far right).


Cosmo flowers

I planted a bunch of Cosmo flower seeds in between the sunflower plants, mostly just to see if I could grow them outside, and because I figured the sunflowers could share the dirt. To my surprise they have sprouted and they're really growing!


The tomato I grew from seed

I just put this little guy in the ground today... look at how little it was back on June 13th!


Okra

These are the okra seedlings I planted two weeks ago. They also seem to love the heat, and they are growing a new pair of leaves every couple of days, each twice the size of the last. I'm hoping for a ton of okra. I think it might be my favorite vegetable! I didn't grow up eating it, which probably adds to its appeal because it's still a novel vegetable for me. But it's also fun to eat because it's such a weird shape, and it's covered in little prickly hairs that you have to really scrub off. So it's sort of like, "are you serious? are you really trying to eat this crazy vegetable?" But it's delicious. I highly recommend trying it if you haven't already.

Okay that's about all for this week... thanks for checking out what's blooming in Bloomingdale! :)