Good Thursday Morning, Everyone. We have nice cool temps today after several sweltering days of 90+. I was rather amused by all of the newscasters who had been longing for warm weather and who were suddenly wilting with the heat. I find anything above 70 and below 90 absolutely perfect.

I have been talking about my container gardens for a while now and thought I would show some of them off. The white buckets contain some of the tomatoes I started inside. These are the Big Rainbow and the Brandywine varieties. Both are heirloom plants and produce nice sized slicers. In about a week I will add some fertilizer spikes to each. I have learned over the last couple of years that you have to feed container plants more heavily because some nutrients will leach out with watering. The large blue containers have my peppers in them. I have a couple of new varieties and one favorite from last year I got as seedlings: Cow Horn cayenne, Mexibelle, and Big Bertha belles. I also have two varieties of basil (spicy Thai and Boxwood), spinach, marigold, yard long beans, and lettuce in the spots not devoted to peppers.

This stack of plants includes the other variety of tomato I started inside--the Fresh Salsa. Between them I put a pot of lavender and on the trellis supports I have marigold. I cut those small containers from plastic juice cartons. This is what I wanted to do with the milk jugs but I found that the softer plastic couldn't take the weight of soil. We are going to keep more of the juice cartons for next year. The only problem I have found so far is that some of these containers can get much too hot in certain areas of the patio.

This area here is one where I may have to modify my scheme. Some of these containers got very warm and I lost one, maybe two, spinach plants. I am experimenting now with covering the outside with some kind of paper to reduce the amount of heat they can absorb. If I get hopeful results I may change the configuration next year and put the trellis with the small containers in a different large container. The blue pot at the back contains stevia and the whit one at the front will have nasturtiums when the seeds sprout.

This incipient jungle contains the peppers I started from seed--False Alarm, Poblan0, and Gypsy. I also have marigolds, fairy eggplant and broccoli. And the big tomato is the Parks Whopper my sister gave mom for Mother's Day. It was already blooming when we got it.

Now you might just be able to see the first green tomatoes. We are eagerly anticipating the first fried green tomatoes of the season and the first homegrown salads.