Garden update!

Last year I got a tasty heirloom sweet yellow banana pepper plant and since I heard peppers will produce for 2 years before dying, I saved it over the winter by bringing it inside in a pot. The leaves all fell off except for 2 big leaves at the end, and I thought it was dying, but I put it outside and it grew a whole bunch of leaves, and now has started to produce some flowers and really early peppers!


a baby yellow pepper + a pepper flower that will turn into another pepper


the peppers I started from seed aren't producing peppers yet, although a couple have some small flower buds starting to pop out


the red potatoes I planted just a month ago (after letting them sprout on the windowsill for about 2 weeks)  have already  grown about 3 feet tall. I've added about 8 - 10 inches of dirt since they first sprouted, gradually covering up the stems as they grew (but not the leaves) so that they would produce more roots and potatoes Supposedly I could keep adding dirt if I wanted and the potatoes would just grow more layers of potatoes underground, but I would have to build up the wall at this point if I wanted to do that, so this will have to be enough. Now they will grow all summer, and eventually the stems will die and fall over, and about 2 weeks after they die and dry up will be time to harvest the potatoes.

There's also a bunch of onions on the left there, they are still growing- the spring weather has been so up and down that a couple have gone to flower, but only a couple- and I figure I will let those go to seed to reseed my onion patch for next year (or the year after? Not sure how that works since I always buy "sets" which are one year old plants).  I can't do anythign about them anyway- once the onion has started to flower you're not going to get a good onion out of it. But I planted around 125 onions and only around 4 are going to flower so far, so I think I'll be ok (as long as it gets a bit warmer so these can die back and be harvested already!)


Zucchini plants surrounded by onions


My artichoke plant got flattened by a recent hail/thunderstorm, but since then about 3 new leaves have started growing. I think it likes cooler temperatures for growing, since it's growth stalled out when it was in the high 80s for a couple weeks, but now that it's back in the 70s it is growing like crazy again. 


The cool weather the past week has also caused some more asparagus to come up from the ground.  8 out of 10 of my plants have sprouted at least one asparagus, and most of those have sprouted at least 2, especially after this week. Not sure what's going on with those other 2- they may not have survived transplanting, or they may magically sprout sometime soon too.


Those ferny things are what asparagus looks like when it grows up!


My  potted herb garden- from bottom to top- basil, sage, mint (and some basil behind that sage), lemon grass and basil, and up top is a strawberry plant.  Along the wall in the back is more basil and onions + a lemon tree



 Japanese Eggplant!

I also have a bunch of corn, beans and pumpkins growing out back, but no pictures of that today.  The dogs trampeled about half the corn that sprouted, but there are around 12 corn stalks that survived