Planting This Years Harvest

This post is an indirect path to food...actually it's a much more direct path to the actual food itself, but a round about way to the recipe from which I prepare my foods. Anyways, it's GARDEN TIME!

So you may or may not recall that I planted a few tomato plants in some containers last year (in about August).  And with some very careful babying I nurtured those plants along through the entire winter and I have been enjoying the fruits of my labor, literally, for the past several months.  However, in about February I noticed that the leaves on my sweet 100 plant were shriveling up and falling off.  I took a portion of the plant into the local nursery and they told me my tomato plant had caught a virus...my response "are you kidding! Is this something I can treat by putting some vitamin C in the soil?!?!!"  Their response, "Nope, just go home, enjoy what's left of the fruit and let your plant die a peaceful death."  I felt like I had just pulled the proverbial plug on my plants.

So while my final plant is dying away (I just harvested 5 ripe tomatoes off of it today and the last of the tomatoes should be off by next week - the leaves have long since given up the ghost), I decided it was time to replant my new seedlings.

A few weeks ago I planted a few seeds -- Jubilee tomatoes, Red cherry tomatoes, jalapeno, cilantro and basil.  The seedlings have been growing well (except that I killed all of the cilantro when I left the seed tray out in the sun for way too long (who knew an hour in the sun could do so much damage).  Obviously the cilantro seedlings were way too woosy for me.  So the surviving seedlings were in desperate need of replanting.  Last Saturday was the day.  Here's what happened.

Here are my desperate seedlings who need a new home.



I got a bunch of buckets from a friend:


I had to drill holes in all the buckets (and wouldn't you know that the whole time I did it all I could think about was that stoopid song "There's a whole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza....":


Then a little dirt, a little plant food, and voila -- a container garden filled with a tomato plants. I've got about 5 Red Cherry Tomato plants, 8 Jubilee Tomato plants, 3 jalapeno plants, 2 cilantro plants, and about 6 more basil plants waiting to eventually be replanted. In addition to the onions, full grown basil plants and the Oregano and Rosemary plants.




Here are the jalapenos that were replanted in my handy-dandy radio flyer wagon:


Now here's a quick tour of the other things that I have growing...

beautiful and positively delicious basil (and a bit of Greek Oregano)




cliantro for my fresh salsa


red onions (also for my fresh salsa)


And last, but not least, my jalapeno plant


Some day all of these scrumptious plants will bear fruit that I will harvest and turn into delightful eats. In the meantime I will spend my time watering, watering, and watering some more in this very dry desert climate.