Roof Garden 10003

Tonight we enjoyed the first salsa cruda featuring garden ingredients: brandywine tomato, serrano and jingle bell peppers, supplemented by greenmarket onion, garlic, cilantro, and lime. It was a delicious complement to fresh corn cakes. Yeah garden!

Chile abundance greeted me in the garden this morning. A bunch of poblanos have popped out, ditto on jalapenos. If I can get the same thing going on with the habaneros I will be satisfied. Is it all about the fertilizer? I'm thinking of alternating between liquid feeding to the roots one week and then folar feeding the alternate week.

Lately the smell of the white sage is intense. Just pulling off a few leaves, not even crushing them, yields this deep resinous smell that's almost intoxicating. It's so strong it seems to linger in my nose long after I leave the garden.

There was joy in the garden this morning. A few ripe tomatoes and serrano peppers, nice comeback by the mint plants after the underwatering of last week. Most exciting is the emergence of fruit on both the poblano and jalapeno plants. Maybe I should fertilize more often - big bursts of growth after each application of liquid fertilizer. At this point I'm thinking that I should have used more fertilizer at the beginning.

I think I turned a corner in the garden today. Late last night Diana came back to the apartment with half a brandywine tomato from the roof that D had picked. She had apparently said that it's the best tomato she's ever eaten. I tasted it and despite having been refrigerated I think it's delicious. Now I love the garden again.

It's not just a lack of water that has harmed the garden, it's a lack of love. Maybe I'm so cynical that I have mentally doomed my own garden with self-doubt. The pests and temperature extremes have scared me off, but now I'm back. I did a real prune on several plants and plan to go back tonight to do more. Those few bites of tomato have revived my enthusiasm.

Just got back from a week vacation. Seems that someone forgot to water the garden regularly in our abscence. The roma tomato plant is all shrivelled, as are several mint plants. On the bright side the brandywine tomatoes are starting to turn red, there are several fruits on the black krim tomato, jingle bell peppers are turning red, and there is even the first habanero pepper on that plant. Yeah for ripening fruit! Other than mint the herbs did fine while we were gone.

I have (hopefully temporarily) lost enthusiasm for gardening. This always happens to me. I feel really enthusiastic at the beginning of the season when there is soil work and planting to do, and then I love steam in the middle of the summer. I need a big spread where there is more physical work to do.

Still no mice in the traps. Probably just as well. But there doesn't seem to be any more nibbling on the plants either. Maybe the vermin understood that I was after them and moved on to less-contested territory.