Planting

Planted fairytale eggplant, a Rugters tomato and habanero, jalapeno, scotch bonnet, poblano and carmen peppers today in the space near the house where the pond used to be. I hope they do well! I am also hoping that the fairytale eggplant's small size will prevent it from doing what has happened to every other eggplant we've planted: flopping over with the fruit ending up sitting on the ground after a storm or big wind. Then they never ripen properly and I at most get 1 eggplant per plant.

In other news, the blackberry bush continues to double in bulk every week. By next year I think I will be able to pick blackberries from our bedroom in the second floor.

Walther Gardens & Vegetable Plants 2007

Around the corner from my house is a little neighborhood nursery called Walther Gardens. They have been there since before there even was a Walther Blvd and they also run one of the city's first snowball stands. Everything is grown right there and they have a great selection of vegetable and flowering plants. The prices are excellent as well. All of the vegetable plants are only $1 each and since they count as food, are tax free. So for $9, I bought the box of plants below.

This year I bought: 1 cloud nine eggplant (white eggplants!), 1 dusky eggplant, some tomatoes (better boy, early girl, beefsteak and sweet 100s), scotch bonnet peppers (very exciting-they are hard to find in stores and a lot of Caribbean recipes call for them), and two zucchini plants. I am tempted to go back and get some more cucumbers or a different variety of squash, but I am undecided. The woman who checked me out said not to put the squash or eggplants in the ground yet anyway, as it has been getting down to almost freezing the last couple of nights.

I am excited to have some more varieties of tomatoes (or as the lady at the nursery called them "toe-may-dahs"-okay, when I lapse into Baltimore-ese I call them that too) we already planted a variety that are supposed to be super producers (50-100 lbs of tomatoes each or something like that) but I really love tomatoes. What if I don't like the super producers? And early girls are, well, early producers, beefsteaks are big and the sweet 100s are cherry tomatoes. So you can see that I really do need about 7 tomato plants to adequately feed 2 people.