The little salad garden is growing, albeit very slowly. The carrots are up, and germination looks to be very good. Some of the spinach has emerged, as have a couple of the twenty-five onions, and enough lettuce seedlings survived the (probable) bird attack that I will have plenty to transplant into the bare spots. I also have some lettuce seedlings growing in vermiculite, so hopefully I can replant the containers that have passed their prime.



My two Patio tomatoes suffered a lot of leaf miner damage, which I first misdiagnosed as bruised and damaged leaves from being mishandled in Lowe's nursery. It became apparent the damage was from leaf miners when I spotted the squiggles from their tunneling, so, scissors in hand, they were soon inspected and all damaged leaves removed to a sealed plastic bag. The larger of the two plants now has 13 tomatoes on it, the smaller one has a lot of blossoms. I have taken to tickling the opened blossoms with my electric toothbrush each day, in hopes of increasing their chances of pollination. Mr. H is still patiently moving the pots out in the mornings and back in at night. When, oh when, will he be rewarded with a ripe tomato?


About a week ago, I was contacted by Chelsea, of Hometown Seeds, with a request for a link to their website to be added to my sidebar. I've never ordered any seeds from them, but I looked over the website and it seems to be a nice family-type business that is just starting up, so I said I'd be happy to help them out. Today in the mail I received a "thank you" from Chelsea, and a sample of some of their seeds. I also found the link wasn't working, so I fixed it. I hope.
I was happy to see Shasta Daisy seeds among the collection. Before I had my main vegetable garden along the east fence, I had Shasta daisies and summer phlox, and they were so pretty! Unfortunately, my neighbor had Bermuda grass, which overtook the flower garden so badly I finally removed all the plants. Now the neighbor has a small garden area along the fence, where she keeps the Bermuda grass under control, so I'd like to reintroduce that strip of land to the daisies and phlox.