Edible Garden

I have an addiction. I can't stop buying plants! I just bought two more hostas, a blackberry vine and some little grassy thing with pink flowers over the weekend. Only the blackberry vine has been planted, the others are still waiting patiently to be cared for. Oh, I also bought a monkey plant from the Berkeley Horticultural Nursery last weekend. At the rate of my plant purchasing, I am never going to catch up with the planting. Ugh! I need to take a break from buying plants every weekend. Photos of aforementioned plants to come in a later post.

My tomato and zucchini plants are doing fabulously! The two strawberries, artichoke and a new basil plant are thriving as well. I can't wait to eat some home grown veggies in the near future. I still have to send back the soil sample to test for lead in my garden. Alameda county offers a free kit to test the garden soil for lead. They also do in-home consultations which I opted not to bother with. I got my test kit a while back but haven't taken soil samples yet. I need to get it done today!

Please ignore my weedy yard and look at the happy strawberry and basil. The one with two long leaves is an artichoke.

This squash plant has gotten so big and has at least six or seven flowers in bloom. 

The tomato plant on the right is a lot bigger than the other one even though they started out about the same size. Yesterday we saw couple of green tomatoes on there, so exciting!

I transformed this dark and dirty corner of our house couple of weekends ago. I planted the two ferns from Berkeley Hort and some really bright and pretty ground covers. I added some compost to the clay soil and laid downweed blocker and a layer of mulch. The plan is to wait for the fern in the corner to grow bigger (it can get about 4 feet tall) and somewhat block the ugly gas meters. 

Notice how the fern on the left has some droopy leaves? After couple of weeks in the ground it's looking even worse. But I am still holding onto a sliver of hope that it will survive my black thumb. I found out the cats that use our yard as their litter box have discovered my mulch. There were several piles of their "business" the next day in my fresh mulch. How annoying!