In my post on saving money on plants, I briefly touched on the seeds I started for my garden this year. Unfortunately, the weather has killed most of those plants. I was hesitant to put things out early this spring because we were having temperatures down in the 40′s at night. When that stopped, we went straight to 100° weather during the day. By the time I planted everything outside, the heat was too much for most of the plants. My cucumber plants died, as did one of my tomato plants and my cilantro. I ended up purchasing larger plants at Lowe’s but those were planted later than I would have liked, so I’m not sure how well they will do, particularly the tomato plant. I started new cucumber seeds outside. The heat has kept them from growing as fast as they probably would if we were having milder weather. Neither the new tomato plant nor the cucumber plants have any blooms. I do have two cherry tomato plants started from seed that are planted in pots and have blooms. I also have three strawberry plants in a pot. The first strawberry of the season was eaten by some creature, likely one of my dogs. When I returned from my weekend trip last weekend, I discovered that the heat had nearly dried up all three plants. I’m attempting to nurse them back to health, but it doesn’t look promising.
My best luck has been with some plants and seeds that I planted in an old wine barrel my parents gave me a few years ago. I originally put the trellis in the barrel to keep one of my dogs out of it. She thought it was placed by the house for her digging convenience. The trellis has stopped that. I decided to plant store bought basil and cilantro plants in it (at the top of the photo). I then added some lettuce seed around the rest of the barrel (most of this can be seen in the picture at the bottom of the barrel). I had some pole bean seeds so I planted three of those in the center of the trellis. Normally, I would think that it’s a little too shaded by the house. But with the heat, I think the plants are doing well due to the protection of the house. Now I just need to find a good pesto recipe and cut back the basil before it completely takes over the barrel.
