Herb Garden

I haven't given any updates on my garden, but it's actually been doing quite well since we moved. Much better than the last place where the little herbs I planted, basil, mint, rosemary, chives, were a miserable sight at the end of the summer. Even though we got help from our neighbours with watering while we went on our road trip. Our tomato plant gave one fruit, then died, and the fruit had turned bad before we even picked it ...

It turns out that the plants seem to rather like our front porch. And we have now kept alive for the summer several herbs and vegetable plants:
. Tomato plant - It has struggled a little bit, the first couple of months it only bore one fruit, then did nothing until we finally feeded it the plant food it was visibly starving for. It almost immediately started producing fruit, and we soon thereafter got a batch of fat beef steak tomatoes, most of which we ended up baking in the oven as part of our mozzarella-tomato bread. At that point we thought the tree was done, as it started to wilt and the branches came down. I gave it a last shot though, pumped it with food again, pruned the branches and the tomatoes started appearing again. Before long it was packed with them, so much that the main branch broke from the weight. I carefully tied the branches up again, and it doesn't seem to be doing so badly anymore. We are now waiting for some 24 tomatoes to ripen.
. Cherry tomato plant - This one has been very generous. We have recolted somewhere between 100 - 150 tomatoes from it already. The tomatoes ripen pretty fast and the plant has been furnishing us constantly with ripe fruit all summer and there is plenty more still to go. The problem here is that we are competing with the Scrub Jays for the fruit, because I have estimated them to steal probably about one third of our recolt so far. They are tempted by the red tomatoes but they have also, whether it is accidentally or not, broken unripe tomatoes off the tree. Since early this summer when I started noticing fruit disappearing, I have been suspecting the birds, but I have now caught them at the act several times. Actually, they won't even leave if you shout at them to leave the plant alone ...
. Bell pepper plant - It has grown very slowly, and we only recolted two yellow peppers yet (aside from a couple that went bad), but it has a number of fruits on it now, so I still carry hope ...
. Chilli pepper plant - We got several red chilli peppers from it earlier this summer (a total of eight), but then it stopped growing. It has a couple of fruits now but it doesn't look great.
. Basil plant - Actually, we are on our second one now. The first one we got was fabulous, it grew so fast, and so thick and so green. Then it got attacked by caterpillars, who feasted on it so bad, while also laying larvae under the leaves, that I finally gave up and got rid of the whole plant. I got a new plant, it's a different variety (as you can well see by comparing the pictures) that I don't like quite as much, but now I am prepared to deal with pests with a bio pesticide we bought for a little fortune. I've cut it down pretty agressively (and we twice made pesto) but it seems to be doing alright ...
. Rosemary bush - Actually, left overs of our Xmas tree! We just meant to finish it, before we threw it away, but I took pity of it, changed the soil, and now it's thriving.
. Chives - Same thing, we still had it from the old place and it looked pathetic. I changed the soil and since then it has multiplied.

Next year I mean to start up the tomato plants a little earlier. They don't take that much maintenance but standing in the sun all day they do need a lot of water. So does the basil plant, and we have to cut the flowers off pretty regularly. Otherwise, they're pretty easy. We're thinking about getting some mint too, and maybe oragano or marjoram. What we use the most are by far the basil, cilantro and rosemary. Problem is, I really haven't gotten any cilantro to thrive yet. Open to suggestions ...