Is it midsummer? I'm calling it that.

I planted the seeds in our planters May 31, a month and a half ago. I thought we'd have lush plants by now and possibly even things we could eat. I hate to admit it, but I don't have much more than tiny seedlings so far. I've had to plant lettuce three times just to get a handful of tiny sprouts.

I had been hand sprinkling the planters every day since I planted the seeds, even after I finished the drip system. Then we left town for six days. To my surprise, more seeds sprouted in the absence of my hand sprinkling! So much for keeping the soil evenly moist.

The potted tomatoes thrived while we were gone, too. We moved them in off the patio and put them in the tub in the hall bathroom (the one with the skylight). We put an inch of water in the tub and closed the door. When we returned, this is what we saw:



Yes, not only were the plants fine but a tomato had decided to ripen while we were neglecting it! It was yellow when we left. The bathtub was dry, and the soil in the pot was moist. I wonder if that means we should leave two inches of water if we leave for two weeks.

I was pretty excited about harvesting our first tomato, even though I'm not a tomato lover. I expected Phil to enjoy it, but it's still sitting on the counter. Oh, well. I plan to try the next one myself, within minutes of picking it. I want to decide for myself if it lives up to the hype that homegrown tomatoes get. Of course, maybe they'll stop ripening now that we've moved them out into the sun and started hand watering them again.

Remember I said I was worried about the salt grass when we planted the garden. It took about five and a half weeks for the first blade of it to emerge from the surface of one of the planters.

The anemic-looking inch-high seedling on the right is supposed to be a sunflower.
























The next day, more saltgrass poked out of one of PVC pipes Phil installed to hold hoops for covers. Here is a view from directly above.



This is not good at all. This grass has roots all the way to base of the beds and who knows how far below and how far laterally. The only way I know to kill saltgrass is RoundUp, and even that isn't a sure thing. I know commercial farmers use that in their fields, but it's not something I wanted to do. Pulling it just breaks it off at the surface, and it's impossible to dig out all the roots.

I am having serious doubts about being able to eat anything from our garden beds anyway. If our plants don't have a serious growth spurt pretty soon, there's no way there'll be anything edible by the end of the season. Anyone have a good saltgrass salad recipe?