NEVER ENDING GARDEN SURPRISES!

  Practically the only annual I bother with is Alyssum. It is just a lowly ground cover but it fills in nicely and blooms all summer long. I pot up the baby plants from their nursery jumbo paks and let them grow for about a month in the cold frame. This nice sunny morning  I ran out to the garden to lift the lid on the cold frame to vent it and my nose was overwhelmed with the scent of honey and vanilla from these little wonders! Gee, they really do have a fragrance! 

 The grafted tomato plants were delivered from Territorial Seed just 2 days ago. I left them on the kitchen counter overnight and they doubled in size! Here they are in the greenhouse, potted up and they've grown up and need stakes already. The larger plant is the wonderful slicer "Legend" and the smaller one is the double grafted Brandywine on one side and German Yellow on the other. I buy grafted plants because the hardy root stock they use is resistant to most of the viruses that plague tomatoes. 

 The geraniums are blooming their fool heads off...don't they know it's not summer yet? I guess since the geenhouse gets up to 100 degrees on sunny days, they're very happy to flower. It's time to throw the shade cloth over the greenhouse roof and lower the solar gain to 80 degrees!

My under-gardener was pressed into service yet again today to use the trusty truck to haul some big bundles of goodness home from the Grange...6 bags @ 3 cubic feet each of raised bed potting mix and Happy Frog top dressing. I have given up saying, " That's all that I'll probably need for this year!" He knows better, even if I believe it every time that I say it! Oye!