We're far enough into the growing season now for me to discover some surprises in the garden beds due to free-wheeling labeling practices on my farmer's market purchased plants.
For instance, in my last attempt at a veggie garden, one my my "bell peppers" turned out to be a banana pepper. This year, I once again have a fully grown "bell pepper" that is distinctly not bell shaped. Is it a hot pepper? A sweet pepper? Is it even ripe? I have no idea. Based on a preliminary search of the Johnny's catalog, my guess is it's a "Mellow Star" Japanese-style sweet pepper and usually eaten green, but probably not the "Yankee Bell" I thought I bought.
That beautiful rainbow of cherry tomatoes? Supposed to be a sauce/plum type called "Juliet". My plan was to make salsa and sauce out of my tomatoes, since I'm not a big fan of eating tomatoes straight, but we'll see. In any case, I'm going to have a lot of them!
I'm not to worried about my mystery plants though, it's a good way to try something new, but it does make it harder to replicate if I find out I really like it!
With the exception of the broccoli, which is struggling against dual attacks from woodchucks and some insect I can't find (probably cabbage moths), everything is growing well at this point. I've been enjoying some delicious salads and pesto and best of all the blueberries are starting to ripen! We put bird netting over the bush this year, in hopes to getting to harvest more fruit than usual, fingers crossed for some blueberry muffins soon!
