On Saturday morning, I passed by the thyme plant growing in my herb container garden and saw this!

ICK!!!! I don’t know where they came from or how they got to be over an inch so quickly but these little suckers were munching down on my thyme plant. I quickly picked them off and disposed of them and thankfully have not found any more…but why we have so many caterpillars around this year eating all our plants, I just don’t understand.

Speaking of which, the evil little caterpillars that were eating my jostaberry bushes have nearly been eradicated. I check the plants about once a day to see if I find any new bugs and still find a handful at times, but it’s nothing like it was the first day when the poor plants were just overrun with them. And I’m extremely happy to report that they are beginning to put on some new leaves which I hope to keep out of the mouths of those caterpillars…as well as big green grasshoppers like the one I found hiding in the middle of a leaf earlier today!

This weekend I planted one of the ginger roots that has been growing in the window. I still need to do the other one, but need to go dig a pot out of the cellar first. If I wasn’t afraid of losing the thing in weeds, I would just pop it in the garden…but I think I’ll just try them in containers for now and then transplant roots later after I’ve seen how they will do and know just where I want them since I’ve heard they can grow quite aggressively. The shoot on this one is continuing to grow so it would seem our planting strategy is doing ok so far.

We also planted one of the tomato shoots which sprouted really well in water. We’ll see if the little tomatoes on it start growing again. The second smaller shoot needs to be planted as well, I’m just trying to figure out the best place for it so it won’t be trampled by the dog.

Speaking of the dog, we had a mishap with one of the herb containers last week and she managed to empty the whole thing out in the courtyard. But somehow, I must have gotten the seeds back towards the top of the pot because it’s starting to sprout. Either that or there are weeds starting in the pot which I also possible. I’m not certain whether it’s basil or dill but I guess we’ll know soon enough.

It’s mystery partner is also starting to sprout so we’ll see what happens. These were extremely old seeds which we found in the barn when we bought the house. I’m rather surprised they are doing anything since the rosemary and parsley seeds are not. But I haven’t given up on them yet either.

When I did all the other herbs I also started a fresh pot of catnip, with two kinds of seeds for our kitties. They go crazy for the stuff and eat everything in sight so I’m giving them a bit of time to grow before I let the cats loose on it.

I also started lemongrass again, not only for us but also for the dog. It’s supposed to be the dog equivilant of catnip so we’ll see if Ayla likes it. I can only hope that she doesn’t go all crazy after eating it like our cats usually do with catnip. She’s nutty enough as it is, and when a 100 lb Newf goes crazy, you definitely notice!

And just because I haven’t posted much about them, our Fordhook zucchini plants from Burpee are doing very well. We ate two of them already and they were really nice and tender. This one is just about ready to come off and we have a bunch of little ones starting; I just hope I get a male blossom ready at the same time as all the female flowers so I can pollinate them. For whatever reason, our zucchini plants don’t do a good job of this themselves…but with a bit of help, we’ve gotten some nice results!


This thing is a mystery plant. When we came back from our vacation in Florida, this was one of the plants that was still alive. It was labeled as a Brandywine tomato but it hasn’t looked anything like a tomato until just recently. I thought for a while it might even be some sort of pepper or chili plant but I just don’t know. It has a few blooms on it now so I guess we will see if it does anything at all. But at the very least, it definitely doesn’t seem to be a weed anymore.

As you can see, our tomato plants are also doing pretty well still but we have a ways to go before we can harvest anything. Three of them are Long Keepers and one is a Big Rainbow from Burpee seeds. We tried to grow Big Rainbow tomatoes from a seedling last year but never got too many tomatoes from it. Not sure if they’re just not suitable to this climate or what. It’s definitely one of the slowest to produce but if the fruits taste good, I guess it really doesn’t matter. There should be plenty of others.