Hibiscus Sabdariffa - emerging buds

Today I walked out onto my backyard porch which is of course very hot because of our hundred degree weather.  Right now literally it is 100 F.   That's pretty intense.   Luckily the Hibiscus Sabdariff, or what I like to call Jamaica, which husband says is not, is on the porche and proteched by shade.    It only gets the sun up until around noon.   Which is good because it starts to wilt if it has too much sun.    I don't know if it was lack of hardening or if the El Paso sun is too intense for it.   Okay well the bottom line is I discovered flower buds.   Of course I was very excited and ran back inside for my camera.   Here is what I took.

German Chamomile

This is one of the exiting herbs I have growing right now.   What is so exciting is that its flowering.

March 1

March 24

April 28

May 11

May 22

June 3

June 7

Abandoned

You're probably thinking I abandoned my blog.   Yes,...well no, I'm writing to it now.   Okay but there is a huge gap between the last time I wrote and now.
This is what I will do.   I will go by each plant and show a progress of it throughout the time I've been absent.

First though I'd like to share some cute photos of my garden companions.   The Chihuahua is just a visiting companion though.

A Citrus Tree

Lemon Tree

So the fact that I've been ignoring my blog because my husband is here means my husband is not very good for my blog.   But on the other hand he has helped me plenty in my garden.  He has put a few things in the garden as well as re-potted some of my plants.   But what I'm most excited about it my citrus tree.   Among our many visits to Costco he pointed out a papaya tree.   Intrigued I went to take a closer look and saw citrus trees as well.   They had lemon and orange.   Then there were grape vines.  I didn't know they sold these in El Paso.   Frankly he was surprised and as was I because these guys, excluding the grapes will die in the winter.   Well we walked around the store and I told him "You know what.   I'm getting the lemon tree.  Otherwise I'll regret it."  So we went back for it, he picked one and bought it for me.  It is now its sitting on my back porch. 

Lemons

The pot it was in was too small for it already as the roots were starting to show on the surface of the soil.   So we put it in the largest pot I have.   The one I had bought last year for the tomato plant.   So my lemon tree is now the proud dweller of my largest pot.   Its in there for this year because it will be coming in for the winter.   We'll see if it doesn't outgrow the pot by then.  Oh and it took a whole bag of my potting soil.  The one I had just bought.  All 55 quarts.  We picked the lemon tree with the least amount of fruits that looked healthy.  This is so that it will take the transplant better and to make sure it is not over fertilized and dies at my house.   Okay so here it is as well as the small fruit it has.

Honey, that Tomatillo is Egglplant

Eggplant

I've been away from my blog for a few weeks now.  Why my husband came into town for two weeks for the first week I was super busy cleaning the house and filling the refrigerator with food he likes.  Then of course the send weeks he's in town.  This week I have no more vacation so I'm forced to sit in front of the computer instead of enjoying his company because of work.  I gave him a tour of the garden when he got here and saw if he could identify some of the plants I had in the garden.   One of them was what I called Eggplant.   He said it was tomatillo.  But not recognizing what the eggplant looks like he just accepted what I told him.

A few days later we were out shopping at Costco.   They had a wonderful variety of vegetables and herb plants for sale.   One of the most impressive was the lavender with its purple flowers.  They also had chives, tomato plants, cilantro, rosemary and other stuff.  Then I spotted one plant that looked like one of the unknown mystery plants that I have which I planted from seed.  Something I forgot to label and could not figure out what it was after all.   Well that mystery plant looked a lot like the eggplant at the store.  And I had an "OOOhhhhh" moment (light bulb).   My mystery plant is eggplant.   That means I had accidentally labeled some tomatillos as eggplant.  No wonder it seemed that I hadn't planted any purple tomatillo.  I had planted more because of that and now I have a lot of purple tomatillo plants.  So yes my husband was right.  That was tomatillo.

Eggplant

Okay so if you look at my post on March 31st, 2011.   That's all purple tomatillo.   My bad.  Sorry for the confusion.

This pictures really are eggplant.

Eggplant

Eggplant Bud

Eggplant bud

Roma Tomato Transplant - Tomato Row Complete

Previously I'd shown the transplanting of the Money Maker tomatoes and of the Better Boy Hybrid tomatoes.  I had the Roma tomatoes in plastic gallon size milk cartons.  This has been my best homemade planter yet.   I especially loved the handles I left on them.   It made it really easy to transport them in and out of the house on cold nights.  The Roma tomatoes were one of the first tomatoes I planted.  These were in the eggshells.  Hence why they are so big in size compared to the others.   You will find these on the left.

Roma Tomato Plants

  The last one at the end looks a little scrawny.  This was one of the ones that I pulled apart because they were too close together.   So I played with the roots a bit and I imagine it is still somewhat shocked.  In addition to that when I was cutting apart the gallon to pull them out I noticed that it did not have very good drainage as it was holding plenty of water and not letting it run through.  So we'll see how this scrawny plant comes along.   I have more tomato plants I can put out so I'm not too worried about loosing it.   I do hope it will make it though because Roma tomatoes are awesome.

Eggplant Flowers

On my daily trip today of watering my plants a saw little yellow specs on my eggplant plants.   On closer inspection I went to go get my camera.   This time the camera on my phone would not do as the flowers were much smaller and difficult to capture.   So I instead switched to my 12 megapixel camera for clearer pictures and better focus.   Here is my Egg plant.  Perhaps I'll have little eggplants in time for Easter.   That would just be darling.  There were bees quietly visiting these as well.