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Tomatoes and Sunflowers: This Summer’s Garden Gems

We enjoyed our first, albeit small, cherry tomato harvest last week, sweet and perfectly formed orbs of goodness. The plant looks healthy, with clusters of green tomatoes just a few days away from another harvest.

Garden fresh cherry tomatoes

Our second tomato plant is an heirloom beefsteak variety. The fruit is taking longer to form, given its size, but soon they’ll ripen as well. Eating garden tomatoes is one of the great pleasures of summer.

Ripening Beefsteak Tomato

Our highly anticipated plum and apricot haul has been a bust, unless you’re a bird, an opossum, a tree rat, or a squirrel.

Bluejay foraging in the fruit tree

When the dog’s away, the rest of the critters play, moving through the branches, sampling the fruit, then moving on as the fruit loosens from its stone and falls to the ground. One of the not-so-great aspects of summer is sun-baked, rotting fruit and the fruit flies that love them.

Apricots on the tree
Sampled fruit
Dinner for the fruit flies

Not for the first time, I’ve mused that since we’ve encroached on nature to a great extent, allowing the neighborhood critters to feast from the tree seems reasonable. There’s always a local farmer’s market.

Last week, I crawled along one of the pathways in the late afternoon and cleared most of the stubborn weeds that grow under the gravel and the stone path. I counted on the late-afternoon shade to get the job done.

Cleared of weeds for now

Gorgeous pink Gladiolas came and went, spectacular while they bloomed. I’m still not burying the bulbs deep enough, so the plants lean as they get taller and heavier. I need to dig even deeper. That said, they were spectacular just the same.

Sloping gladiolas

A few weeks ago I discovered a praying mantis ootheca or egg case on the fence. The case looks like half of a walnut shell. These insects are coveted by gardeners, so much so that you can buy egg cases at nurseries and online. I’m delighted to have spotted it when I did, and pleased to have the resulting hatchlings in my garden.

Praying Mantis ootheca, also know as an egg case

We see several fence lizards this time of year. This one played an unwitting game of hide-and-seek with me, darting under a flower pot when I walked up the path, then returning to the sun when the proverbial coast was clear.

Eastern Fence Lizard

We would forget about each other, carry on with gardening and sunbathing, and then startle each other again.

A single sunflower seed planted itself not far from our bedroom window, and it’s now twice as tall as the tomato plant and quickly approaching the height of our house.

That corner is nearly impassable these days, between the sprawling bougainvillea, the expanding tomato plant, the sky-high sunflower, and the overhanging succulents. I like to think of it as my secret garden each time I squeeze through.

Here are a few parting shots of this summer’s garden. It never fails to delight.

32 thoughts on “Tomatoes and Sunflowers: This Summer’s Garden Gems”

  1. We are still waiting for our first tomato to ripen Alys. We normally don’t grow any vegetables but someone gave us two beefsteak tomato plants in the spring and we are growing them in containers. Your garden looks wonderful and I can’t even imagine the work you have to put into maintaining it.

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    • I hope they ripen soon. In my experience, they start slowly and then in a snap you’ve got a crop. I’m often asked if my garden is a lot of work, and I think the answer might be yes if you thought of it as work. I love my time in the garden and I enjoy all aspects of maintaining it. I like the challenge of clearing weeds, trimming and pruning as needed, raking the gravel, planting bulbs, and general maintenance to keep things going. We have in ground irrigation so I only water the potted plants. After years of drought, the pots hold succulents and not annuals. They can go thirty days without water!

      Thanks for stopping by.

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  10. It’s too warm for stone fruit here, or I’d have the same battle on my hands. Our main fruit predator is flying foxes, or fruit bats, closely followed by lorikeets, cockatoos and our own possums. I don’t mind sharing with the birds and possums, but the fruit bats stink and leave very corrosive splats of poop on our cars, painted woodwork and decorating the sides of our water tank. We protect young banana stems by encasing them in black bin liners, tied tightly round the stalk and with a tiny opening in the bottom to let out water. It works about 70% of the time…

    Your garden is looking lush and lovely, and I’m suffering severe hydrangea-envy!

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    • Those fruit bats sound like a huge challenge. I’ve come to appreciate over the years that fruit trees in a garden can be both a gift and a challenge. Our lemon tree doesn’t appeal to anyone but us, so it’s nice to have one low-maintenance tree.

      The hydrangea are lovely this time of year. I wish we could ‘visit’ gardens a la Star Trek’s simulation rooms. Wouldn’t that be something?

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  12. Love the description of how you and the lizard startle each other! We don’t have Praying Mantis here – what do they eat, that they are so coveted? Your sunflower corner does look inviting… the kind of place a child would like to hide and have secret tea parties with the fairies. 😁 And your tomatoes look delicious. I couldn’t help noticing we have exactly the same green colander. I shall think of you each time I use it now! 🤗

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  13. Your garden is in constant motion and always changing whether you do it intentionally or nature takes care of that for you. I am so happy with this new place. I tried 3 times to grow anything at the other place. No lavender or rosemary down there, but it seems to be thriving up here! With some luck, I can build a small oasis though nothing will compare with your beautiful paradise. I love the lizard and the birds. You take good photos. Those tomatoes look luscious but the apricots make me a bit sad. Home grown are the best.

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    • Marlene, you’ve moved to a magical place. I’m so happy to know that plants are doing well, and scented ones at that. That makes me smile.

      I’m one lucky gardener living in a place that allows plants to thrive year round, benefitting from healthy soil and sun. The drought years were brutal, but since replacing all that llawn with natives and succulents, it’s a healthier ecosystem.

      We had sandwiches this weekend with the first juicy beefsteak tomato. There are over a dozen green tomatoes fullly formed that will soon follow.

      Fresh apricots are delicious. Next year I’m going to try some lightweight mesh bags i saw in the neighborhood. They’re open enough to let in the light, but unlike bird netting, they don’t have the potential to injure wildlife. I’ll cover the lower sections, and leave the rest for the garden visitors.

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        • We had ours pruned this year, and they suggested every three years. I agree that tree pruning makes a huge difference. I pruned our dwarf lemon a few months ago and it’s coming back beautifully. I’ve kept the tree compact so I can manage the work. The plum apricot graph is now huge.

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  15. Pingback: The Mantises are Here – Gardening Nirvana

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