Teatime and Summer Garden

Hey all! sorry I haven’t posted here in so long, I’ve been blogging about my hike across Europe here: http://www.thetestofwisdom.wordpress.com

In the meantime my garden has really been doing well this year! I’ve got about 8 tomato bushes growing now, all different kinds (and due to the labels washing off I have no idea which ones 🙂 ).  I’ve also been making a LOT of iced tea with what’s on my balcony.  The rose and lemon thymes I got have been going into basically everything I eat, they’re ABSOLUTELY worth having on your balcony garden!

Today I’m making 2 kinds, an herbal mint tea and a  sencha-herb tea.

4 mint herbal tea

cinnamon mint

chocolate mint

spearmint

spanish mint

raspberry leaf

strawberry leaf

rose thyme

and honey.

Put in a tea bag, put tea bag in jar, add boiling water, stir in honey.  Put into the fridge, wait a while and voila!

 

Sencha-herb iced tea

2 pinches of sencha

a large sprig of rose thyme

2 small sprigs of lemon thyme

and honey.

not a very good picture

Follow the instructions above!

 

Below are some photos of how my balcony garden’s doing…you can see I got some motivation and painted the table!

nasturtiums, cinnamon mint, strawberry

hyssop (left) and lovage (right)

Rose thyme. you need some.

clover

The box of pretty. Normally I only grow plants I can use somehow, but this year I made an exception and got begonia (left), dahlias (middle...they're in between blooms right now, but are a dark pink and white), and heliotrope (right)

my snapdragons. they're not looking so good this year but as long as they keep blooming I'm happy!

(more or less) clockwise: mystery tomato, Spanish mint, spearmint, chocolate mint, frankincense, Blueberry, St. John's Wort, snapdragon, raspberry. the sprout at the bottom is a peach vine cantaloupe.

strawberry

marjoram. after 3 years of looking grim, it decided this year that it wants to LIVE.

tarragon, ivy, Spanish mint (seriously, I have way too much of this!)

moonglow tomato and red basil

cream sausage tomato. I love this variety (cream and green sausage) because the plants are bushy and you get TONS of tomatoes all summer from them!

gold oregano and lemon thyme. i use both of these pretty much every day! I'm thinking about transplanting the marjoram gone wild into this pot, as there's enough extra room for it to grow.

mystery tomato on left and right. The unknown ones will either be mr. stripey, black from tula, or green sausage. I'm thinking both of them are green sausage tomato because of the way they're growing outwards.

more mystery tomatoes. I think the one at the top will be mr. stripey or black from tula. the bottom right plant is a monkey face pepper plant, which is actually much taller and healthier than it looks in this photo. It's starting to bud.

red roses. it's still recovering from it's 3 week hiatus on the scaffolding, but I'm hoping it recovers enough to give me some roses this summer!

pear tree, rose, round zucchini. The zucchinis are looking good this year! I have hopes. Also, I've been informed that the reason my rose plant changed totally between summers is that the main plant is dead, and this is the the root it was grafted to, which probably won't bloom. I'm not sure if I'll pull it up or keep it. I kind of admire its balls.

blueberry and clover. I thought the blueberry had cooked to death on the scaffolding while my balcony was being fixed, but with some shade and a lot of water it came back to life.

view one

view 2

 

Have a great week!