The Ornamental Vegetable Garden: Beautiful weather after the rains

Lush and green, flowers blooming...it's lovely out there.

New growth on the tomatoes looks strange to me. Curly, like there's been herbicide damage, which there hasn't. I assume they're responding to the weather, but I don't recall this ever in the past.

The potato-leaf 'German Johnson' variety shows it clearly.

'German Johnson'

And the 'Speckled Roman' are showing it all over, even on the old growth. I haven't grown these before, but it just doesn't look right.

'Speckled Roman'

I'm very interested to see if they look different later in the year, and whether there's any resulting effects on the fruit. I sure hope not.

The walking onions are heading. I don't use these in cooking, because I don't care for the flavor, and they're tough. Also, they're really hard to control. They pretty much become a weed. They're taking over my compost hill. In this spot in the garden, I keep them limited by pulling. I like to keep some, because I think they're interesting to look at.

'Egyptian walking onions'

Arugula, which grows fast, is coming out. I've learned to sow the seed after lettuce has come up and begun to get good growth on it so I'll have comparable sized leaves from each for salads.

I haven't grown beets for several years. I'm excited to see how these 'Babybeat' plants turn out. I'm planning on having beet greens to mix in salads, and I hope the small beetroots will be tasty.

A few 'Primo Vantage' cabbage plants that I didn't pull completely out of the soil are leafing out. I don't know if there will be any useable heads from them, but I'm leaving them grow to find out.

Small Persian melon plants look quite happy after transplanting. I've surrounded them with marigolds to hopefully mask the aroma and discourage raccoons.

'Savor', my favorite, on the other hand, are not doing well. They didn't do well in the propagation chamber, so I'm assuming the seed wasn't still good.