basil leaves in bucketThis has been a trimming week in the garden. First I trimmed my basil plants and ended up with a big bucket of basil, which I used to make Basil Lemon Pesto (recipe coming.) If you trim the basil plants, they bush out and produce much more basil. If I get more basil than I can use from a trimming, I just freeze the basil to use in soup and pasta sauce during the winter.

This is how the basil plants looked after they were trimmed, so you can tell they were pretty bushy before trimming!

I also trim my tomato plants a few times every gardening season. Once a branch gets two bunches of tomatoes, I snip it off above the second bunch, and of course the branches that don’t have any tomatoes also get trimmed. Trimming makes the tomatoes ripen more quickly and produce bigger fruit. If you want to read more, here’s a good post about Pruning Tomatoes from Fine Gardening.

Thanks to Nate, I grew a few tomatoes from seeds this year for the very first time. A late-season snowstorm killed some of the plants, but I still have three that are flourishing, and it looks like I’m getting some Berkeley Tie-Dye Tomatoes. (Thanks again Nate!)

This year I’m growing these little Thai eggplants called Kermit eggplant for the first time. (This is a super close-up photo, so this little guy is only a few inches wide so far.)

For a few years now I’ve been growing cucumber plants inside some of my old tomato cages. The cages keep the cukes up off the ground and make it easy to spot them. I’m starting to get 1-2 cucumbers every couple of days now. (Yaay, Greek Salad!)

I also cut a nice big bucket of kale this week, and after looking at quite a few recipes, I think this one is the Raw Kale Salad I want to try first.

So that’s what’s been going on in my garden this week. What’s growing at your house?

(If you want to see other garden updates from this year, you can click the label 2010 Garden Updates.)

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