Grafting Again

This is a great miniature hosta with loads of flowers - no I don't know the variety.
The purple devil plant - yes, that's the name from the catalog.
The Italian dandelions seem to have a different flowering process.
The tobacco loves this hot steamy weather - we are growing it for its flowers.
This seasons first ripe tomatoes.
This is the plant that I broke the terminal bud out of and it has recovered nicely.
Leaf spot.
Poor broccoli heads.
These potato flowers are really pretty.
The next batch of grafted tomatoes.

After the excitement of earlier this week things has calmed down. The lettuce has made a comeback but I had to replant most of the pole beans. I was trying a new variety of pole bean this summer but most of them were lost to the ground hog. I think I have maybe one or two hills and the rest I planted again with my old saved beans. I don't know what that variety is called but we like it and we should get a crop. The ground is warm so they have already started pushing up and should catch up with the few others quickly.
I picked the first tomato today but I am not sure which variety it is ( records, records, records?) I have a picture of the tomato that a few weeks ago that I broke the terminal bud off. The plant has replaced the leader with a sucker and has hardly slowed its growth. I have a fair crop of green fruits on most plants so we will have plenty of tomatoes soon. With all the rain, leaf spot has returned even with straw down so I have started to cut off the infected leaves. I never compost any tomato plant parts but take them to the city leaf dump. (I do the same with cucumbers.) Even if I cut off leaves the first foot up, the tomato plant fruit production does not seem to be affected. Some of this years plants seem more susceptible to leaf spot than others so that might be a consideration for whether a variety is grown again.
The broccoli is ready for harvest but I am not impressed with the flower heads. I don't know if it's the weather - too hot for broccoli - or just the variety, but the heads are small and bolting fast. We will have to see what the side shoots look like for the final decisions. We have also had peppers as a breakfast side with scrambled eggs - the variety is "Healthy" and they are an early harvest so they are not fully mature, but good.
The melons and cucumbers are finally happily growing up the trellises and I have flowers and some developing fruits. Even the zucchini have flowers and small fruits but watching the roadside, I see that the Chicory is blooming so that means Squash Vine borers are on the wing so its time to protect the plants. I will mound more dirt up around the stems, check the undersides of leaves for eggs and maybe dust with a bit of Sevin just as a precaution.
The potatoes are flowering. This years plants have particularly beautiful flowers as the above pictures can attest. Now in a few weeks we can try stealing a few new potatoes for an early taste of the corp.
I pulled out the pea vines and thinned the parsnips, planted more egg plants and the celery root and as the heading says, grafted a third set of tomatoes. This time I put "Green Grape" on the Red Peach root stock. I really don't think I will get fruits but at least I get the practice of grafting. I think all the tomato seed is on sale so I think I will buy some just to practice a few more times.
Susan and I are both part of a Triathlon sprint relay team, along with friend Mary Ann, this coming weekend in Door County ( you can check it out at www.doorcountytriathlon.com )and I also have an art fair to attend as an artist selling my original lampowork glass beads at the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum Art Festival in Neenah, Sunday July 18 from 10-4, so I think that there may be a brief pause in the posting so we can catch our breath after next weekends back-to-back activities.
Happy Gardening