on the deck

That weed plant I kept in a few pots to see how it grew, has flowered. Tiny little things on long tall stems.

The whole thing has become leggy and it's not attractive anymore plus I still don't know what it is, so I don't want it seeding all over the place.

I cut down all the flower stalks and chopped up most of the plants for compost- done with them. Only one which still looked rather nice after loosing its top, was kept. I think its leaves look a bit like parsley.

Coleus here are doing nicely. I've kept them in part-shade under the tomato plants. Not having the problem with wilt on hot days like I did last year.

Moved the stevia plant over to sit in tomato shade, too. I thought this was a sun-loving plant, but it has been wilting almost every afternoon even though I keep it well-watered. Either it's too hot, it hasn't recovered from transplant yet (I potted it up the day I bought it) or I'm overdoing it on the watering...

Here you can see all my tall cherry tomato plants. In front of them, the potted coleus, then the young pepper, stevia, sage, and that unknown weed in front. Just off to the left, older pepper plant and a peek of the cosmos-

which is looking lovely. I quit cutting its flowers to bring in the house because they drop petals fairly quickly.

I usually take off the lowest stems on my tomato plants, just to make it easy to water without splashing too much foliage.  I don't usually think about suckers- can't remember if I removed them or not last year. This time, I left them on. Noticed one day it had been too long since watering, and some foliage was yellowing, droopy. They didn't recover after watering, instead the stems turned yellow and began to drop off. I went out there yesterday to cut the yellowed stems completely- it was maybe two or three on each plant. Noticed that every single one was a smaller stem that came out below a main stem, and had no sign of fruit forming. Suckers? I'm not sure. But obviously the plant discarded them in times of stress, saving its resources for the fruiting branches.