Beautiful and interesting plants. I love your Cosmos. I grew Cosmos this year for the first time in over 15 years, and I am glad to see that they are not the same huge, overpowering plants that they used to be. I got some double-click and Ladybug in a trade and they are only about 18 inches tall with double pink and yellow flowers. Yours will be nice choices for next year. I also have three of those little petunias that are white and purple. Wonder what they are.

Great pictures, Fran!

The red and orange Cosmos look very similar to the Dwarf Ladybird Mix that I grew last year in front of the porch. I tried Profusion Zinnias in that area this year, since they are a bit shorter, but they are just now starting to bloom, so I may try something else there next year.

Your tomato plants look great. Of the ones on your list, I am growing Black Cherry, Cherokee Purple, and Sweet 100's. The Cherokee Purples are the furthest along, but I noticed that a couple of them had cracked at the top near the stem. Have you ever had that happen? How does that Tiny Tim taste? It looks like a good candidate for a pot on the porch. My house faces south, so even things on the porch get full sun for much of the day. This year, I have a Mini Bush Yellow Cherry there, and it is tiny, only about 6" - 8" tall so far, and has a couple of tomatoes on it that are the size of a pea.

We'll have to have a thread this fall to compare all of the varieties of tomatoes everyone tried this summer.

Bonnie

Fran,you are an awesome gardener and we are so lucky you are kind enough to share your garden with us! Looking forward to more pics!

oops, never noticed that the pic for the cosmos psyche didn't go through correctly. sorry about that but

here is the cosmos psyche
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Northerner, I surprised that your double click are only about 18 inches tall. It's supposed to grow to 4 feet. I had some last year and they did get that tall. I wasn't impressed with them so traded the seeds from that last fall and didn't grow them this year.

Finally figured out what the orange and yellow cosmos is. It's cosmos diablo and I forgot that I had WS those seeds this year.
Just have no idea what the orange ones are and the red one. I didnt' have those last year and only sowed seeds that I saved of
gazebo lavender
sonata fushia
psyche white
candystripe
picotee
diablo
gloria
sonata lavender
daydream
seashells white
seashells pink
pied piper
versailles red
sonata white

so where it came from, the red is beyond me.

I have no idea what that little white and purple petunia is either. I only know that the seeds came from a very dark purple petunia and or a very pale pink petunia that my neighbor purchased just before a local nursery closed for the month of August. She couldn't say no to the price and she planted them all in one pot. So the seeds where a mix.
I have a string around the flower so that I can save seeds from it and not mix them up with the other seeds.

Highaltransplanter, my plants are huge, but the toms are still small. Last year some of my cherokee purple did crack on the top but they still tasted wonderful, wouldn't be without them. The extremes in weather temps and water can cause toms to crack, but to me that is part of growing your won tomatoes in the garden and enjoying them.

Tiny tim has a sweet but a bit tart flavor to it, and I didn't find the toms that small when ripe, about the size of a sweet 100. My 25 year old daughter likes them better than the sweet 100.
I never heard of the mini bush yellow cherry and couldn't find much about it when i did a search. sounds interesting though and one I would like to try as well.
I should have plenty of saved seeds from the tiny tim and my other toms for trades in the fall.

Angie, thanks for the complement, not sure I would say I am an awesome gardener though. Some of my plants are about as sick looking as you can get and not sure why.
Some has to do with the craziest weather I have seen in my life. At the moment the news and weather people are telling me that more rain has fallen in the month of July where I live than has fallen since the 1920's.
Gee, didn't need to make me feel worse about the weather and all the rain than I already do.
And the severe thunderstorms that have moved through on almost a daily basis for almost 2 weeks has been unreal.
But that's the life of a gardener. Some years are better than others and it's either feast or famine when it comes to good weather.

A pic of one of the storms that went through about 2 weeks ago, taken from the back door. No, I don't live in the tropics or a tropical rain forest. I live in a suburb northwest of Boston MA.
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Fran, thanks for the tomato info. The Mini Bush Yellow Cherry is a Russian heirloom that I purchased from Heirloom Acres Seeds (see link). This is my first year to grow tomatoes from seed, so all 9 of the varieties I'm trying are new to me. I can't wait to taste them all, to see which ones I want to add to next years list! With all of the trading I did this past winter, I ended up with 25 different types of tomato seeds, so I have quite a few still left to try.

With as many different types of Cosmos that you grew last year, I wonder if there was some cross pollinating going on?

Bonnie

Here is a link that might be useful: Mini Bush Yellow Cherry

Bonnie,
Thanks for the info and link on the mini bush yellow cherry. Sounds like one I would love to have seeds of to try next year.

I've only had a cosmos cross once in all the years I have grown them. I collected the seeds from that one and for lack of a name I have called it Painted look as it looks just like i painted the edges of it with a paintbrush and fushia paint. And this cosmos has stayed stable with the seeds for the past 4 years.

So far all of my cosmos have been blooming true to the seed collected as I collect and save all the seeds separately from each other.
Some have not bloomed yet, so we will see in time if they all bloom correctly. I do know, though, these orange and red cosmos are not self sown plants or seeded by the birds, they are plants that I did sow and plant myself.

Fran

Love your cosmos photos. I only have self sown ones this year and am waiting to for them to bloom. I am adding an annual bed to the front yard this year and will ws cosmos for that bed this winter.

LOL, that is an odd petunia.

We could use some of your rain as though not in a drought yet we are several inches below normal and I have been watering the beds and the lawn.

Pretty flowers, Fran. And it looks like you had a monsoon. Our frequent, heavy rains of early summer seem to have left for the rest of the summer. It's getting dry again here.

Karen