Thai basil, lettuce and beans

It seems like my Monday routine the last few weeks goes something like this: work in the garden in the early morning when its cool. Plant lettuce and beans.  Weed, weed,weed.

It was so hot and so dry the last couple of weeks that nothing seemed to grow except the weeds. Finally though with the rain this past weekend, the green beans are popping through the dirt.  The lettuce however was either all eaten by critters or cooked into dust in the hot dry dirt. I replanted lettuce for the fourth time this morning.

Part of the herb garden. Left to right back row:  Mint in bloom and sage.
Front row:  sweet pepper and three Thai basil called Siam Queen from Burpee. The pepper has been very slow to grown but I am sure it will smother the basil before the summer is over.

Siam Queen, Thai Basil, started indoors and then transplanted to the garden. At this time, they appear to be nice little well behaved bushy plants.

I usually plant sweet basil near the tomatoes. I love fresh sliced tomatoes with a little bit of sweet basil, some olives, salt, pepper and a little olive oil.  This year I decided to try one of the Thai basils and chose Siam Queen (probably because it was the only Thai basil I found on the seed racks anywhere), and I love it.  It's intensely aromatic and has dark red flowers - which I keep pinching off to make the plant bush out.  The flavor is stronger than regular sweet basil but its very good.  It's been slow to grow with all the heat we've had and  what with filling five, 100 gallon water tanks at least once a day for the last several weeks, I didn't spend much time watering the garden!  Mostly they received enough water to keep them alive, but with this weekend's rains - like everything else, they are growing like mad.  I highly recommend this basil.