Although chances are you don’t go to bed at night wondering how my garden is doing, I thought I’d post an update anyway, if only to encourage some dirty fun in your backyard. To be honest, it’s been slow going. I had to throw out all of the zuchinni (supposedly the easiest thing to grow), the chard never came up and the beans seemed to be in a holding pattern for a long time. The radishes, those are still doing well, and pretty much popping themselves out of the ground for me if I ignore them for too long. And the remaining plants are actually looking up, finally! (I think it was the seaweed and fish fertilizer!)

See that luscious green orb? I’m very excited about it. I actually get up every morning and look out the window to see if it’s still there. It’s going to be a red tomato and I hope I get to it before the birds do. There are actually 2 tomatoes growing, which I never would have guessed after seeing how badly the other plant did. Funny thing: I planted 2 plants in 2 places, and one did terribly. I figured out it was probably the soil–potting soil vs. my garden mix [possibly of doom]–and aeration.  Next year I won’t be wasting my other cedar planter on marigolds, I’ll do 2 tomato plants. Mmm, I love tomatoes.

Secondly, one of the marigold plants has an actual flower on it! Even though I just totally dissed them in the last paragraph, I’m excited that they are finally doing something. They supposedly attract snails (as in, encourage them to eat themselves rather than other plants), so I planted one in the raised bed too, but once I saw what the cucumber plants finally got around to doing I uprooted it.

Check it out! Gigantor leaves! And yellow blooms! With any luck these cucumber plants will be producing in no time. They’ve totally overshadowed one of the types of bean plants that is next to them and by the time I got in there to transplant the beans (that never quite took off) it looked like a losing battle. I’ll let cukes take over.  I noticed one plant trying to use my basil plant as support! (Basil is doing well too–I added some to fresh tomato sauce last week,  yum!) The tall bean plants in this pic are scarlet runner beans. No beans yet, but lots of plant, so I can’t complain.

Since 3/4 of the bed is pretty much empty (due to the other plants being duds) I have a lot of weeds, so I spent the morning pulling them. At this point I should probably think about what to plant there next. Suggestions welcome.