It’s really been a great week in the gardens.  🙂  I think I am almost to the point where I can safely say the gardens are planted.  There may be a few things going in yet, but for the most part, now we just grow.

Here is a good overall picture of The Sunset Garden.

It’s definitely different from my last pictures!  My tomato plants really suffered right after I got them planted.  We had wind and rain all weekend, and I did lose several to the elements.  My initial plan for this garden was to use the Florida Weave to trellis the tomatoes, as that’s my favorite method for doing so.  But when we returned from a weekend away and I found tomatoes on their sides from the wind, I had to quickly change direction and started carrying over my portable trellis panels.

Here’s a good view of the tomatoes.

I think overall I lost about a dozen plants total, which isn’t bad considering I started with 100.   Later today I may stop by the garden center and see if they have any treasure left to fill the holes with, but as it stands, I’m pleased with how the tomatoes are doing.  I need to pick up some Tomato Tone to feed them, but other than that, they seem adjusted and ready to grow.

Back to the other side of the garden.

The fluffy green plants there on the bottom are the strawberries that were in the garden when I got it.  They are growing nicely, but don’t have blossoms yet.  I have no idea what kind they are, but if they were June-bearing I think I would be seeing some blossoms attempting to form.

To the left of the strawberries you can see my pole bean towers that I put in yesterday.  I used the tall red supports, and then push some bamboo poles into the ground inside the supports, and plant the beans around those.  I also added a layer of fencing around the outside of the red towers.  I just have no idea what to expect from critters.  I see veteran gardeners planting greens and lettuces with no barriers, so maybe the critters aren’t really a problem here?

For my part with the critters, my onions are coming up nicely all around the bed.

I keep accidentally stepping on them, but they are pretty resilient and spring back most of the time.  I need to give the onions some weeding TLC soon.  See that wet dirt pile there in the picture?  Today I planted some Bush Baby Watermelon seeds.  I was going through my seeds looking for what else I could put in the garden when I got to the melons.  This particular variety says they only put out 3 1/2 foot vines.  I think I can get that to run on the outside of my tomato plants and we could be in business.  There is another of these mounds on the opposite side of the garden.

One more picture from over there.

In this one you can see the second wet dirt pile that holds watermelon seeds.  In the landscape fabric closest to us you can also see the three brussels sprouts plants at the very end there.  At the far end of that row, if you look closely you can see my two tomatillo plants close to the strawberries- they are doing VERY well and are happy to be there.   Now look a little closely and you can see one lone circle of fencing between the tomatillos and the brussels sprouts.  THIS is a fun experiment, I hope.  I planted Buttercup squash in the exposed dirt there.  Then I stapled a “barrel” made out of fencing over the squash seeds.  The idea being that when the squash grows, it will grow up the fencing, and then down the fencing, and what grows on the ground from there will be a manageable amount of vines.  We’ll see.  Buttercup squash are my absolute favorite winter squash, so I’d love to find a way to grow them in a smaller space.

As you can see, I do have a small bit of room there yet that I could put a few things in.  We’ll see if the garden center has anything interesting yet to add.  Otherwise, I can always throw in a zucchini or summer squash plant.