Gardening Fun Time!

It's the middle of July now and my garden is in full swing. (Though I did get started later than I wanted to since we had a snowstorm once a week from mid-March to the end of April. That's not typical of my climate.)

The first of my sunflowers are starting to bloom and I like the deep orange color of the petals. I seeded a number of different varieties of sunflower in that bed, along with marigolds for a ground cover. I hope to end up with a wall of sunflowers of a variety of different heights and colors.  As a nice plus, the ground cover of marigolds I planted are not only very pretty, but they give this corner of the yard a very nice smell.

Watched tomatoes never ripen. Apparently.

The San Marzano seedlings I started last winter all died (I think they didn't get enough light), so I'm growing the Big Boy tomatoes that I bought from the grocery store instead. 

I planted three vines, and have plenty of tomatoes growing, but nothing ripe yet. I have a feeling that in a couple of weeks, I'll have more tomatoes than I know what to do with.

In the bed...

Out of the bed...

... and in the yard. And still growing.

And squash ate my yard! This monster vine is a volunteer. I've got a few little squashes (squish?) growing on it so far, but I've gotten lots of squash blossoms off of it; they are very tasty stuffed with cream cheese and fried.

Other than some chilies in pots and some basil, that's pretty much it for this year. I've discovered from all of this that I really like gardening. Next year, I think I'll be nice to my friendly neighbourhood pollinators and plant a lot more flowers (and between my vegetables).  Also planting climbing plants such as peas or cucumbers would be a good way to get more use out of my available space. Finally I'm not ready to give up on starting heirlooms from seeds and next year I want to try growing Cherokee Purple tomatoes and more San Marzanoes.