Garden Chaos

You'd think with being home most of the time, my garden would be a little more tended to than it actually is. Fortunately, since we went the square foot gardening route, there has been virtually no weeding to do. Picking off bugs and grasshoppers has been surprisingly minimal.
I should have been doing a better job of pruning and staking. There are pepper plants buried under mounds of tomato vines.

The strawberries and beans and cilantro succombed to 114 degree heat. I planted late so we are now getting tomatoes, peppers, and zuccini. Looks like cantaloupe and watermelon soon too. We've had lots of cucumbers but for some reason most were too bitter to use unless doused in lime juice and hot sauce. I got tired of radishes so stopped replanting those. I pulled everything in that bed to get ready for our fall planting.

Not sure what happened to the corn there. It started out strong then just gave up.

I have one more bed to plant in but it doesn't have soil yet. Kinda ran out of time and money before I got to that one. I wanted to add some taller beds for root veggies too but might have to save that for next year.

Well, I've learned some things but not enough yet to get all that I wanted out of the garden this year. It gets really hot here so I need to figure out the best timing for planting. Definitely starting early next year and all of the kids want their own beds so I'm going to make a few smaller ones so they can each have their own to plant and tend whatever they want. More flowers would be nice too. Our landscaping is a little heavy on the palm trees and ornamental grass and not enough color but we have to find hardy, low-water varieties that will also survive our nippy winters. I'm used to San Diego non-weather and still need to figure out what grows best here besides the weeds and scrubby shrubs that adorn our local hills and and mountains.