It was tough trying to decide whether to do this as a bunch of tweets or as one post. I probably could’ve easily done it either way. LOL

My garden seems to be doing fairly well. Not as well as I had originally planned but most of what’s growing should be ready before Fall. LOL

My sugar pumpkin is only a foot tall but is already producing buds.

The sunflower is almost 2 feet high. While it still has about 4 more feet, if all goes well this will be the first sunflower that I’ve grown that will actually flower.

I may have incorrectly identified the Super Sweet 100 tomato. I assumed that since it was growing so robustly it must be the SS. But now it’s got large flowers on it that I don’t recognize. I guess we’ll find out in a week or so. 😀 I’m pretty certain I do know which one is the Orange Flesh With Purple Smudges, due to the tinges of purple along its stem.

Ants are still eating my radish leaves, along with a bunch of carrot seedings. Damn! And I was hoping this bunch would be the good crop. I hope that enough of the Kaleidoscope Mix will survive, though. I’ve always wanted to see red and purple carrots.

The cucumber has found the fence. I coaxed a feeler over to it yesterday and this morning it, along with two others, have wrapped themselves around the wire.

My watermelon and pepper plants seem to be recovering from Glenn’s weedwacking. If I don’t have watermelons this year I’m so going to kill him!

The spinach is puny and bolting as seedlings. They do get some shade. I think it’s mostly because of the crappy loam Glenn brought home. It’s too heavy and dries out too fast.

The last of my first sowings of lettuce should be ready for harvest within the week. Also grown in the loam, they took twice as long as the ones I planted in potting soil. 😛

Since I plan on dumping the loam I only planted enough lettuce to fill the railing box, filled with potting soil, for the second batch. They are doing quite well. The third batch was sown last week, in those Jiffy peat balls. I did double this time as I hope to have another railing planter by the time they are ready to be transplanted. I love lettuce!

Only one of my cantaloupes sprouted. 😛  It’s about an inch high because I planted it a month late and it took forever to sprout. If I get melons by October I will be happy. LOL

I am incredibly jealous of the Asian family on the other side of Swanton Street. They converted one side of their lawn into a raised bed that is about 4 feet by 8 feet. In it they grow a bunch of veggies. Along side it, in the walkway, they have about a dozen planters filled with peppers and other small veggie plants. And then there’s the plethora of planters bordering the other side of the lawn, filled with flowers. I will have replicated that garden (well, as much as I can replicate it given that I don’t have a yard) by next year.

Just received a letter from my landlord. It included a letter from one of my neighbors. It appears that she has issues with both my garden and my putting clothes out to dry on warm days. She claims I’m being inconsiderate of my neighbors. A few facts:

1. I’ve been here 7 years longer than she has. In fact, aside from one other family (who arrived six months before we did), I’ve been in this complex longer than any other tenant.

2. I’ve been hanging my laundry outside for almost as long as I’ve been living here.

3. I’ve been gardening for at least five years.

4. She regularly runs into both Glenn and myself, has chatted with us, yet has never brought any of this up with us.

5. She parks her car in the same fire lane my garden is in. I know this because if her car’s exhaust doesn’t set off our carbon monoxide detector, the squealing of her brakes (which she rides) wakes us up in the early morning.

The bitch in me is saying she’s being hormonal and hypocritical. Which bitch should I strangle? 🙂

I was rearranging my schedule on Google Calendar (because those two sets with the free weights just weren’t going to happen today) when I discovered that today is the last day to plant tomatoes and peppers for this year, and I was out of pepper seeds and soil. So off to Mahoney’s I sped!

I picked up both Bell and Jalapeno pepper seeds from New England Seed Co. I’ve decided I like their seeds best. In addition I found some more seedling trays to replace the ones that mysteriously disappeared last year. They are just the right size for the pellets I had left over from last season. When I run out of those I can use the organic soil I also picked up (and was initially overcharged for).

As soon as I got back I commenced to sow. Each tray has nine slots, so I filled up one tray with Bell peppers and another with Jalapenos. I have had such shit luck with peppers in the past I figure I’ll be lucky if one plant of each lives long enough to produce fruit. 🙂 I also planted a tray of cherry tomatoes but I LURVES dem! IMHO one can never have too many cherry tomatoes.

Naturally, the kick off of the local gardening season has now got me pumped for the rest of the season. *shows off green thumbs and toes* Whoo hoo!