Another Harvest and Garden Pics

We made another harvest this week, a couple more squash, zucchini, a good handful of strawberries that had not been half eaten and we went ahead and cut back some cilantro and lettuce.

Here's the first box, the beans have taken off and are blooming now so beans aren't far behind. You can almost see our cat keeper offer on the lettuce and herb box, we set some bamboo stakes into the corners and suspended more of the bird netting over the top of the box. So far this has worked and kept the cats out of the box. The pour little tomato we thought was done for after the wind storm has come back to life with the help of another bamboo stake, it's got a nice sized tomato waiting for color on it now and plenty of blooms.

Boxes 2 and 3 have really filled in now. The squash and zucchini are both doing great, the jalapenos have started to form and are almost to harvesting size, the onions are going crazy and we have little baby carrots going to town. The cucumbers are finally starting to take off and we picked our first the other day, it's kinda bent looking but it's a cucumber. The bell peppers I was worried about, the blooms kept falling off before doing anything and I've found it to be they weren't getting as much water as they like, I've upped the watering schedule and they get a nice big drink just for them as well.

You can just see the tip of the hanging eggplant we installed over the boxes, I'll do a better post on that later, it has taken off and changes everyday.

The rest of the tomatoes! The cherries are going to overflow here soon, there are something like 10 little bunches all looking to be ready right on top of each other, good thing Joe eats them like candy. The new little tomato has taken off and has a couple of blooms going so we'll be able to compare all three fruit sizes here soon.

It seems as soon as I take pictures something grows and changes but it will make for a great slideshow by the end of summer.

The First Big Harvest

So we've been picking strawberries since they went in, but this is the first harvest of our veggies.

The squash and zucchini have really taken off mom has been manually pollinating both plants seeing as even with the addition of some lovely lavender we seem to have one lone bee attracted to our garden.

These were picked last weekend and tomorrow there will be more ready to come off. I'll get more pics of the garden in total then.

It's not the taking of the photos that I can't keep up with it's that they grow faster than I can get the editing done. Sheesh.

Ugh Visitors

So it seems at least one of the "not indoor" cats from our neighborhood has decided to use our lettuce and herb box for its own use.

And of course we just planted a new round of seeds the day before that have now been scratched up and tossed around.

All I can say is ick ick ick. It does make me wonder now if it's not caterpillars eating the lettuce but cats, since they've left one head alone and it's doing great.

So now we've got to construct some form of barrier to keep the kitties out. This has become a big problem in our area due to the foreclosures, people have left their homes and cats as well. New people have moved in and brought yappy little dogs but I have a feeling they're being intimdated by the cats.

I'm going to try the barrier method to keep them out since there isn't any general consensus over solutions except for the hose and ours seem to sneak in at night, we haven't seen any cats yet.

I'll have new pics of the plants up soon, just have to get them off the camera and edited for the site.