Garden: Zucchini Gone Wild

It's been almost two weeks since I posted an update on the garden. I took some new pictures this past Monday night. In less than four weeks the garden has gone from this:


To this:

You can actually see the plants in the garden! And now for a little update on everything.

First off the zucchini are by far the biggest plants in the garden. They have huge stalks and leaves now but still no flowers. The picture doesn't do it justice:

The grape tomato plant has flowered and started growing little fruits. I can see a lot more flowers forming so I should have a lot of grape tomatoes to look forward to in the near future. Ranch black bean dip here I come (I will post this recipe sometime - it's the best!).

The sunflowers are the second biggest plants in the garden. One foot down, eleven more to go my friends:Watermelon is growing nicely as well:

These are the yellow bell pepper plants that I bought at a local nursery. I don't feel like they have gotten any bigger since I planted them but they do have tiny little buds on the top. Hopefully they will flower soon.

Despite a beetle infestation the beans are doing pretty good. The bush beans have gotten rather large and are putting out new shoots and leaves and the pole beans are starting to climb the supports. Bush beans:

Pole beans:

And then finally the strawberries. I have picked 10-12 strawberries from my two plants so far. They have been very delicious.

We've added two eggplant plants that were purchased at a local nursery and planted them where the brussel sprouts were before they all died. They don't look too exciting right now so I didn't post a picture. We direct seeded broccoli on Sunday but I'm afraid the seeds were washed away in the storm.

I've also added two mint plants. Mint is supposed to help repel pests in the garden. The thing about mint is that it grows like crazy and quickly takes over everything. So upon a recommendation in a gardening book I planted two mint plants that I purchased in clay pots and set them in the garden. Hopefully that will keep it from spreading everywhere. I also planted some catnip seeds in a pot in the garden. Catnip is part of the mint family so hopefully it will also repel pests.

The last thing that I have added to the garden is nasturiums. These are flowers that are also supposed to help repel pests like marigolds. I have direct seeded these in a row along the fence by the watermelon and also in a pot set in the corner of the garden. They look really pretty on the seed package so hopefully they did not drown in the storm.

It's amazing to me that all these plants have grown in less than four weeks. I can't wait until the actual vegetables start to grow!