Drama! Days after planting part of the bed, we notice the earth looked tossed around and dug into a bit. We assume the culprit to be a neighborhood cat(s) (there are a few) who is using the bed as a large kitty box, which, honestly, I don’t even blame them.

Raise the nets! Raise the nets! We must fortify our position to defend against the tinkling kitties!

New Additions:

Tomatoes

We finally feel comfortable to put in tomatoes without fear of cold damage! This year, we are going to add in some miniature and some color:

These Juliets, a variety that bears a small fruit, should be really tasty for salad additions and tossing into a pasta or rice dish.

We decided on Early Girls and Sun Golds, two medium size varieties, for the bulk of the half barrel planter. We’re looking forward to seeing these plants develop deep into this big planter like our monster tomato plant did last year! Hopefully, these puppies will keep humming along all summer. This location gets the most sun on the property. We did get some scorching/drying out a bit last year so we’ll be mindful to keep it well watered.

Here comes the funk. These Sunny Boys will add some yellow to the red and green. I can’t wait to try these in a salsa or tacos or something of the sort.

So many tomato plants, we needed an additional planter. Thankfully, we had this last one laying about, certainly less aesthetically pleasing, but functional. AND… PEPPERS! or one, at least for now. Ms. IS can’t really do the spicy thing, nor the pepper thing for that matter sooooo not as much internal demand we’ll call it. But I did say SALSA! didn’t I? So, we have to have this one pepper plant at least… for now.

Raised Bed Bonanza!

My lovely lady and I didn’t coordinate very well with the actual planting of our little dirt patch. We ended up planting the seeds/baby plants at different times. She’d plant something, then I’d plant something and then we went nuts. On top of that, the aforementioned kitty play pen may have jumbled up some things. Sooooo, result: We have some garlic, patches of dill, chive, a nice tidy row of bull’s blood beets (yay!), sprinkled with eggplant and zucchini. It’s a moshpit really. Hopefully something will like the space and take off!

Theoretically, there’s a (somewhat) straight line of Bull’s Blood beets in there.

Little strawberries coming along nicely!!!

Big bro in town visiting styling some serious gear.