Tomatoes Anyone?

Every year, we try our hand at a vegetable garden. Every year, we pretty much fail. We can partially blame soil conditions and lack of proper sun exposure, but really, most of the blame lies on lack of consistent watering. Last year we planted in half wine barrels and we harvested all of 5 tomatoes and 3 cucumbers. What a disappointment!

So this year, we've actually been paying attention to our garden and had amazing results! Dylan picked a prime spot of land (in the front yard, which is kinda white-trashy but "SO Pleasant Hill" as my cousin put it), rototilled the soil and we picked our plants. We went a little overboard on tomatoes (we planted 6!) because there is NOTHING better to eat than a fresh, vine ripened, homegrown tomato- even Dylan agrees with this! In fact, if you've decided that you don't like tomatoes but have never had one that is homegrown, please stop on by and try one- you won't be disappointed! We also planted pumpkin, zucchini, cucumber, lemon cucumber, watermelon (which isn't doing so well), basil and cilantro.

Even though our garden is doing well, it hasn't been free of problems:

Problem 1: the neighbor cats like to poop in our yard, especially in the plot of land we chose for our garden.
Solution 1: chicken wire. we laid chicken wire over the soil and cut little holes out where we planted. cats don't like walking on chicken wire, let alone pooping! we also planted some marigolds around the perimeter of the patch because we heard that cats and bugs don't like the scent of marigolds.

Problem 2: the mole. during emma's birthday party, a mole was discovered under a rock in the very back of our yard. it traveled through our entire yard, under a fence and into our vegetable patch. it then proceeded to dig tunnels around and uproot each plant. we'd stomp down the tunnels just to find new tunnels each morning.
Solution 2: dylan went out early one morning with a high pressure nozzle on the hose. he blasted the tunnels full of water in hopes of catching the little guy coming up for air. he found the mole flooded out under the fence. all he had in his hands was a sledge hammer so, obviously, he had no choice but to use that to knock off the mole. in our neighbor's driveway. at 6am. (also white-trashy, but hey, it worked!)

Problem 3: lack of water. in the past we have been terribly inconsistent in watering our plants. and if we don't kill them while we're around, they die when we're out of town.
Solution 3: water. it's amazing how living things thrive when they have enough water!

So far, we've harvested about 20 zucchini, 20 cucumbers and 8 tomatoes. But, as you can see from these pictures, there are about a zillion more to come!


(Grady is standing to the right of the zucchini plant. Look how tall it is compared to him!)

(cherry tomatoes)

(roma tomatoes)

(zucchini and zucchini flower)

(One of our pumpkins resting on the chicken wire)