As I sit here listening to the incredible new Radiohead release (A Moon Shaped Pool, one of those musical creations that gets better and better with each listen), it feels like a good time to share news from the garden. The season gets so busy so quickly that information gets lost. From planting to staking, tying to watering, feeding to troubleshooting to harvest, it all becomes a blur.

Let's start with a picture.

This is what the driveway garden looked like on May 21

Planting began on May 9 - most of the garden edging bales were planted with dwarf tomatoes. Most of the indeterminate non-dwarf tomatoes were also planted, in 5 gallon grow bags, on May 9. Another significant planting into grow bags occurred on May 12 - newly made dwarf crosses (my work last summer) - all of the new hybrids - as well as the first of the dwarfs from those crosses (F2 generation), as well as peppers and eggplant. A few remaining tomatoes went into bales a few days ago (see - I already am confused by exactly what I did when!).

Planting is one thing - getting it all into a final arrangement is quite another. That work happened on May 20 and 21. The driveway is now a combination of rows (eggplant, peppers), and rows of plant clusters (tomatoes) - each cluster of plants around a large container of spent planting mix, into which went the supporting stakes (that happened the last few days). Today I took my big ball of twine and did my first supporting tie for those indeterminate tomatoes that have adjacent stakes. Lots of staking remains - and once staked, regular tying and pruning (removal of suckers) and eventually, topping. This is the work that stretches out delightfully all summer long, culminating in the eagerly anticipated harvest.

The final count for this year's garden - 164 tomato plants, 35 pepper plants, 18 eggplant. That's a whopping total of 217 plants, 50 of which are in straw bales, the rest in containers of various sizes, most of 5 gallon capacity. I am going to be doing a bit of watering, I suspect!

Here are a few more pics - the eggplant and pepper rows, and a "tomato plant cluster". Just click on the pic below and it will change to the next one in the sequence - total of three pics.