How does my garden grow?

For some reason, I am really stuck on raising vegetables this year. I think it is Shelley's fault -- her apartment in California has a community garden and last year she attempted to grow salsa ingredients there.

My flowers are doing well, I've already got hummingbirds and bees and butterflies using the yard. The herbs are doing well, too, but they're mostly for the butterflies: parsley varieties, fennel, dill, rosemary, cilantro, and thyme varieties. But, I want to have some veggies, too! Even though, I may have grown my forest too well to allow enough sun for veggies.

This spring I decided to try both tomatoes and bell peppers in our yard. You may remember that last year's upside-down tomato planters yielded one lonely tomato; my hypothesis is that they were too wet last summer. So, this time, the tomatoes are in regular big pots, and the upside-down plants are bell peppers -- Huey (red) and Dewey (green). We have three, so one of the pepper plants, Louie (yellow) is in a pot. It should be a good comparison of methods. There are two tomato plants, Bert and Ernie -- they are different varieties. I stacked the deck a little by buying one transplant that had some blossoms already.

So far, Dewey is growing a bell pepper. It was barbie-size for a week or so, but has now progressed to the size of a ping-pong ball. Dewey had two other barbie-sized ones before, but dropped them on the ground, unless a critter helped him by dropping them. So, I'm thrilled that the third one has progressed to a larger size!

And, Ernie has the first tomato. It is a big heavy one and is finally starting to turn yellowish (soon to be red, I hope!) from green.

I have a new tool to help -- Roy found a moisture meter so I can test the pots to make sure they aren't too wet! That's a moot point this week with all the rain, but at least I won't be adding too much water and drowning them.