Reflections, Realizations, and Bad Ideas

I returned last night from a 4 day vacation to the coast. Although I had someone very nice who was willing to water things for me, I came back and stood at my garden's gate, and I feel as if just that quickly I have lost the battle that is my garden.

Haul out the white flag.

Now that I've slept on it, I still feel like there is a lot of work to catch back up, and after time away I see some problems that I failed to identify until now.

In no particular order.

Problems:

- What in the world was I thinking with the peas? I set the pots up in rows just like you'd plant rows of peas. The tomato cage idea on the peas is working, although not as well as I had anticipated. My peas still don't seem to have enough room to 'go' anywhere. But the main problem is the row placement. I cannot reach the pots in the back! It's almost impossible to get enough water back there because of the tomatoes on one side and the squash on the other.

- Speaking of squash: those monsters are taking over my garden! The storage box idea is working great, but... give an inch, they take a mile. Instead of growing along the soil in the pot, they're... they're growing through the gate. And into the flower bench. And although I had pollinated 2 zucs before leaving on vacation, none set, and since I wasn't here to pollinate all this time, I can see half a dozen squash and zucs that probably didn't get pollinated by the bugs. Lazy bugs. So now I'll have an extended period of time without squash and zucchinis while the plants reset. Ultimately, however, I don't have enough room. Not in this arrangement. Maybe I need to back off to one plant each?

- The lavender needs a bigger pot. The more I look at it, the more I realize that poor thing is slowly dying from lack of water due to constriction in its current pot. I don't have one bigger on hand, which means a trip to the store if I want to keep it a live. Which I do.

- I have *got* to think of a better solution than those wimpy cages from the store for my tomatoes. While I was gone on vacation, they decided they'd grown vertically for long enough, and they tipped over into each other. So when I came back, I couldn't tell where one tomato began and another ended. I got outside and drove some stakes into the ground to hold the cages up, and I sorted the branches, so that will hold them for a little while.

- ... I may not be planting another Bell Pepper. That thing is just sitting there. It *is* getting visibly larger but good LORD could it grow any slower?

- My Roma tomato is still suffering blossom end rot. Ngh. 

- Back to squash. I think they're getting mold.

Ideas:

- Maybe I can do some emergency rearranging to save the hassle and confinement of the peas and squash. If I straightened the peas out to run along the wall of the house and set the squash in front. Sure, I'd be reaching over the squash to water the peas, but both would have ample sun and I could definitely reach them with the hose rather than with a hand pail.

Successes:

- The tubs for the squash: working great.
- The cages on the peas: not so bad.
- The bird netting on the strawberries: excellent! Sister brought in a huge handful of strawberries just yesterday, and they were delicious.
- My gnat solution is perfection personified.
- The barrel lilies are getting huge!
- I actually grew carrots!

Tis all for now.