199/365 ladybug on dill

104/365 rainbow water

I was out watering the garden when I noticed a lovely rainbow reflection in the stream of water. Naturally, I had to grab the camera. Shoot with one hand and water with the other.

52/365 dill at night

Another nighttime shot from my garden. It's funny because I thought I had pulled all the dill last summer. But there was a LOT of dill in my garden and apparently I missed this one. Which turned out to be a bonus for me. I'm really enjoying this strange, ethereal brown tone of my garden images at night. It's certainly a very different look.

280-365 last harvest

Well, we made it about two or three weeks further into the fall this year before having to dig up the tomatoes. Not bad for Colorado. The watermelon was a surprise, as I was no longer watering that box, covering it at night, or tending it in any way, shape, or form. I thought there were no other watermelons, but here was this lone melon hiding out at the back of the box, just growing merrily along. Sadly, it still wasn't ripe enough, so it didn't have much flavor.

257-365 salsa harvest

242-apple

241-salsa

Photographically speaking, this isn't a great shot, but I just had to show these crazy plants. There are just two plants here - a tomato and a green tomatillo. See the white frame hiding out inside there? Those are two 10' PVC pipes arched over the box, which is 4x4'. The top of the arch is probably about 4 1/2 feet high. I am just amazed at the way these two plants have grown! They took over that box, big-time! I have a number of tomatoes, but I wasn't sure the tomatillos were ever going to do anything beyond have flowers, but I was happy to discover that I DO have some growing now. What you can't see is that there's a jalapeno on the other side of those two gigantic plants (with about a dozen peppers), so I'm looking forward to some yummy salsa soon!

232-365 watermelon

In my other not-technically-a-SFG box, I have ONE watermelon plant. With THREE tiny little watermelons. Yippee!! I've never grown watermelon before.

It's very exciting.

231-365 tomato plants

According to the Square Foot Garden book (apologies to Mel Bartholomew - mine is not technically a SFG because there are no wood lath pieces delineating my squares), I can plant ONE plant per square foot (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - I didn't go pull the book out). Which is what I did - I have precisely ONE tomato plant and ONE green tomatillo plant. Of course, since the box has four squares in each direction, there are some other veggies growing in there. Not that you could tell. I have gotten a couple of tomatoes and there a bunch of green tomatoes in there - just waiting for them to ripen.

The tomatillo, however, is concerning me. There are at least seventy hundred twenty flowers on there and not the start of a single tomatillo. At least not that I can see. As you can tell, that's rather a challenge. I feel bad for the jalapeno, green peppers, cucumbers, lettuce, and one carrot. I'm sure they'd like to have the sun. Okay, maybe not the lettuce so much. I think the lettuce is enjoying all the shade.

How will I make homemade salsa with my own garden harvest if the tomatillo never produces? Sigh.

The arched PVC pipes? Those supported some mesh to protect the plants when they were young and vulnerable. When the tomato and tomatillo began to press against said mesh, I decided it was time to remove it. So they're wrapping around the PVC and expanding wherever they can go.

230-365 purple tassles

201-365 apricot harvest

Last year, this tree offered beautiful, fragrant flowers for a few days. Ditto this year. I had absolutely no idea that it had an abundance of apricots to offer, too.

BTW, that's my almost 6' tall son down there. Quite a reach!

177-365 dill

Apparently dill spreads like dandelions or something. I was pondering pulling a bunch of it, when I discovered some striped little critters hanging out on them. After some research, I learned that dill is a great host food for the pre-Black Swallowtail Butterfly (caterpillar stage).

162-365 hail protection

See the hail in the corner? See the happy strawberries that were not beat up by hail? I'm SO grateful that I put some netting covers over my square foot gardens.

119-365 apple abundance

I know, more blossoms. They're such wonderful photography subjects, though. Looking forward to a terrific apple harvest.

114-365 sneaky cat

96-365 growth

How crazy is this?

92-365 mystery plant

Anyone know what these are? They weren't in my garden last year and I've never seen them anywhere before.

Anyone?

Bueller?