Oh I was wondering how we would work the tomatoes this year… last year they did so poorly, rotting on the ground from neglect, we didn’t even cage them, I don’t know what we expected, but  this guy seems to have the answer! Trellis training - the way to go, and it looks affordable

Just got back from visiting our friends’ John and Brandy’s  place where we finally got a chance to see the couple of vegetable beds they put in this year (well, I think it’s mainly B’s project).  They’ve got tomatoes, zucchini, various herbs and some marigolds to go with the tomatoes.  We’ve been getting lots of rain out this way lately and it’s really causing our beds to explode.  I enjoyed a couple of strawberries the other day, we have been eating lettuce for a couple of weeks already and now we have some small tomatoes forming as well as small heads of  broccoli.  I can wait untill Alli has a chance to try my home-made-fresh-from-the-garden pasta sauce extraordinaire.  I learned how to make it from my old friend Mike who comes from an italian family and all the vegetables we use pretty much are grown at home.

We’ve had a couple of days of fairly hot weather with no rain here and it’s starting to show in the garden. Some of the lettuce is starting to loose its vibrancy and droop a bit (I’ll try and post pictures later tonight). I suppose I’ll give the beds a good drenching tonight and that should bring them back.
This just makes me more and more convinced that setting up a drip irrigation system is where it’s at in terms of ease of use and effectiveness. A friend of ours has a bunch left over from a garden we did last year at his place so I think I’ll give him a call and see if we can pillage it. I know for sure he has the main feeder line as well as the nipples and drip spikes to run off the main and into each individual plant. All that leaves is a water control timer for the faucet at the back of my place (or a rain barrel for that matter).