Garden

My garden is just bustin' out! Last year, which was my garden's first year, I had pretty good plants, lots of tomatoes. The pepper plants did well, but didn't produce much. This year, the garden is increased in size, and we planted seeds as well as plants. My onion sets went crazy and are quite large now. The onion seeds came along, although they are bunched up way too much. The carrots are coming now too. I am thinning them a little at a time and feeding the baby carrots to the Bug raw. She loves them. We've been picking a few peas every night and eating them raw along with the carrots. The tomato plants are so big, I'm afraid they might take over the garden, and perhaps the world. No tomatoes yet, but there will be. The peppers look pitiful in comparison. We are getting summer squash. We planted two summer squash, two zucchini and would up with three summer squash plants. (I put in one plant after some of them didn't come. hoping I wouldn't get all of one thing. Just my luck.) Bug and I are harvesting dill seed and chamomile flowers to dry. The Japanese beetles are wreaking havoc in the zinnias and marigolds. The zinnias are just now blooming, but I don't know if the marigolds will make it. The potatoes look Jurassic, but I can't get to them to hill them, so I don't know how they will produce. Here's why I can't get to them. We put sunflowers in at the ends of our garden rows, and everything is so close together and they are so tall that they are shadowing everything else. I want them to bloom, but I'm getting to the point of pulling them out before they do because they are so in the way. We had to tie up the tomatoes because they were shadowing the peppers too much. I've got three cherry tomatoes, one in the ground and two in pots. The one in the ground is beautiful, the potted ones are dying. I can't figure out why. I found swallowtail caterpillars on my dill last night. We bought some poison for the Japanese beetles, but now I'm afraid to use it. It might hurt the caterpillars. On the other hand, I don't want the beetles killing the basil. Ah the curse of the gardener.