2011/11/01 - Life got busy, but here's a quick update

My fiance finally moved across the country and is here with me now.  Yay!  This means we're doing more on the garden... a little... kind of.  It also means I'm not spending my evenings blogging.  Yay... kind of.  LOL

So here are the updates!

We've once again moved the barrel beds, and we've been hooking up the plumbing on them and the raft bed.  It's almost done.  (It's been almost done for a couple of weeks now, but I think this weekend we'll probably knock it out.)

We planted some more seeds (cauliflower, broccoli, spinach, peas, and a lot of hot peppers) but something (possum?) got in while the weather was lovely and I was keeping the greenhouse wide open to encourage beneficial flying critters.  He tromped over one of the bell pepper plants, ate the cauliflower seeds and the Sun Thai pepper seeds, and generally made himself unwelcome.  So now we're keeping the door zipped all the time.  Anyone know of a good way to discourage him from coming back?

Fiance has neatly organized the greenhouse with shelving and plastic fish food containers.  It no longer looks like a junk room in there.

The fish are getting so big!  Several of them are starting to get the highly arched back that mature fish are known for.  (Before that, they're just kind of fish shaped, if you know what I mean.)  So I think it'll probably be another month or two and then we'll harvest.  I have had to cut back on the feed a bit.  Since we have lots of big fish, and no longer any tomatoes or other heavy-feeding plants, the balance is getting a bit off.  Once the raft bed is up, this should all be good again.  And then of course we'll harvest some fish and I'll probably be off in the other direction.

Okay, now for the pictures  :-)  Since it's been almost two months, we'll have some older ones and some newer ones:

When I pulled out those tomato plants, some of the ripe tomatoes fell down and went *splat* on the growbed.  Evidently that's all it takes to start new plants.  This is 9/18:

And this is just two weeks later on 10/1:

Yes, I've ripped them all out again.  But WOW is it fertile there or what?!?

I actually got one of the carrots (yes, it's supposed to be small and round):

And the leeks are doing well as is the basil:

And the chard is happy:

The bell pepper plants were also (before our visitor):

(Yes, that's a toilet brush.  It's for keeping the drain pipe clear.)

I don't have any pics of the organized greenhouse or the work in progress on the new section.  But hopefully next month I can post pictures of it finished!